The Book Boyfriends Collection: Wither, Wait For You, The Edge of Never. Lauren DeStefano
“And you loved her?” Camryn looks over at me, letting her head fall to the side.
I keep looking at the stars.
“Yeah, I loved her, but it wasn’t meant to be.”
“How long were you together?”
I’m wondering why she wants to know this; most girls I know snap into that jealousy-fueled mood-swing stuff that makes me want to cover my nuts when it comes to talking about exes.
“Two years,” I answer. “The break-up was mutual; we started checking out other people and I guess realized we didn’t love each other as much as we thought we did.”
“Or, you just fell out of love.”
“No, we were never in love to begin with.”
I look over at her this time.
“How did you know the difference?” she asks.
I think about it for a moment, searching her eyes just about a foot from mine. I can smell the cinnamon toothpaste she brushed with this morning when she breathes.
“I don’t think you ever really fall out of love with someone,” I say and see a flicker of thought move through her eyes. “I think when you fall in love, like true love, it’s love for life. All the rest is just experience and delusions.”
“I didn’t know you were so philosophical.” She grins. “I should tell you, that counts as romantic.”
Usually, it’s her doing the blushing, but she got me this time. I try not to look at her, but that’s not so easy to pull off.
“So, who were you ever in love with, then?” she asks.
I straighten my legs out in front of me, crossing my ankles and locking my fingers together over my stomach. I look up at the sky and from the corner of my eye see Camryn do the same.
“Honestly?”
“Well yeah,” she says, “I’m just curious.”
I stare at a bright cluster of stars and say, “Well, no one.”
A tiny burst of air escapes her lips. “Oh please, Andrew; thought you were going to be honest?”
“I am,” I say, glancing over, “a few times I thought I was in love, but—why are we talking about this anyway?”
Camryn lets her head fall sideways again and she isn’t smiling anymore. She looks sort of sad.
“I guess I was using you as my shrink again.”
My eyes draw inward. “What do you mean?”
She looks away; her pretty blonde braid falls away from her shoulder and onto the blanket. “Because I’m starting to think maybe I wasn’t … No, I shouldn’t say something like that.” She’s not the happy, smiling Camryn anymore that I ran out here with.
I raise my back from the blanket and prop myself up on my elbows. I look over at her curiously. “You should say whatever you feel whenever you need to. Maybe saying it is exactly what you need.”
She doesn’t look at me.
“But I feel guilty even thinking it.”
“Well, guilt is a bitch, but don’t you think if you’re thinking it in the first place that it just might be true?”
Her head falls to the side.
“Just say it. If after you say it and it doesn’t feel right, then deal with that, but if you hold that shit in, the uncertainty will be a bigger bitch than the guilt will be.”
She stares up at the stars again. I do, too, just to give her some time to think about it.
“Maybe I wasn’t ever in love with Ian,” she says. “I did love him, a lot, but if I was in love with him … I think maybe I’d still be.”
“That’s a good observation,” I say and smile slimly, hoping she might again, too. I really hate to see her frown.
Her face is blank, contemplative.
“Well, what makes you believe that you were never in love with him?”
She looks right at me, searching my face and then says, “Because when I’m with you, I don’t think about him much anymore.”
I immediately lie back down and fix my gaze on the black sky. I could probably count all of those stars if I tried, just as a distraction, but there’s a much bigger distraction lying next to me than all the stars in the universe could be.
I have to stop this, and soon.
“Well, I’m very good company,” I say with a grin lacing my voice. “And I had your little ass crawling across that bed the other night, so yeah I can see how you might be more inclined to think of my head between your legs than anything else.” I’m just trying to shift her mood back to playful, even if it means she’ll smack me for it and accuse me of breaking my like-it-never-happened promise.
And she does smack me, right after lifting up and propping herself on her elbows like I had.
She laughs. “Asshole!”
I laugh louder; I’d throw my head back if it wasn’t pressed against the ground.
Then she moves closer to my side, propped up on one elbow as she looks down at me. I can feel the softness of her hair brushing against my arm.
“Why wouldn’t you kiss me?” she asks and it surprises me. “When you went down on me last night, you never kissed me. Why?”
“I did kiss you.”
“You didn’t kiss-kiss me,” she says and she’s so close to my lips that I want to kiss her now, but I don’t. “I don’t know how to feel about that—I don’t like how I feel about it, but I’m not sure how I should feel.”
“Well, you shouldn’t feel bad, that much I do know,” I say, being as vague as I can.
“But why?” she probes and her expression is beginning to harden.
I give in and say, “Because kissing is very intimate.”
She cocks her head. “So, you won’t kiss me for the same reason you won’t fuck me?”
I’m instantly hard. I hope like hell she doesn’t notice.
“Yes,” I say and before I have a chance to say anything else, she’s crawling on top of my lap. Shit, if she didn’t know I was as hard as a rock then, she definitely knows now. Her bare knees are pressed against the blanket on each side of me and she leans over, her arms holding up her weight and I fucking die when she brushes her lips across mine.
She looks right into my eyes and says, “I won’t try to make you sleep with me, but I want you to kiss me. Just a kiss.”
“Why?” I ask.
She really needs to move off my lap. Oh shit … it’s not helping that my dick is pressed between her ass cheeks right about now. If she moves just an inch backward—
“Because I want to know what it feels like,” she whispers onto my mouth.
My hands move up her legs and then her waist where I grip my fingers around her form. She smells so damn good. She feels amazing and all she’s doing is sitting on me. I can’t even begin to understand what she would feel like inside; the thought makes me crazy.
Then I feel her pressing herself against me through our clothes, her little hips moving gently, just once to persuade me, and then she stops and holds herself there. I’m throbbing painfully. Her eyes search my face and my lips and all I want to do is rip off her clothes and bury my cock inside her.
She leans in and places her lips over mine, slipping