22. Hope Is A Dangerous Thing

22

HOPE IS A DANGEROUS THING

LILA

I f you told me that the Bristol Brenner was nervous around me, I wouldn’t believe it. The Bristol I know would be cracking jokes or disguising some discreetly placed touches. But nope, none of that. Just good ol’ awkward silence.

“Are you sure I can’t help with anything?” I ask, swinging my legs against the edge of the countertop and glancing at the chunks of chicken swimming in honey sauce.

“Nope. Just continue sitting there and looking pretty,” Bristol says, stirring his aromatic creation with that dexterous hand of his—one that spent hours ravaging me in the Reapers’ locker room last night.

Just walking around today was a struggle. I wouldn’t be surprised if photos of me looking like I had a grade-A wedgie surfaced later this week. Bristol made sure to get me back for tying his hands, and he executed his revenge perfectly. I’m fucking addicted to him. And I know that’s a bad thing—especially because he remains emotionally unavailable—but that sex was life-changing.

I tuck the middle of my bottom lip between my teeth, feeling my belly sour with some indelible feeling…and it’s not hunger. He looks so at ease cooking. This giant, Olympian god towering over the stove—with his shirt practically vacuum-sealed and stretched over knitted back muscles—doing the most mundane task in the entire world. This famous, world-renowned hockey player is spending his time cooking me dinner, and domestication has never looked so hot.

He swipes his index finger through some of the brown, herb-speckled marination, gathering a globule before sticking it out for me to try. I pause for a moment—more out of shock than hesitation—and slowly lean forward to envelop his finger with my lips, sucking off the honey and garlic sauce with a timid flick of my tongue. Bristol’s eyes are unwavering, so unfathomably dark beneath the fluorescent lighting that I lose sight of the rings of his irises completely. Something visceral weighs down his upper eyelids, turning an affectionate gaze into an animalistic glare, and he looks about ready to disregard dinner altogether and feast on me instead.

A throaty noise rides out on a hushed exhale, and I’m not sure where I find the confidence, but I take his finger a little deeper into my mouth, clocking every twitch of his jaw through my lashes. His arm tenses for a split second, his head tips back in pleasure, and I’m going to need to rein in the hormones if I want to keep this dinner civil.

With my face as hot as that stainless-steel pan, I eventually extricate his digit, embarrassment and lust forming one hell of a concoction in my belly. Every time I look at him, smell him, touch him, I’m retracing my steps and falling head over heels again, despite cautioning myself not to revisit the motheaten pages of a tumultuous past.

And to my utter surprise, Bristol doesn’t look the least bit off-put by my amateur finger blowjob.

“Fucking hell, Lils,” he grounds out, lapping up the saliva I left on his forefinger, his voice steeped in desire—much like the cloves of garlic simmering in an amber pool of rich, umami flavoring.

Blush rouges my cheeks. “It tastes good.”

Bristol—stupid Bristol—with his loaded, dimple-showing smile, just stares at me like I said something of actual substance. “ You taste good,” he whispers under his breath.

I’ve been conservative with how I’m sitting—considering this dress is a slip away from showing him my lace thong—and as conspicuously as I can, I squeeze my thighs together.

If I wasn’t so incapacitated by his compliment, Old Lila would’ve come in with a real ballbuster like, “You ask me to taste your mystery sauce again and the only thing that you’ll be tasting is blood,” or, you know, something along those violent lines. But she’s MIA.

There’s a beat of silence that falls over us like a pall, and Bristol comes to his senses before turning back to the stove, busying himself with flipping over the browning slabs of meat. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to act. I feel like I’m some schoolgirl with a crush.

He was great with my mother, and it was clear she liked him given how many times he made her smile. He was just the right amount of charming, actively listening to her stories and regaling her with some of his own. It makes it that much harder for me to confront whatever it is I’m feeling for him.

And I remember everything I said to him after I passed out on his cock the other night.

But the worst part?

I still mean every word I said.

Bristol bends down to get a Tupperware of precooked rice out from the fridge, and then he grabs two plates from the cabinet above him, along with some lemon wedges and a few sprigs of thyme. While he’s working on making everything presentable, I decide that the least I can do is make some conversation, even if there’s a ninety-nine percent guarantee I’ll word vomit.

“My mother loved meeting you,” I pipe up from behind him, plucking at a loose thread on my sweater dress.

Even though I can’t see his face, I can hear his smile in his words. “I loved meeting her too. It’s incredible what she does. I can’t imagine the emotional strength it takes to work with animals. She’s sacrificing her time and efforts to help those dogs find a forever home, and I think that’s the most admirable thing anyone could do in their lifetime.”

I wish Bristol could’ve met my mom in the conventional way—after months of us dating and a flood of pestering texts from her about meeting my real boyfriend. But it didn’t work out like that. We’re still not a couple.

I hated lying to my mother. She asked us a few questions about our fake relationship—to which Bristol answered with unquestionable confidence—but she didn’t want to bore us with an interrogation. It was the first time I’ve seen her in months, and I feel like an emotional wreck. I feel like a child again, running to my mother for safety—running to my mother to absorb all the hurt and pain moldering inside me.

When my fingers tug too hard, a crater forms in my favorite dress. “Yeah, she’s amazing.”

Bristol stops moving for a second, and his upper back shifts with a deep breath before he repositions his body to face me. “Lila, I…” He trails off, then drags a hand down the side of his face. “I have to ask you something.”

I perk up a bit, hope feathering through my chest with a warmth reminiscent of a sun-kissed summer afternoon. “Yeah?”

Whatever Bristol wants to ask me isn’t easy for him to articulate, and I’m starting to worry that maybe I should be prioritizing fear rather than far-fetched hope.

His lips gather into a frown, and the contours of his face cast dark shadows that malform his naturally calm demeanor. “When we were on the yacht for the photoshoot…and you panicked after they called your name…what really happened out there?”

Oh. That’s not what I was expecting him to ask me. I’d kind of forgotten all about that whole incident. I didn’t tell him before to spite him, but now, there’s no animosity between us.

My legs stop kicking as my fingers abandon the self-dug hole in my dress. My lungs are on fire, burning as if I’ve inhaled mouthfuls of saltwater, and I’m drowning all over again in my own insecurities, my fears, the all-around guilt for not confiding in him when he’s offered to take some of the weight off my shoulders.

I feel the panic ambush me with a tightness in my chest that’s too thick to dispel, like my heart’s been fossilized in sticky, impassable sediment. “Sometimes I panic about how I look in front of the camera. I think the nerves about it being my first big photoshoot were getting to me, and it didn’t help that you were looking like an oiled-up Hercules.”

The punchline falls short.

Bristol nods sympathetically. “But you were…you mentioned that feeling at the gala too.”

Oh, great. Now we’re really going to unpack everything. I don’t want to talk about this right now. I want to eat dinner with my non-boyfriend, talk about stupid, trivial things, then go to bed unplagued by the impossibly high standard I’ve set for myself because of my hyper fixation on not being good enough.

“Bristol, I don’t want to talk about this right now…”

He pushes off the counter and comes closer to me, bracketing either side of my legs with his arms. “I just…I want to understand you. Please, Lila. Please talk to me. I shouldn’t have waited this long to ask you about it. I should’ve pushed for the tr uth that night on the boat, but we were both too unstable to have that conversation.”

I want to fight him on this—I want to shove him away and disappear off the face of the planet. But fighting hurts more than accepting the truth, and there’s only so much more hurt that my body can take before it atrophies.

“I hate myself sometimes, okay? I don’t think I look good enough to model. I don’t think I look good enough for people to like me. I know for a fact that there are plenty of people online who don’t like me, and all I do is desperately search for validation that I’m not entitled to. I chase after people who want nothing to do with me. I’m too loud and too emotional, and that scares people away. I prioritize random strangers’ opinions of me over my own. So, when you left me, all you did was reinforce every preconceived notion I had about myself.”

I try not to shout or raise my voice. All I have the energy to do is crumble into a sobbing mess, tears meandering down my cheeks in tributaries, smearing through my spotty foundation. I bury my face in my arms out of instinct, so mortified by the snot and the spit and the tears that I don’t want Bristol to look at me.

The world goes dark, and the only noise I can hear is my pitiful sniveling. I don’t know how long I cry, but in my moment of blindness, I feel the warmth and steadiness of two arms wrap around my curled frame. Bristol’s holding me, stroking my back with his hand, and whispering mumbled gibberish into my neck. I unball myself and fully give him the extent of my pain, flinging my arms around him and letting him see the disastrous state of my mascara-ruined face.

“Shh, Lila. It’s okay. I’ve got you. I’m right here,” he coos.

“I’m never enough. I’m never…anybody’s first choice.”

Bristol gently breaks from our embrace, tipping my chin up so that I’m forced to look him in the eyes. “That’s not true, alright? You are enough. You’re more than enough. And I’m so fucking sorry I ever made you think that you weren’t. You’re…”

“I’m your s-second choice,” I finish for him, pulling away from his hand and wiping the incoming deluge bubbling over my waterlines. My vision mists, pinching in around the edges, and a feverish heat steamrolls through my body, making it harder and harder for me to focus on anything aside from the—frankly inevitable—structural collapse of my heart.

Bristol tries to console me with another touch, and I lose it on him. I push him squarely in the chest, having to keep him away from me because I can’t bear the pity burnished in his equally tearful gaze.

A crackly cry rips from his throat, so harsh and grating that his voice loses its healthy, rich timbre. “You’re not. That’s not how I think about you at all. You’re my first now. You’re my first choice now , Lila.” He’s scrambling to reassure me, or maybe he’s lying to me in some last-ditch attempt to keep me from leaving.

Tears soak into my cheeks like Rorschach inkblots suffusing through paper, and thin trickles beeline for the seam of my lips, demanding entry so that salt can cling to the underside of my tongue. I drop down from the counter, and I stagger as far as my legs will carry me, blocking out the desperate pleas being lobbed over my shoulder. I don’t know where I’m going. I just—I want to leave. I want to run away. I want to disappear. But the closer I get to the exit, the faster my strength diminishes, and I fall to my knees just a few feet from the front door, bawling so loudly that the harrowing cries ricochet off the walls.

I’m not good enough for Bristol. I’m not good enough for anyone.

You’re fucking stupid, Lila. Of course you wouldn’t be the first choice of a man who keeps secrets from you and ghosts you. Stop trying so hard. It’s embarrassing. No wonder people want to get as far away from you as possible. Your dad was lucky he never got to know you growing up.

Sadness and anger clash inside of me—sapping my body of energy with hurtful, quick-settling words—and they feed the monster that lurks in the rafters of my mind. It preys on grey matter, turns my own thoughts against me, whispers hard truths in my ears when I’m surrounded by nothing but barefaced deceit. I should have listened. I knew this was too good to be true.

Bristol’s next to me in an instant, and channels of tears disappear into the outcrop of stubble on his jaw. “Lila, please. Please breathe.”

And then he traps me in a hug. I strain against those tree-trunk arms, thrashing against his chest, yelling cruel words at him to get him to release me. But in spite of all the screaming and the elbowing, he bears the brunt of the pain until I’m too tired to fight him.

“It doesn’t matter that you weren’t my first love,” he whispers against my head, his grip loosening the slightest bit now that my body’s been stripped of its defenses. “I’m falling for you, angel. So much that it fucking scares me. I never thought that I’d be ready for a relationship after Summit, and then you came along with your quick wit and those beautiful blue eyes, and you gave me a reason to keep living. You showed me that life doesn’t end when you lose someone. You were there for me when I came to you broken, and without realizing it, you just…you fixed me.”

My wails are still on a deafening rampage, but that urge to destroy is gone now—that overcritical voice in my head is silent. He clutches my body to his chest as his heart propels with uncountable beats, going so impossibly fast that he forgets to breathe. His fingers are steel clamps on my back, and he’s holding me like he’s afraid I’ll fade into the blurry landscape of a quickly forgotten dream .

“I wish you were my first choice, but I didn’t know you back then. I know you now . Summit will always have a small place in my heart, but you don’t just live in my heart, okay? You infect every living part of me—my heart, my head, my lungs, my stomach. I breathe easier when I’m with you. My heart’s lighter when I hear you laugh or see you smile. You occupy every thought I have. You give me butterflies on a regular basis. You’re everywhere; you’re all around me; you’re at the forefront of my entire being. Summit is a memory. You are my present—you are my ass-whopping, hard-headed, strong, independent, selfless, caring present. I feel everything for you. I feel it so greatly that you burn me, Lila. You burn me so badly that the only way I can stop thinking about you, even for a second, is to carve you from my goddamn body.”

Bristol’s voice breaks as moisture continues to assail his skin, and he cradles the back of my head, soothing me with ministrative strokes. “I’m so sorry I made you feel this way.”

Silence cloaks us like an impenetrable haze, and an orchestra of stuttering whines desecrates the stillness of the house, curtailed by sniffles. I let my tears waterfall onto his shirt and my fingers delve into his back, and I knock down all those reservations standing between me and happiness—between me and him .

“I’m so s-sorry,” I apologize through fractured syllables. “I’m s-so s-sorry.”

“Shh. None of that, angel. You have nothing to be sorry for. Thank you for telling me the truth. I’m sorry that you’ve been carrying all this pain by yourself. If I wasn’t such a fucking idiot, I would’ve made sure to carry it for you from the very beginning.”

“You couldn’t have known. I was horrible to you. You gave me a chance to tell you the truth on the yacht, but I didn’t. All I did was punish you for something that you’d already apologized for.”

“You weren’t horrible. I deserved it. You didn’t trust me, and I don’t blame you. All that matters now is that you trust me. I…I want to help you heal, if you’ll let me.”

The eye of the storm passes, leaving behind a few teardrops. My vocal cords are raw but finally still, and the full-body tremors no longer control me anymore. It’s the aftermath of a natural disaster, where light torrents of rain welcome a new beginning, saturating the pulverized earth to nurture broken roots that, in a few weeks, will sprout anew with life once again. A rebirth.

All I do is nod.

Bristol wipes my damp undereye with his thumb, a soft smile embellishing his lips. “My beautiful girl.”

A hollow chuckle floats out of me. “I have snot all over my face.”

“And yet you’re still beautiful,” he insists. “You’re the most beautiful girl to have ever walked this earth, Lila. And pretty much everyone knows that you’re out of my league.”

“Everyone?”

“The guys give me shit about it on a daily basis.”

A true laugh, born from deep within my belly, erupts. “I’m not out of your league, though I’m flattered you think so.”

Bristol nuzzles his nose into my neck, garnering some squeals from me. “Every time I see you, I’m astounded by how naturally stunning you are. You take my breath away, and you don’t even have to try. No makeup, light makeup, heavy makeup—none of it matters. Your soul is what’s truly beautiful. The outside is just an added bonus.”

I’ve never been told anything like that before. Sure, I’ve gotten compliments from people over my modeling pictures, but I never know if they really mean it. To hear that from someone so important to me…it really does change my perspective on things.

“You’re not too loud, and you’re not too emotional. You’re you . Being loud and being emotional isn’t a bad thing. I fell in love with your very loud opinions—though they’re usually at my expense—and I fell in love with how big your heart is.”

Bristol pulls back so that he can caress the side of my tearstained face, and those callouses on his hands are not as rough as I remember them to be. “Not everyone’s going to like you, but the ones who matter will.”

He pauses, trying to work up the courage to finish his sentence, and his throat ripples with a nervous swallow. “I want to be your boyfriend. For real this time.”

Considering all my brain activity is offline right now, it takes me a second to compute Bristol’s words. “You—what?”

“I think I’m…I think I’m finally at a place in my life where I’m not tortured by Summit’s passing. I want the real thing with you, Lila. None of this fake dating crap. I want to have you in private and in public. I want to show you off. I want the world to know that I’m happily yours. I just wish it hadn’t taken me this long to realize it.”

Bristol wants the real thing? All I’ve ever wanted is the real thing with him, and now everything I’ve dreamed of is coming true. No more hiding. No more secrets. I want to start over. With him .

Honestly? I want to spend the rest of my life with him, but that’s a conversation for another day.

I don’t know what to say. And instead of boring him with some dumb, foot-in-the-mouth response, I answer him in the truest way possible. I lean forward, cradle his face in my hand, and press a gentle but passionate kiss to his lips. His mouth skates against mine in reverence, and he swallows up all my doubt and residual tears, endowing my lungs with fresh air. Air that’s no longer infested with a black, oppressive smog.

“I’d love to be your girlfriend, Bristol Brenner.”