Page 14 of Licks

Understatement, but I’d thought I’d dealt with it. Yet here I was, the wounds feeling fresh once more. “All you had to do was wait. I was ready to forgive you for cutting me from your life for a year and a half. Why couldn’t you have waited one fucking night for me?”

“I don’t know. I was a stupid kid with no real family and few friends, and enough self-loathing to keep half the therapists in the country employed. I didn’t think you’d ever feel what I felt. And you and Finch looked so much alike. I wanted to pretend, even for a moment, that you were mine, which is really warped. It just got so twisted.”

Beyond twisted, and my head spun.

For nine years I’d believed her texts that night had been lies. She’d ghosted on me our last year in high school. Had ignored me until her birthday messages. Then she’d slept with my brother, as though she’d gone out of her way to toy with me. I’d assumed her actions had been a form of retaliation—a way to punish me for who the hell knew what? For having loving parents? A scholarship? More friends?

“Not sure what to do with that,” I said, my voice scratched up. I wasn’t sure what to do with any of this.

Her chin wobbled. “I don’t expect your forgiveness. I know there’s no chance for us. It’s done. I just wanted to apologize. I should have said it back then.”

No chance for us. Her words were threaded with such loss, like she’d toss a penny into a pond and wish for it to be otherwise. Like she’d take me now if I offered myself up. The regret pooling in her glistening gaze was enough to fill the Pacific.

All I’d ever done was try to make Gwen happy. I’d taught her guitar, to touch her and sit close, but a creative outlet was valuable, something to distract her from her cold house when I wasn’t around. I would invite her to my family dinners. We’d sneak into each other’s rooms, to play cards and backgammon and argue if Superman or Wolverine would win in a flat-out brawl. We had spent endless hours together, searching for clues to find her father.

Then she tossed me and our history away like it had been nothing.

Not an easy pill to swallow, but I’d coped by believing everything had happened for a reason. Walking in on Gwen and Finch had led to more hours writing music, less studying. Deferring my courses. Traveling. Putting everything into song. Without that devastating blow, I could be living in San Francisco, working some nine-to-five, ass sore from warming an office chair, singing karaoke instead of originals.

But if fate had guided my folly in showing up at Gwen’s that night, then why had it brought me here now, after what I’d done? Why was I feeling this intense longing when the information I came to share would shatter her?

She was shaking slightly, gnawing on her lip like it was her job. I jammed my hand through my hair. All this time, all this pain, and she’d slept with my brother because she’d been irrevocably lonely. Not to hurt me or push me away. She’d done it to cope with her abandonment issues.

It still stung…but less. I was also tired of holding a grudge.

“Apology accepted,” I said, ready to leave our past in the past. “The history isn’t as ancient as I let on, and it would do me good to put it to bed.” But the comment had me picturing Gwen in a bed, in the present, those strong thighs around my waist, my cock buried inside her. Lust tapped a beat up my spine.

Tainted history and all, my attraction to her hadn’t lessened, and delaying my reason for being here only made it worse.

She stepped closer. “Do you mean it?”

“Mean what?”

“You can move on from what I did? Forgive me?”

I didn’t recognize the hesitancy in her voice. Teenage Gwen hadn’t had a tentative bone in her body. “It’s been nine years. I’m not holed up in my apartment, wallowing in self-pity.”

She tilted her chin down—eyes wide, head cocked—giving me her don’t bullshit me expression. This Gwen, I knew. “‘Girl with the Black Heart’?” she said.

Busted. Writing an album full of hate songs had been excellent therapy. The fact she knew it also meant she’d been keeping tabs on me. “Have you been listening to my music?”

She shook her head quickly. “No. Of course not. I’m more of a metal girl. I just read the song titles somewhere.” But her nose twitched. The same tic that followed a Gwen fib.

“Liar.”

“Says you.”

The idea of her lying in bed, my music filling her room, pleased me more than it should. I shouldn’t be joking with her, either. Or were we flirting? Nothing was going according to plan. Including my bitterness that resurfaced. “You should give it a listen. It’s a how-to on dealing with a broken heart.”

She inhaled sharply. I expected her to bite back, the way her sarcasm used to match mine blow for blow. Her tone quieted instead. “Since when does mending a broken heart involve dousing a girl in gasoline?”

“Not a girl. Her shadow. It was about torching history you can’t shake. And I thought you hadn’t heard the song.”

“I maybe saw the lyrics online.”

“Which line is your favorite?”

She opened her mouth, likely to tell me off, but she flattened her lips. A twinkle backlit the wariness slitting her eyes. “It’s tough to decide between the part where you stomp on my ashes or the line where you say my soul is black.” She punctuated the gibe with a shaky grin.