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Her smile is both sad and understanding. “You don't want to work yourself to death.”
“Life is too short to waste it away in an office. There are so many things to do and see and feel. My father never got to experience that and I made up my mind a long time ago I wouldn't make the same mistake.”
“I get it.”
I can't help frowning. Everything I'm saying is the opposite of what she believes in. “You do?”
She laughs lightly at my scepticism. “We're both products of our conditioning, resisting the way we grew up. I want stability because I never had it and you want the opposite for the same reason.”
“So we're alike, yet opposites.”
“Exactly.”
Silence falls over us, but it isn't uncomfortable. I take her hand in mine as we lay there on the blanket, staring up at the stars. Our conversation once again revealed what I already know – that we're completely wrong for each other. Yet right now I've never felt closer to another person. We might be opposites, but Claire is special to me and she always will be. I want nothing but happiness for her, and if that means her moving on straight after I leave, searching for her perfect man, I'll be okay with it.
Until October, however, she's mine and I'm not letting her go.
24
Claire
“Did you hear that?”
Still groggy from sleep, I lift my head and look at the man in my bed. He wasn't supposed to stay over. When I invited Dylan in last night, I expected him to make my body sing from pleasure and then leave again. I lay there spent, yet alert, vigilant, and ready to get up and say goodbye to him – still trying to prove I'm okay with what we're doing.
Not that I'm quite sure who I'm trying to prove it to anymore, him or me.
I went to the bathroom after our last round, hoping he'd take the hint and leave, but when I came back, he'd fallen asleep. As much as my heart hurt having to do it, I tried to wake him, thinking that he wouldn't want to fall asleep in my bed. Instead of getting up to leave when he stirred, however, he slipped his arm around my waist and pulled me to him.
Dylan is barging his way into my heart inch by inch. How am I supposed to handle this thing between us when he's not letting me keep sight of the boundary?
Wednesday night, after our picnic, I felt my composure slipping with him. It worried me how easy it would be to let my guard down and enjoy more than just sex with him. Even my attempt to keep things in perspective by bringing up his overseas trip wasn't anywhere near enough to drive a wedge into the blanket of intimacy wrapped around us. When he dropped me home on Wednesday, he suggested he wanted to come in, but I told him I had to be up early.
Last night, however, I didn't have that excuse. And now, this Sunday morning, I woke up in Dylan's arms. All the hopes anddreams of a future with Dylan that I've been pushing down came screaming back loud enough to hurt my temples.
I sit up, rubbing my head and wondering if the sudden pounding is inside my head or at my front door.
Another furious knock sounds. Nope, the banging isn't in my head. Well, it isn'tjustin my head. I can't help wincing as the knocking grows more frantic.
“I'll answer it.”
Before I can tell him it might not be a good idea for him to answer my door, Dylan is up and out of the bed, picking up his boxer shorts from the floor. He doesn't even pause to put them on before leaving the bedroom. I get a flash of his ripped chest and arse before he's out of my bedroom, rendering me speechless.
The moment the knocking stops, there is another loud noise.
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
“Keep your knickers on, Chase. It's not what you think.”
“Not what I think? Not what I think! You're at my sister's house first thing on Sunday morning and you've clearly got a boner. How can it not be what I think it is?”
My lungs are failing me, as well as my heart, as I realise it's my brother at the door. I want to die.
But there is no time for that.
“Okay, it's exactly what you think it is.”
I get out to the hallway just in time to distract my brother from the punch he's about to throw.
