Blurred Lies (The Blurred Series Book 1) (10 page)

Ryan: No. Some girls like to be the one in charge, controlling every situation. Others like to be taken care of, in all situations. Some are a bit of both or more of one with a little of the other. Which are you?

Me: I guess I don’t really know yet.

Ryan: Then I’ll look forward to finding out. Sweet dreams, Natalie.

What the actual eff!?
What does that even mean?

Staring at the dark ceiling, with a million thoughts running through my brain, mainly about Ryan, I resign myself to the fact I won’t be able to concentrate on my book anymore tonight, and I won’t be getting to sleep anytime soon.

Thank God my shift tomorrow doesn’t start until noon. 

It’s going to be another long night.

Awesome.

* * *

“What do you want me to do to you, baby?” he asks me in the dark of my bedroom.

I’m writhing beneath him, knowing I want him to touch me, but I don’t know how to answer. I’m used to him being on the other side of a computer screen, not in my bed...on top of me. I struggle to answer him online, and find it almost impossible in person. I don’t have time to think or form words.

“I don’t know. I’m not-” his mouth crashes against mine in a punishing kiss that quickly turns into a gentle caress. He tugs at my bottom lip with his teeth, but it doesn’t hurt…at least not in a bad way.

He licks the bite away, silently seeking entry. I comply and his tongue strokes mine, languidly, stoking a fire that’s begun to burn inside me.

He moves to his knees without breaking our kiss; the change of position causing my thighs to part, allowing him to settle his hips between them. The new sensation, along with his continued exploration of my mouth, cause me to whimper with need, and I feel the blush creep up my neck to my cheeks. I’m embarrassed at the involuntary noise escaping my lips and vibrating against his.

My embarrassment fades into the darkness surrounding us when he answers with a groan of appreciation that emanates from deep within his smooth, muscled chest, which is now pressed tightly against my lace bra. I can feel his taut abs brushing against my softer curves and it makes my skin tingle, causing goosebumps to rise all over my body.

He moves his kisses down to the curve of my neck and shoulder, lightly grazing my skin with his teeth, then licking it before kissing again. I feel his hand slide up the outside of my thigh to the curve of my butt, meeting the edge of my lace panties, then back down to my knee; the action causing me to raise my leg and wrap it around his waist.

I feel the evidence of his arousal pressing against me, only my underwear and his jeans between us, and it makes me gasp.

Abruptly, his lips stop their ministrations on my neck.

“God, you’re so beautiful, Natalie.”

“Land, I lo-”

“Don’t call me that, Dove. That’s not my name,” he says with some irritation, but never stopping his caresses of my body. His lips still mere millimeters from me as he speaks. His deep voice humming against my overheated skin.

“What is your real name?” I ask breathlessly next to his ear.

“What would you like it to be? Something from one of your books, perhaps?”

This doesn’t make sense.
Why does he want me to give him a name? If not his real name, why not Land?

Before I can answer, his lips cover mine, once again, and I moan into the kiss as his hand moves back up to the edge of my panties, where he dips his fingertips ever so slightly under the lace edge of the thin underwear, threatening to touch somewhere no one else has ever been. Teasing me.

I realize I want him to do it.

I moan in protest when his hand retreats back down my thigh.

“Do you want me to touch you, Natalie?”

“Yes,” I whisper, a little ashamed of my neediness. I’ve never done this or felt this way with anyone but Land.

“I want to be sure you really want this, baby. I won’t touch you until you beg me for it.”

“Land, please-”

“That’s not who you want me to be. Who do you want me to be?”

He kisses me again, and I suck his bottom lip between my own; a silent plea for him to go further. If I can’t beg with words, I’ll beg with my body.

Suddenly, I feel metal against my teeth and my tongue darts out to explore what I suspect - it’s a lip ring.

I gasp in shock. This isn’t right. I’m kissing Land. He’s in my bedroom, in my bed, and we’re finally together. It’s not Ryan; I wouldn’t betray Land this way.

Why won’t he tell me his name?

“Say my name, Natty.”

I don’t know what to do. If I say the wrong thing, this could all end. I’ll hurt him. I don’t want to hurt Land. I can’t.

“Say it, and I’ll give you what you want. All you have to do is say it.”

He teases the edge of my underwear again, and licks the sensitive skin of my neck. All coherent thought leaves me, and I’m nothing but lust for the guy who’s driving me to the edge of insanity with his touch, whoever he might be.

“Ryan, please...”

“That’s right, Little Dove. I’m going to make you forget anyone else exists.”

* * *

When I wake up, I’m still half in the dream. I’m covered in a light sheen of sweat and I can feel the blood pumping around my body, fueled with adrenaline. I’m so turned on, I think I might have an orgasm if I so much as move.

“Holy shit,” I whisper to myself, sweeping my damp hair from my face, trying to bring myself down from my altered state of reality.

What the hell was that?

As my heart rate returns to normal and my brain works to make it all the way back to the real world, a sinking feeling begins to settle in my stomach. I feel conflicted. I betrayed Land in my dream. Why would I do that and why with Ryan, of all people?

The thing that makes me feel the worst of all is the fact I liked it. When I felt his lip ring in my mouth it excited me. In that moment I wanted it to be Ryan. But I’d been so happy that I was
finally
with Land in the beginning of the dream. All my prayers had been answered when he kissed me.

I have serious emotional problems.

Suddenly, my alarm sounds, signaling that it’s 9:00am. I shut it off quickly, not wanting any more noise in my already muddled head.

I realize now that I’ve been right to worry about getting too close to Ryan. What I was wrong about was the reason I should be worried. It’s obvious now that I don’t need to be concerned about Ryan hurting me; I need to be concerned about me hurting Land, and maybe even Ryan, too.

I can’t let Ryan get any closer.

I won’t.

It’s pretty difficult to avoid someone you live with. It’s even harder to do it for two weeks straight, but somehow I’ve managed to do just that.

Go me
.

I can’t quite bring myself to be proud of the achievement, though.

How have I done this, you might ask? Well, I don’t really know. I put it down to having a woefully gullible big brother and previously untapped text avoidance skills. It’s amazing how far the excuses
“I’m not hungry, thank you”
and
“I have a ton of writing work to do”
will get you. However, I fear my good luck may come to an end at any moment.

Just this morning, I had to pretend I was asleep when someone knocked on my door and peeked their head in. I still don’t know if it was my brother or Ryan, because, you know...I was
asleep
.

The part I feel the worst about is the fact that I’ve had to involve Calli in my avoidance tactics. Anytime Ryan comes into the café, I’m darting into the kitchen and busying myself frosting cupcakes or making sandwiches. Calli is, unfortunately, not as gullible as Nate and became suspicious after the second or third time it happened; especially when I found there were no more cupcakes to frost and I’d used up all the sliced bread, which left me just standing in the kitchen, wondering where it all went wrong, when Calli came in to announce Ryan had left the building.

So busted.

I wound up telling Calli, pretty much, my whole life story over coffee during one of our quiet periods, but I left out the part where I had promised my virginity to someone I’ve never met, then had an erotic dream about him, which then turned into an erotic dream about Ryan. I don’t think she’s ready for that level of honesty. I just told her that I can’t handle being around Ryan so much after everything that happened in the past. I think she bought it.

She probably didn’t buy it.

Now she’s sickeningly sympathetic with my plight, which only serves to make me feel worse about the entire situation. I’ve basically manipulated my boss/only friend here into feeling sorry for me and helping me avoid my roommate, who is also her friend.

I’m a horrible, horrible person and I’m going to Hades.

Luckily, I don’t have a shift at the café today, however, I also don’t know if Ryan will be in or out of the apartment all day.

Potentially problematic.

I haven’t told Land about my sneakiness these past two weeks, or my reasons for it (obviously), but even he seems to be growing suspicious. Last night he wouldn’t quit asking me if something was wrong and we got into an argument when he wouldn’t stop pushing.

It ended with me feeling cornered and telling him he doesn’t know what my real life is like and to stop being so damn nosy. He apologized - yeah, that’s right;
he
apologized to
me,
even though I was the one being a bitch - and he told me he just cares about me and has been worried.

I really wish his words had the calming effect I know he intended them to have, but instead I signed off without so much as a goodbye and I feel terrible about it now. Just another casualty in ‘Project: Ryan Avoidance’.

I’m beginning to wonder if it’s even worth it. I’ve managed to hurt Land, even though that’s the exact thing I’ve been trying to prevent, I’m lying to everyone I care about and the guilt is eating away at me more and more each day. I’ve spent more than one night laying in my bed, unable to sleep with the anxiety making everything play on repeat in my head until I’m so exhausted, I cry myself into passing out.

I need to get a grip
.

As I’m sitting here with my back against the headboard of my bed, hugging a cushion to my chest and thinking of how best to get that grip, a knock sounds at my door and my eyes go wide with panic. It’s too late in the day to pretend I’m asleep again, and there’s the small issue of being fully clothed with my hair and makeup done. I even have shoes on (not entirely sure why, though, as I have no plans to leave the apartment today, due to my serious lack of a life). I’m wracking my brain for a plan, and apparently I take too long because the person at the other side of the door finally speaks.

“Nat, can I come in, please? I know you’re in there and I know you’ve been avoiding me…
Please
.”

Just hearing his plea is making me regret ever avoiding him in the first place. I now know I can add Ryan to the list of people I’ve hurt...or at least mildly irritated. I mean, I don’t think I’m capable of actually hurting a guy like Ryan, let’s be real.

This was a stupid plan. Ryan would, probably, never do anything with me like the dream I had, which makes my concerns about hurting Land irrelevant. I freaked out, like I always do, and overreacted. It was just a stupid dream.

I need my mom; she’d know how to clean this mess up.

That thought has me feeling more melancholy than I’d like.

“Natty, come on. Whatever I did, I’m sorry, okay?”

Clearly I took too long lamenting over my error in judgment.

“Come in.” I swing my legs over the side of the bed as the door swings open, and I promptly focus on my hands, fiddling with the non-existent lint on my lap, feeling foolish.

“Hey, can I sit?”

I look up to see Ryan motion to the space on the mattress next to me, and I reply with a nod and swiftly move my gaze back to my lap. My eyes were on him long enough to notice how attractive he’s looking today, despite the tiredness apparent in his eyes. I have a brief moment to wonder why he’s been losing sleep before he speaks again.

“So, is it because I made fun of the books you read?” He sounds regretful. He doesn’t know exactly what’s kept me away from him, but he’s blaming himself for it, anyway. Why is he so sure it’s something he did? I expected him to be pissed off with me, not remorseful. I need him to be pissed off. If he’s sad about the situation, that just makes me feel even worse for causing it.

I suck
.

I glance over and see he’s supporting his weight on his hands, which are placed slightly behind him on the bed. He’s wearing a brown, leather cuff on one wrist and a nickel watch on the other. The position makes the black T-shirt stretch over his hard chest, and the arms of the dark, short-sleeved button-down that he’s wearing over it stretch around his well-muscled biceps.

Now is not the time for drooling!

“No. I d-don’t know why you think I’ve been avoiding you. I...I’ve just been real busy with work and writing and...stuff.” Jesus, that was lame, even for me.

“Natty, you’re a horrible liar, and that’s a good thing. What’s not a good thing is you avoiding me and not giving me a chance to make right whatever it is I’ve done wrong. I can’t make it up to you if you don’t tell me the truth.”

I can’t tell him the real reason I’ve been avoiding him, but he’s obviously not going to buy any lies I try to sell him, either. Also, I don’t want to lie anymore! I’ve told more in the last two weeks than I have in the rest of my life put together, and lying is bad for the soul, or so I’m told. It certainly feels bad. They may have been white lies, but at what point do they go from white to black? Where’s the line? Are there such things as gray lies? Because I’m sure I’ve told some of those, too.

The white lies, the more questionable gray ones, the lies by omission; they’re all so blurred now.

“Look, Ryan… Yes, I have been avoiding you, but I’m done now. I can’t tell you my reasons, but I can tell you that it was nothing you did, okay? You don’t need to feel bad or fix anything. This was all in my messed-up head and I’m sorry.” I rush my confession. I’m ashamed and I know he can hear it. I don’t want him to sympathize with me, though. I don’t deserve it.

He brushes his hand up and down my back in a gesture of reassurance and, despite the layer of clothing between my skin and his, I feel a shiver run down my spine at the contact.

“Hey, it’s okay. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, Natty. Just promise me if I ever do something that makes you want to avoid me, you’ll let me know so I can fix it.”

His hand settles on the small of my back, making it difficult to focus on what he just said and the appropriate response. If I don’t stop reacting this way to him, I’m going to be in serious trouble (or I’ll at least make a total ass out of myself at some point).

I feel like I need to be desensitized to all things Ryan. Maybe I’ve gone about this all the wrong way; rather than being cut-off, entirely, maybe I need overexposure. The more time I spend with him and the more casual contact we make, the less I’ll react to it. Kind of like when you eat too much of one food because you like it so much, then make yourself so sick of it you don’t eat it for the next two years. That happened to me with tuna once.

Ryan is nothing like tuna.

“Okay, I promise. And I’m sorry for being weird the past two weeks.” I give a nervous smile and glance his way again, just in time for him to stand and move to my bedroom door.

Don’t leave!

Oh, God. That is
not
the reaction I wanted to have.

He turns back to face me with his hand gripping the open door and he flashes me that panty-melting smile of his.
Bastard
.

“Well, I guess since it wasn’t my fault, that means I don’t have anything to make up for, which means I can just go ahead and unpack the picnic I made. Good talk, Nat.”

With that, he leaves the room and heads down the hall to the living area.

He made a picnic? He was planning on taking me for a picnic? I don’t really know what to make of that.

My curiosity immediately gets the better of me and I follow him down the hall.

“You made a picnic?” I don’t even try to hide the surprise in my tone. I think my voice has risen an octave. “For me?” I whisper that last part, because it’s kind of inconceivable to me that he’d do something like that.

“Yeah. Well, I put a picnic together. Technically, Calli made the contents.” He turns and winks at me and opens up a backpack sitting on the counter. He
winked
. That’s Ryan, I guess; just winking at (and making picnics for) all the girls.

I start wondering how many other girls Ryan has made a picnic for, and it makes me sad, so I stop thinking entirely and just watch him.

He begins unpacking the contents of the backpack, and I suddenly get the overwhelming urge to stop him. Do I want to go on a picnic with Ryan?

Uh, yeah!
I’d be lying to myself if I said I didn’t.

“Wait! Why can’t we still go on the picnic? I don’t have to work today or anything.” I know I sound like a disappointed child, but I can’t help it. I also realize I need to get more of a life outside of the café and the internet.
Ugh
.

“Well, now that I don’t have anything to make up for, I figured I’d just put all this stuff in the fridge and go do something that would actually be fun,” he deadpans.

“Oh. Right. Sure. Okay.” Of course he doesn’t think having a picnic with his best friend’s little sister would be fun. This is Ryan we’re talking about, after all. I should have assumed that in the first place and saved myself the embarrassment. I feel like I’m the chubby pre-teen again.

This doesn’t feel good. Why does my chest feel so tight?

Eyes on the floor, I quickly turn away from him and begin walking back to my room, fighting tears that threaten to spring free at any moment.

I will not let him make me cry!

“Jesus Christ, Natalie, I can’t believe you actually bought that shit. Of course I want to still go on a picnic with you!” he almost yells to my retreating form.

A feeling of relief washes over me, quickly followed by a twinge of anger. His little ‘joke’ really upset me. It wasn’t very nice of him. On the upside, however, maybe this is exactly what I need to cure me of my attraction to Ryan. These small glimpses of the mean boy he used to be - my former tormentor. The only problem is, the attraction started way back when he was still tormenting me, so that might just make things worse.

Turning back to face him, my arms automatically wrap around my chest in a subconscious effort to protect myself.

“Really?” I don’t sound hopeful; I sound dubious.

“Really, really,” he says with a cute grin on his rugged/handsome/beautiful face. I can’t turn away. It’s blinding, like if you look directly at the sun.

“Why?” The question is out before I have a chance to think it through. Do I really want to know why? Do I really want to watch him struggle to find an answer, because really, there isn’t a reason he wants to hang out with me?

He doesn’t want to hang out with you.

“Because I enjoy your company, that’s why. You’re funny, you’re cute and I like being around you.”

I look for any sign of a lie in his expression, but find none. It surprises me, and makes me happy at the same time.

I give a self-deprecating chuckle. “Well I guess I must have changed more than I thought, then.”

“No, Natty, I’ve changed. You’ve always been you.” He smiles again, and then puts back in the backpack the few items he took out during his little charade, and zips it up.