Page 17 of Miss Behaved
“I’m going to head to my room and drop off a few things.” I say when I realize he isn’t taking the hint that I’m not asking him to follow me around. “We’ve got a short break, and I should probably make a few calls. Or get a snack. Maybe even just relax, I don’t know.”
I turn without saying goodbye, like being around Carson makes me forget how people should act around each other, because I can’t trust myself around him, even after all these years.
“Sounds good,” Carson says, following two paces behind me, not taking the hint.
I hug my bag tighter. “That wasn’t an invite.”
“I know,” he says. But he follows me through the lobby and into the elevator anyway. He’s quiet the whole ride up, standing beside me as we watch the floor numbers tick away. Somehow the silence weighs more than any conversation we could be having.
When the elevator finally comes to a stop, and the doors open, I wait for oxygen to return to my lungs as I step out onto the floor, but Carson is right behind me.
“Are you following me?” I finally ask, stopping at my room.
He gives me a shrug. “No, are you following me?”
“Why would I be following you?”
“Well, this is my room.” He juts his head to the left, toward the door across the hall from mine.
“Of course it is.” I tip my face to the ceiling and sigh.
“Yours?” he looks at my door, and I nod.
Carson’s gaze moves from me to the door and back again, that panty-melting smirk climbing his cheeks. And all I can do is pray he doesn’t ask me to come in, because the past is starting to feel like a long time ago, and while my brain isn’t ready to forget, my body is begging me to forgive.
Carson turns to his door and slides the key into the lock.
“Good to know,” he says, shooting me a wink that pierces my armor. He dips inside his room and lets the door close behind him, leaving me frozen and feeling like a teenage girl all over again.
7
Carson
Thirteen Years Earlier
“Dude,thatchick’stakingoff her clothes.” Sam jets over to the window, and his mouth falls open.
It takes me less than five seconds to realize where his eyes have landed, my window having a perfect view of Monica’s bedroom.
“Don’t be a perv.” I stomp over and slap the blinds shut, shoving him when he tries to get past me to peek through.
“You’re joking.” Sam laughs. “This coming from the guy who got suspended last year for bringing his dad’s porn stash to class.”
“That’s different,” I snap back at him.
I’d brought the magazines to school to piss off my dad, kind of hoping I’d be caught, because he’s an ass, and I wanted to get under his skin. But this isn’t some chick in a magazine. This is Monica. And I’m not about to have sleazy Sam ogling her through the window.Even ifI’ve accidentally done it once myself.
I’d gotten home late, and it was dark outside. I came into my room only to be blinded by the light of her bedroom window cutting through the darkness. Her bra slipped down before I could process what I was seeing. My feet unfroze as her bra hit the floor, and I shut the blinds so fast they almost ripped from the window. As much as I wanted to see it,see her, that wasn’t the right way to do it.
“Damn dude, you’ve got it bad for that girl.” Sam tosses himself on my bed and grabs one of the Nintendo controllers, smashing the buttons to plow through the level like he does with most things in life—quick and reckless. It takes him less than two minutes to die.
“Fuck this game,” he grunts.
I snatch the controller out of his hands and reach under my bed, throwing a nudie mag at him.
“You want some tits? Here,” I say to him.
He tosses it onto the nightstand. “I don’t want your jerk-off stash,” he says with a pinched face. “Besides, why do you even need that when you’ve got the real thing stripping thirty feet away from you?”
