Chapter 15

Friday night was rough. After Briar’s epic loss, the guys hit the mini bar hard and then crashed until noon the next day.

I’m not entirely sure why Conor wanted me to drive all the way to Buffalo, seeing as how I spent the hours after his game having drinks with Brenna Jensen and Summer Di Laurentis, two of Hunter Davenport’s roommates, and Demi Davis, Hunter’s girlfriend. The four of us had a proper girls’ night. We had a great time at the hotel bar, and I won’t deny how helpful it was to sit with them during the game, as they were able to explain the rules when something happened that I didn’t understand.

Although, to be honest, I still couldn’t tell you what offsides means or what constitutes icing. Conor getting a timeout for tackling a guy, I figured out on my own. But the rest of the hockey lingo Brenna was throwing out like a pro went right over my head. As I understand it, hockey is basically a bunch of first graders fighting over a little black puck while the referee tries to keep them from killing each other. It’s cute.

Coach Jensen gave anyone who wanted to permission to hang back in Buffalo, a consolation gift of sorts, so several of Conor’s teammates paid for an extra night at the hotel. I’ve got my room till Sunday, on another floor than the Briar players, thankfully. I ran into Demi in the tiny hotel fitness center this morning, and according to her, the entire fifth floor was hoppin’ from last night’s depression binge drinking. She said she and Hunter hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep.

Despite Conor saying the other day that he was going to need consoling, we barely exchanged ten words after the game. He was commiserating with his teammates, which I understand. But I’m grateful the girls were around to keep me company.

Everyone seems to be in better spirits this morning. In the hotel restaurant, I meet Conor for brunch, along with a few of the others who stayed behind.

“Where’re Brenna and Summer?” I slide into the chair next to Conor’s and set down the plate of food I just gathered at the buffet. And by food I mean brown toast and one hard-boiled egg. Yum. “And Demi,” I add when I notice Hunter is sitting alone.

“Brenna’s Skyping with her boyfriend,” Bucky supplies. “She’s in the room next to mine and I heard them through the wall.”

“Perv,” Conor says while chewing on a piece of bacon.

“Hey, not my fault this hotel has paper-thin walls.”

“Summer dragged Demi on some errand,” Hunter tells me. “No idea where.”

“What’s ’a matter?” Foster grins at me. “You don’t like being the only chick at the sausage party?” To punctuate that, he picks up a greasy sausage from his plate and takes a comical chunk out of it with his teeth.

I burst out laughing. “There is so much subliminal shit going on with what you just did, I can’t even begin to unpack it.”

Across the table, Hunter raises his coffee cup and takes a quick sip. “So what are we doing today?”

“T and I are hitting a mall,” Conor answers in that lazy drawl of his.

“Sweet. Can I come?” Bucky pipes up. “I need socks. Already lost all the ones my mom got me for Christmas.”

“I’m in too,” says Hunter. “My girlfriend abandoned me and I’m bored.”

I slowly chew and swallow a piece of toast. “Um.” Feeling awkward, I glance at Conor, then his teammates. “This isn’t exactly a group activity sorta thing.”

Hunter lifts a brow. “The mall isn’t a suitable group activity?”

“They’re going to buy sex toys,” Foster announces. “Guarantee it.”

“We’re not buying sex toys!” I sputter, then turn redder than a beet when I notice every head at the neighboring table swivel my way. I glower at Foster. “You’re the worst.”

“Or am I the best?” he counters.

“No, you’re the worst,” Hunter confirms, grinning.

“If you must know, I need some new clothes,” I reveal with a sigh. “Conor’s going to help me pick some out.”

“What, and we can’t tag along and help too?” demands Bucky. I can’t tell if the wounded look on his face is for real. “You saying we have no style?”

“Oh, I got style,” Hunter declares, crossing his arms over his chest.

Foster dons the same macho posture. “I’ve got so much style, you don’t even know.”

“You’re right, I don’t,” I say dryly, shooting a pointed look at Foster’s T-shirt, which appears to feature a cartoon image of a wolf riding a dragon over a sea of fire. Whether it’s dragon fire is undetermined.

Foster polishes off the rest of his sausage. “All right, crew. Let’s do this shit.”

And that’s how I end up at the mall a couple miles from the hotel, with four towering, imposing men standing outside my dressing room at Bloomingdale’s throwing clothes at me like it’s a timed collegiate event.

I barely wiggle out of one pair of designer distressed skinny jeans before an avalanche of shirts and dresses come cascading over the door.

“I think we’re reaching the singularity here, guys,” I call out in dismay.

“Change faster,” Conor shouts through the door.

“Foster just found a whole wall full of sequins,” Hunter adds like a threat.

“I don’t think I have much need in my wardrobe for—” Another tidal wave of dresses falls to the floor. “That’s it. We need to lay some ground rules.”

I step out of the dressing room in a long-sleeved plaid shirt that cinches under my boobs and flares at the waist and a coordinating pair of dark wash skinny jeans. It’s not a bad look, managing to hide the parts I’d rather not share, without looking like I hopped out of bed wearing my duvet.

Conor pops an eyebrow at me. Hunter and Bucky give polite golf claps. The three of them are standing there in full albeit ill-fitting tuxedos.

I gawk at them, too stunned to even laugh. “Wha—why—why the hell are you wearing tuxedos?”

“Why not?” is Bucky’s response, and this time I can’t stop the gales of laughter that pour out. Jeez. How did these clowns even have time to change clothes while burying me in fabric?

“You’re getting that outfit,” Conor tells me, and there’s all sorts of intention behind his eyes. It’s downright indecent the way he drags his gaze over my body. With an audience, no less.

And yet, under his scrutiny, I don’t feel self-conscious the way I do with others. When Conor is with me, he puts my nerves at ease.

“Yeah, I like this one,” I admit. Then I frown. “With that said, I’m up to my knees in here, you maniacs. Let’s try to restrict it to two outfits each, shall we?”

“Aww, come on, we haven’t even discussed evening wear,” Bucky pouts.

“Or scarves. How many scarves do you think you’ll need?” Hunter asks.

“Is statement jewelry something we should be looking at?” Foster weaves his way to the front of the group with two armfuls of cocktail dresses.

“What’s your cup size?”

Conor smacks Bucky on the back of the head. “You don’t get to ask my girlfriend her cup size, dickhead.”

My heart does a little flip. That’s the first time he’s said the G-word since our fight. I wasn’t sure we were still doing this, so hearing it does confusing things to my head.

“Here.” I gather up the piles at my feet and push them at the boys. “Restriction measures are in place.”

I close the door to someone muttering “fascist” under his breath.

After we’ve done all the damage Bloomingdale’s can handle, we move on through the mall, Conor carrying my two shopping bags.

It’s interesting to see the difference in styles each of the guys picks out. Conor seems to know me the best, or at least our tastes fit most closely together, as he picks the more casual options. Very California. Hunter tends toward an edgier look with a lot of black. Bucky has some sort of preppy fetish that I quickly steer clear from, and I’m not sure Foster understands the assignment. What I do learn, however, is that hardly any of them agree on which looks were their favorites. Not at all what I expected in terms of engineering their ideal version of a Taylor Barbie.

At one point, Conor’s teammates drag us into the toy store where they challenge a couple of middle-schoolers to a lightsaber fight before getting us kicked out for scaring customers with IT masks. After lunch at the food court, the guys have exhausted their enthusiasm for the mall and head out to find new trouble, leaving Conor and me alone for the first time all day.

Our first stop is a surf and skate shop. Seems only fair that I get to play dress-up with him too, so with a dozen boardshorts I shove him into a dressing room.

“What’s your plan for summer?” he asks through the door.

“Back to my mom’s house in Cambridge. She only has one seminar for summer semester, so we were thinking about taking a trip somewhere, maybe Europe. You going home to California?”

“For a little while, at least.” There’s a heavy sigh in the dressing room. “This is the farthest I’ve ever lived from the water. I used to go to the beach and surf just about every day. I’ve tried to get out to the coast a few times since I transferred to Briar, but it isn’t the same.”

Conor steps out in the first selection of boardshorts.

It takes every ounce of willpower not to throw myself at him. He stands there shirtless, leaning against the door of his dressing room and looking absolutely edible. The deep ravine of muscle that disappears into his waistband is doing things to me. It isn’t fair.

“Not bad,” I say flippantly.

“Orange isn’t my color.”

“Agree. Next.”

He goes back inside, tossing the discarded trunks to me as he changes. “You should come.”

“Where? To California?”

“Yeah. Come out for a long weekend or something. We can do tourist shit and hang out at the beach. Just chill.”

“Teach me how to surf?” I tease.

He emerges in another pair of shorts. I’ve stopped caring about the colors and patterns of the fabric and given in to blatantly gawking at his leanly muscular physique and the way his abs clench when he talks.

Would it be inappropriate to lick him?

“You’d love it,” he tells me. “Man, I wish I could go back and get stoked on my first wave all over again. It’s the best feeling in the world, lining up for a wave, feeling it rise beneath your board. When you get to your feet and you’re both connected—you and the power of the ocean—it’s symbiosis. It’s freedom, baby. Perfect alignment of energy.”

“You’re in love.”

He laughs at himself with a boyish grin. “My first love.” Again he steps back into the dressing room stall. “Last summer I spent a month with some volunteers canvasing the coast from San Diego to San Francisco.”

I wrinkle my forehead. “Doing what?”

“Cleaning up the beaches and sweeping the near-shore waters for trash. It was one of the best months of my life. We hauled hundreds of pounds of garbage out of the ocean and off the sand every day, then we’d surf all night and hang out around a bonfire. Felt like we were accomplishing something.”

“You’re passionate about this,” I say, admiring this side of him. It’s the first time he’s talked about his interests outside of hockey and surfing. “Is that something you want to do after college?”

“What do you mean?” He comes out in another suit.

“Well, you could make a career out of this. There are probably dozens of environmental non-profits working on the west coast on ocean cleanup efforts.” I cock an eyebrow. “It might not be too late to change majors from finance to non-profit administration and still graduate on time.”

“I’m sure my stepdad would love that.”

“Why does it matter?”

A tired expression washes over Conor. Not just his face, but all of him. He slouches, hunching his shoulders, like the weight of the topic is wearing on him.

“Max pays for everything,” he admits. “My education, hockey, rent—all of it. Without him, my mom and I would barely have two cents to rub together. So when he suggested I major in finance like he did, Mom considered the matter settled and that was it.”

“Okay, I get that he holds the purse strings, but it’s your life. At some point you have to advocate for what you want. No one else will.”

“It felt, I don’t know, ungrateful to argue with him? Like I’d be an asshole to take his money and tell him to fuck off.”

“Yeah, using the words ‘fuck off’ might be a bit harsh, but a frank conversation about how you want to spend the rest of your life isn’t out of line.”

“But the thing is, we don’t talk. I know he loves my mom, and he’s good to her, but with me, I think he still sees a punk from LA who isn’t worth his time.”

“And why would he think that?” I ask quietly.

“I got into some bad stuff as a kid. I was dumb and did whatever my friends were doing, which was usually getting high, shoplifting, breaking into abandoned buildings, whatever.” Conor looks at me with guilt. Shame, even. “I was a little shit back then.”

It’s clear in his expression he’s afraid I’ll view him differently, but none of this changes who he is now. “Well, seems to me you’re not a little shit anymore. So I hope your stepdad doesn’t think you’re still like that, and I’m really sorry if he does.”

Conor shrugs, and I get the sense there’s more to the story than he’s willing to share. His relationship with his stepfather is obviously a real source of insecurities and frustrations.

“You know what would cheer me up?” he says suddenly.

A mischievous twinkle lights in his eyes, sparking my suspicion. “What?”

He walks past me to pull a skimpy black swimsuit off the returns rack near his dressing room. “Put this on.”

“No way. It won’t fit me,” I warn.

“I’ll get naked if it’ll make you feel better?”

“How would that make me feel better?”

He shrugs again, offering a devilish smirk this time. “Always seems to work on other girls.”

Rolling my eyes, I take the suit from his outstretched hand and duck to the next stall. I would never, ever dream of doing this for any other guy, but I know making a joke of it and doing a little runway turn for Conor will take away the dark cloud threatening to settle over his mood. So to salvage the rest of our day, I strip out of my leggings and sweater and put on the damn one-piece.

It’s cut low on my hips with a deep V in front and crisscrossed straps in the back. As predicted, it’s too small. My ass cheeks are barely contained, and my tits are trying to scale the walls like an attacking Mongolian horde. Nevertheless, I take a deep breath and step out of the dressing room.

Conor is waiting out there for me, still clad only in a pair of boardshorts, his long blond hair swept back from his face.

His mouth falls open in shock.

“Here. Don’t say I never gave you anything,” I tell him.

So fast I can’t hold in the yelp that escapes me, Conor lurches forward and rushes us back into the stall, locking the door.

“What the hell are—”

His mouth is on mine before I can finish. Hungry, predatory. Big palms curl around my hips as I’m pressed against the mirror. His tongue parts my lips and all trepidation evaporates as my fingers tangle in his hair. I’m overwhelmed with him. Skin against skin, so very little separating us. His body is warm and firm against mine.

“Fuck, Taylor,” he whispers breathlessly. “Now do you understand how hot you are?”

He’s hard against my stomach. I feel every inch of him, long and stiff, and it puts ideas in my head. Dangerous ideas. I want to slide my hand under his waistband and grip his hot, heavy erection. I want to feel his tongue in my mouth while I stroke him until he’s moaning my name and thrusting his hips and—

A loud knock startles us.

We break away and I hurry to pull on my clothes over the swimsuit before Conor opens the door to the frowning saleswoman standing in the hall.

Without an ounce of shame, my fake boyfriend scratches his bare chest and says, “Sorry, ma’am. My girlfriend needed an opinion.”

I choke down a wave of giggles. “Sorry,” I manage to say.

“Hrmmmph,” she huffs, then stands there and waits while Conor disappears to put on his clothes.

With his trademark grin, he hands her the boardshorts, while I yank the tag from the swimsuit.

Avoiding his amused gaze, I address the sales associate. “I’d like to buy this bathing suit, please,” I say primly.

We’re both practically in hysterics at the register as I pay for the indecent swimsuit beneath my clothes. Then we both bolt from the store like we stole something, laughing all the way back to his Jeep. After the heat and hunger I felt in that dressing room, this bit of levity is much needed. Levity, good. Hunger, bad.

Yup, hungering for Conor Edwards is very, very bad.

Because he’s exactly the kind of man who will break my heart. Even if he doesn’t mean to.