Читать книгу Wicked Games - Sean Olin - Страница 11

The next morning, when the sun came streaming in through the ocean-facing glass wall of Jeff’s pool house, Carter woke up in a sweat. It was six a.m. The wind chime mounted above the sliding door was tinkling, and he was lying under a pale green sheet on the pool house’s futon, which had been pulled flat into bed mode.

He was naked, and next to him, Jules was naked, too—beautifully, lusciously naked. Seeing her there, her lips slightly open, her breasts rising and falling with each breath, a hook of tenderness tugged at his heart.

For a while he watched her sleep. He studied the way that the light played on her skin. She had a small tattoo of a dove on her shoulder. He hadn’t noticed it before. He lightly caressed her arm with his knuckle.

“Mmm.” She stirred. She turned onto her side and smiled at him without opening her eyes. “Hi.”

When she finally opened her eyes, she didn’t say anything. She just gazed at him, a pure, simple tenderness softening her face.

He leaned in to kiss her, brought his lips close to hers, but just before they touched, his mind clouded with thoughts of Lilah. Somehow, kissing Jules in the light of day felt very different from kissing her under the moonlight. It was like Lilah was watching them this time.

Pulling away, he sat up and blinked in the golden light of the sunrise as it streamed in through the glass wall of the pool house. He held the bridge of his nose between two fingers and squeezed his eyes shut, trying to get his head around what he’d done. He’d never once cheated on Lilah before, and though he didn’t regret what had happened with Jules, it worried him that he didn’t know what it meant.

Gradually, though, she registered his anxiety. She pulled the sheet up to cover her chest. She leaned up on her elbows and studied the tension constricting the muscles of his tan back.

“We should get up. We need to get out of here,” he said in a voice pinched with worry.

Tugging lightly on his hand, she coaxed it away from his face and got him to look at her. They locked eyes briefly, and in his hazel irises, she could see the worries he’d shared with her the night before, while they’d been sitting on that porch, pressing their way back into his thoughts. She held his hand softly in her two hands, took it between her palms, and brought it to her mouth, kissing the meaty pad of his thumb.

“You’re thinking about what you’re going to tell Lilah,” she said.

“Yeah. I’m sorry. I can’t help it.”

“It’s okay. I don’t expect you to all of a sudden be my boyfriend. I understand. You’ve been with her forever. I don’t want to be the girl who broke up the class couple.”

She meant this as a mild kind of joke, to put him at ease, but Carter flinched when she said it. “What do you mean?” he said.

Reluctantly, she let go of his hand. “Just let me know when you’re ready,” she said. “Maybe you never will be. I don’t know. It’s the chance we take. Like the I Ching, remember?”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve created a total mess, I know.”

“It takes two,” she said.

He’d tensed up—listening to something outside.

There was someone moving around by the pool. The rustles and metallic clankings of cans in a trash bag. They couldn’t see who it was—the pool-side wall of the house wasn’t made of glass like the ocean-side wall.

Before either of them had time to gather themselves, the doorknob turned and the door flew open. There was Jeff, hiding behind a pair of Ray-Bans, his short hair matted with bedhead. He was shirtless, barefoot, wearing only a bright yellow swimsuit festooned with blue palm trees.

Jules was up and slammed shut into the bathroom with her clothes before he could say, “Oh! Shit!”

Jeff’s trash bag full of empty beer cans fell to the floor. He lifted his Ray-Bans onto his forehead, and his bloodshot eyes bugged out of his head as he stared at Carter in disbelief.

“Wow,” he said. “I didn’t think you had it in you.”