The Shameless Hour (The Ivy Years #4)

“Yep. I believe you now.”

He groaned. “Right. So. What I didn’t say, but wanted to, is that I think we should be together. For real.” He looked me right in the eye with a gaze so warm that I got a little lump in my throat.

“For real,” I echoed stupidly. “You mean…?” I couldn’t finish the sentence, because I was afraid of what he meant. Rafe wanted to be my… boyfriend? I’d never had one of those.

He curled his arm around my back to give me a squeeze, and dropped mouth to my ear. “You make me crazy in a good way, Bella. We’d be great together.”

They were lovely words, but I was already panicking. The fact that Rafe wanted me to be his girlfriend was tricky to process. No sane man would want a relationship with me. I choked on my reply, just wondering what to say.

“Belleza, you don’t look as excited about this idea as I am.”

“But…” I was still at a loss. “Why does it have to be some kind of pact? We’re already friends. Who have a hell of a lot of chemistry. I don’t do relationships.”

“Why?” he challenged.

“Because that’s when it all goes to hell! Everybody gets big expectations the the other person can’t live up to. Then they get sick of each other and break up.”

He tipped his handsome face toward the ceiling. “That’s obscenely pessimistic, even for you. Some of your friends are very happy together. You told me so yourself.”

“For now,” I pointed out. “And maybe you haven’t done the math yet, but in May I’m graduating. Who knows where I’d be next year? Probably at a graduate school somewhere.”

The dusty stack of graduate school brochures laughed at me from the back corner of my desk.

Rafe eased away from my body and leaned forward, chin in hand. “You have a long list of objections. I could keep arguing with you. Except I don’t think you want me to.”

“We don’t have to argue at all. That’s my point. We could just have sex and skip all the philosophizing. My way is easier.”

“No,” he said quietly. “It’s not. Because suppose you and I fool around right now…”

“Let’s call it what it is,” I suggested. “I could have you naked about sixty seconds from now. At which point we would have hot, sweaty sex.” How could he not think that was a good idea? I was feeling hot just saying the words.

“Fine,” he said. “Hot, mind-bending sex. I have a very active imagination, Bella. It would take us a week just to get through my most recent ideas.” He glanced up at me then with heat in his eyes, and my fun zone gave a shimmy. “But next week, if I pass you on the stairs with one of your hockey player friends, that will kill me.”

“You’d be jealous?”

His dark eyes bored into mine. “Ridiculously jealous.”

“That’s so… possessive.”

He threw his hands in the air. “Call it whatever you want, I guess. But I care about you. A lot. If we have sex, it’s not just… exercise. If that’s what possessive means, I guess I’m it.” He stood.

“Hang on.” Rafe was half-way to the door, so I hurried to finish my thought. “So let’s say we don’t have sex right now. And two weeks from now I do pass you on the stairs and I’m with a guy. You’re saying it’s better that way?”

He turned around, wearing a look on his face like I’d just kicked his puppy. “That will suck, too. But it will suck just a little bit less.”

Seriously? “Not from my perspective. Because we would have missed out on the mind-bending sex part. You're just not comfortable with my sex life. You're shaming me."

“No!” he protested immediately. The anger in his eyes startled me. “I think you’re amazing, and I’ve said so every chance I get. Don't put words in my mouth. I never said your way was wrong. It's just wrong for me.” Then, as I watched, all the fight went out of him. His shoulders dropped, and he leaned his head against the door. “Let’s, uh, take the night off from Urban Studies,” he said.

My heart lurched. When Rafe put his hand on the doorknob, I had an irrational urge to stop him. “Rafe?”

He turned back, his expression guarded. “Yeah?”

“Maybe you didn’t mean it to happen, but I’m a lucky girl to have been your first.”

For a split second, his eyes closed with something like grief. But when they flew open again, he was all business. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”