She lets out a heavy sigh as she continues to pace. “I know, but I never have, you know. All those times, meaningless sex, it always felt like a routine.” She sticks her hands out to the side and stops in front of me, looking me in the eye. “I mean, I don’t even really like it.”
“Not like sex?” Okay, that concept is foreign to me and makes me wonder what she felt when we just about had sex. Were all those sparks I felt a one-sided thing? Is that why she just lay there?
She nods, her blue, mascara-stained eyes so wide they’re practically popping out of her skull. “Yeah, it’s just something that I do, not something that I really want to do. It doesn’t even feel good.”
A lot of inappropriate thoughts creep into my mind at that moment and it takes a great amount of energy to hold them back. “We should get you home,” I say and move to take her hand.
She shakes her head, turning out of my reach, and strands of her hair curtain her face. “I think I might have lost my job.”
“I’m glad,” I say honestly, stepping forward and brushing her hair back because I want to see her face. “This place isn’t somewhere you should be working.”
“But I have to pay rent.”
“We’ll figure it out. There are a ton of jobs out there.”
She shakes her head again, wrapping her arms around herself as tears begin to slip down her cheeks. “You’re too nice to me. You need to stop. I don’t deserve nice.”
It’s like she thinks she’s unworthy of nice. I want to ask her about why she thinks this, but I don’t want to set her off again. She needs to relax.
I aim for a joke. “That’s funny, because a few weeks ago you couldn’t seem to stop calling me an asshole.” I smile at her, trying to lighten the mood.
“Stop it,” she says, wiping the tears and smeared mascara off her cheeks with the bottom of her shirt. I can see her stomach, perfect, smooth, and almost flawless, except for that scar going around the middle. “Don’t joke. You’re being too nice again and I’m so messed up.”
“Everyone’s messed up.” I reach forward and slowly wipe away some of the tears running down her cheek with my fingertips. “In their very own fucked-up way, a lot of people just won’t admit it aloud and then try to change it.” I reduce the space between us and place a hand on her arm. “But you’ve done both of those, which makes you so fucking strong, Lila. I wish you could see that. You’re strong and amazing and beautiful and you deserve so much more than sitting on a bathroom floor in a skanky bar. You deserve to have an amazing life.” I mean every word I say and even though I’m being really emotional, I don’t regret anything I said.
She tries to wipe some of her tears away, but more pour out. She starts to sob and rushes toward me, throwing her arms around my waist. I tense, but then circle her in my arms, hugging her tightly against me as she buries her face in my chest and a strange sense of calm comes over me. I feel comfortably at peace with her in my arms, and if I could, I’d just keep holding on to her forever, comforting her, making her feel better in every way that I could. It takes me a minute to grasp what it might mean. I might be falling in love with Lila. And the moment I realize this is the moment I realize that I’m not sure if I was ever really in love with London. Infatuated with her, maybe. Love, I don’t think so. Because what I’m feeling right now, this terrifying, cliff falling, heart dropping, thoughts racing, plunging into unknown was far from anything I ever felt for London.
Lila cries in my shirt for an eternity and I trace my fingers up and down her back, telling her that it’ll be okay, while I kiss the top of her head over and over again, feeling my life—feeling myself change. The longer she stays in my arms, the less I want to let her go. I want to hold her. Smell her hair. Kiss her cheeks until I can’t feel my lips, only her. I want to do a lot of things to her, very slowly and deliberately so I can feel every sensation.
But then she pulls back and peers up at me with bloodshot eyes. “What am I going to do about Parker?”
“What do you mean, what are you going to do?” I keep my arms around her shoulder, still not wanting to let her go. “If he comes near you then I’ll kick his ass.”
“I don’t want you to get hurt,” she whispers. “You don’t need to be fighting anyone for me.”
I laugh again, louder, until my whole side aches. “I’m pretty sure I can handle Parker. In fact, he looks like the kind of guy who likes to bitch slap and pull hair when he fights.”
She restrains a smile. “He’s not that much of a wimp.”
I roll my eyes again and shake my head at the absurdity. “We are talking about the same guy, right? The douche you dated for a while?”
She nods her head and I detect a hint of an amused sparkle in her eye. “And you were so excited when I broke up with him.”
“I was drunk when you did.”
“And we were playing strip poker. I remember.”
I smile, because it’s a perfect moment, a light after a dark episode. “Ah, strip poker,” I say, tucking her hair behind her ear. “If I remember right you never did take your bra off when I won that hand.”
“Only because I knew you couldn’t handle the goodies.” She shakes her chest and her tits bounce against my chest. She pauses and then lowers her cheek against me, breathing quietly. “Thank you, Ethan… for everything.”
I could tell her she doesn’t need to thank me. That I was glad to do it. That I loved helping her. But I’m not. I wish it’d never happened. Instead, I wish she never had to go through all of this.
I mutter, “You’re welcome.” Then lace my fingers with hers and tug her toward the door, ready to take her back to our home and get her the hell away from this place. I’m ready to take her back home.
To our home.
Chapter Thirteen
Lila
It’s been four days since my little episode and for the most part, life has been fairly normal, except for my relentless need to fixate on Ethan. Ever since he found me in the bathroom stall, I can’t stop thinking about him. It’s worse than before, an intense growing obsession. I’m not even sure what it is. The way he looked at me, touched me, spoke to me, joked with me, forgave me, and then took me home. They’re such little things, yet they mean so much. He may be rough, blunt, somewhat perverted, and completely imperfect according to my mother’s standards, but I seriously wouldn’t have it any other way. I’ve had the supposed perfect guy before, the one who gave me rings, told me I was beautiful, told me he loved me, that I owned his soul, and that he’d do anything for me. But it was a bunch of shit. Unreal. Perfect doesn’t exist. Realness does. Realness is what I need. And Ethan is as real as anyone I’ve ever met.
I’m trying to figure out what this all means in terms of my feelings for him. I thought I understood love once, but it turned out I was wrong. Could the feelings I have for Ethan possibly be love? I have no idea, but eventually I’m going to have to figure it out, instead of wandering around analyzing everything.
I’m also looking for a job again, one that’s Ethan approved, and I’m still getting used to that fact. No one has ever thought highly enough of me to think I deserved something better. Sure, my mother wouldn’t approve of the job at Danny’s either, but not because she thought I was better than that. She would think the Summers’s name was better, but not my character. In fact, if she was basing it solely on my character she’d say I belonged there, something she made pretty clear during one of her phone calls.
“You did what?” she practically screams into the phone and I have to hold the receiver away from my ear as it rings against her voice. “You moved in with some guy?”