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“Don’t be mad, baby,” Johnny murmured against my mouth. “C’mon. Get undressed. Come back to bed.”
I pushed his chest until he stepped away from me. “No.”
His expression clouded. “Jesus, you chicks. The fuck’s a guy gotta do for you? You go into the bathroom all fucking smiles, you come out looking like you want to kill me.”
“How long ago?” I demanded.
“How long ago what? We split up, like, a year ago.”
“No. How long ago did I go into the bathroom?” I forced the words out across a dry tongue and numb lips.
“I don’t know. Five, ten minutes ago?”
“Oh, God.” I wasn’t just back in the world I’d constructed out of wish fulfillment and an overdose of internet stalking. I was back and forth inside it.
I stumbled into the bathroom where I bent over the sink and swallowed convulsively, sure I was about to heave up every bit of my peppermint latte. With my eyes closed I couldn’t see him, but I heard the shush-shush of Johnny’s feet on the tile and felt his hand on my shoulder. Without opening my eyes, I fumbled open the faucet and ran my fingers through cool water to press them against my forehead and cheeks.
“You okay?” His fingers made soothing circles on my back. “What’s wrong?”
“Heat. It’s the heat.” The words slipped out of me, and I wondered why I lied.
“Take a drink.” His hands kept smoothing over my back.
I did feel better with his touch, but my fingers gripped the sink and I didn’t move until I could be sure I wasn’t going to puke. Then I splashed my face again and, dripping, turned to him. “What is this, Johnny?”
“What’s what?” He took a towel from a drawer and gently wiped my face. He cupped my chin in his palm and looked into my eyes before kissing my forehead. He pulled me against his chest, his arms around me.
I didn’t care if it was too hot to snuggle, or that his bare chest beneath my cheek was sticky with sweat. I pressed my lips to the skin there. I tasted salt and sex.
“This. Us.”
He laughed. “I don’t know. What do you want it to be?”
“I want it to be everything, Johnny.” My voice broke.
“Hey,” he said softly. “Hey, shhh.”
I didn’t quite cry, but my body shook with tension and he must’ve thought I was weeping. It was nice, him holding me this way. A nice echo of what had happened the day in his office, except that here I knew if I kissed him, Johnny would kiss me back.
“So why can’t it be?” he said after a minute.
The air in the bathroom was heavy with heat and moisture. Breathing it took effort. Speaking took effort, too.
“Because none of this is real.”
“Hey.” He pushed me gently away without letting go of my upper arms. Holding me steady. “Don’t say that. It’s real. I’m right here, you’re right there—”
“No.” I shook my head. I ran my hands over his chest and belly. “You’re not. I’m not. This isn’t real at all.”
“Then what is it?” He tilted his head and gave me a faint smile. “It feels real to me.”
He slid his hand up to cup my breast through my blouse. “This feels real.”
He took my hand and pushed it down to hold his half-hard cock. “This feels real, too.”
I pushed away from him, half turning. With the sink at my back I had no place to go. “It would feel real to you. You’re always real to yourself. The problem, Johnny, is all of this is inside my head. I’m making it up. None of it’s real. It’s all just something that’s going on in my brain.”
He didn’t laugh. He didn’t try to pull me closer, but he didn’t move so I could get away. “Emm. Look at me.”
I did. He was so beautiful, so young. Smooth face, unlined. Was it wrong to see such beauty in his youth, especially when I had the memory of his real face to overlay the one in front of me? The lines at the corners of his eyes, the silver at his temples, those were things about the real Johnny I found utterly delicious, but there was no denying that the man in front of me was in his yumfuckable peak.
“What’s not real about this? I know we haven’t known each other very long, but…”
“It’s not that.” I shook my head. My hair had started to slip from the clip binding it in a coil to the back of my head.
I reached up and pulled it out, then held the curved leather on my palm to show him. “This is real. I bought it because of something you said to me here. That I left it here, that is was mine.”
He looked confused. “You did? When?”
“You told me,” I said, “in the kitchen. That this was mine, though I’d never seen it. That I’d left it here. Then I saw it in the mall and I bought one like it, because it reminded me of you. That’s crazy, Johnny. Maybe I’m crazy.”
“We’re all a little crazy. It’s okay.” He smiled.
I didn’t. I threw the leather clip into the sink, where the leather turned dark with wet. I looked at him again.
“None of this is real, and it can’t last.”
“Shit.” He frowned. “Some things last. Don’t make this over before it’s even started.”
“But it is over!” I shouted.
He backed up a few steps, eyes narrowing, fists clenching just a little, like he thought I might hit him. He had been married to Sandy, a woman I could totally see punching a dude in the nuts when he was naked. I, however, wasn’t that sort of woman.
“It’s over,” I whispered. “Because it never started. Don’t you get it?”
“No. I don’t get it.”
“This isn’t real.” I threw out a hand to gesture at the bathroom. “We aren’t. Somewhere, you’re shaking…shaking…”
I was shaking, but not from nerves or a seizure, but as though a phantom hand were pushing me back and forth.
“Emm?” Johnny sounded alarmed.
“Shaking me,” I whispered hoarsely, then louder, “shaking me out of it.”
“Out of what?” Johnny cried, reaching for me. “Jesus, Emm, you’re scaring the shit out of me.”
“Shaking me out of the dark. Bringing me back.” I pushed past him. “I’m going.”
“Where are you going?” he called from the doorway as I pushed myself to walk at a steady pace through the bedroom, not knowing where I was going.
Knowing it didn’t matter.
“Are you coming back?” he cried. “Emm! Tell me you’re coming back!”
“I don’t know,” I said over my shoulder as I opened the bedroom door. “I never know.”
And then I was blinking, my vision momentarily blurred, and Johnny’s hand was on my shoulder.
“Emm,” he was saying quietly. “You have to believe me when I say I’m sorry.”
Chapter 18
“For what?” I asked stupidly. I’d missed something important. I gave a pointed look at his hand, and he took it away.
Johnny paused before answering. “You were…gone…again, huh?”
My chin went up a little. “It was nothing.”
“Sure, it’s something,” he said, but before he could say more his phone rang from his coat pocket.
He reached for it, and I took the chance to get up while he was answering. He gestured at me to wait, but I didn’t. I grabbed up my coat and bag and pushed away from the table without even tossing my trash. Let him toss it. I had to get out of there.
I took the long way home. The cold felt good on my hot face, even though by the time I got back to my house I couldn’t feel my nose. Or my toes. The sky had gotten even darker, thick with clouds. The air tingled with the promise of snow.
My phone rang as soon as I got through the front door. I had caller ID. “What do you want?”
“Is that how you always answer the phone?”
“Only when it’s you,” I told Johnny.
He laughed, and I hated that he could find humor in my anger. “I’ve never called you before.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t have called me