Sugarlips (Beefcakes Book 2), Katana Collins [ebook smartphone .TXT] 📗

always so serious. And at sixteen? I didn’t know what to make of that.”

His expression morphed into a grin. “You watched me all year? Why didn’t you ever talk to me… or, I don’t know, make a move.”

“I was a sixteen-year-old cheerleader. I was used to the guys always making the moves. Prior to you, I’d never had to work to get a guy to kiss me.” And frankly, I’d never had to work for it after, either. Liam was the only guy who kept me at arm’s length. “But man, you made me work for it.” I laughed and Liam’s smile tugged higher. “I tried to find every reason in the world to walk by your locker that year. I even tried out for the fall musical because you had auditioned. All my cute flirting that usually worked so well on other guys, you ignored. You kept your nose buried in your books or kept talking to your friends, ignoring me completely.”

Liam snorted and rolled his eyes playfully. “Ignore Chloe Dyker? Hardly. More likely, I thought there was no way in hell you were really flirting with me.”

“Well, you were dead wrong.” I flipped his jacket over my arm, and as I approached the crate of champagne, I intentionally stumbled, dropping my clutch on purpose. He rushed to grab my elbow, his flirty smile quickly etching into a look of concern.

Until he saw that as I bent to retrieve my clutch, I slid a bottle of champagne out of the box and covered it fully with Liam’s jacket. “And that night at the homecoming game, I stole a bottle of champagne just for us.”

With a crook of my finger, I gestured for him to follow me as I weaved through the crowd out to the balcony. “I had every intention of seducing you that night.” The night air was chilly—that was summer in New England for you—and there was only one person out there with us who quickly stubbed out his cigarette and went back into the party.

I handed Liam back his jacket, but instead of putting it back on, he slid it around my shoulders. With a squeal, I popped the cork off the champagne, then wrapped my lips around the bottle, taking a swig of the fizzy liquid spilling out over top.

“You cornered me at the after party in the woods behind the football field,” he said, his eyes bright.

“First, I lured you away from the rest of the people at the party,” I said and noted the way he glanced at where we were; once again, lured away from the crowd. Like a coyote, I knew how to capture my prey. I held the bottle up to his lips to drink, just like I did that night all those years ago. “Then I convinced you to try the champagne. You weren’t much of a drinker, but I remembered that you were always reading gourmet cookbooks and I thought I could win you over with an expensive bottle. Especially if I seemed like I knew something about it.”

His grin widened. “You told me, ‘This champagne runs $60 a bottle.’ Which for us back then was an insane amount of money. For God’s sake, we could’ve bought a video game with that kind of money.”

“Back then?” I snorted. “Hell, that’s a lot of money for champagne now.”

“And you told me that it was the perfect champagne to pair with a pungent cheese, such as limburger or camembert. Except, I think you pronounced it camem-bert, with a hard ‘T’ at the end.”

“All I knew was that I was desperate for you to think as highly of me as I thought of you. You made me want to be smarter and stronger and more poised. And that night, after we made out, I wanted to call you so badly.”

His inhale was sharp and he brushed a finger across my cheek. “Then why did I see you kissing someone else the next week at school?”

“Because you didn’t call me.” I’d been so heartbroken when he never called. I was grounded—not allowed to make any calls myself. “I had thought and hoped since I’d made the first move that you would reach out to me. And when you didn’t, I tried to heal my broken heart by doing what Chloe Dyker does best—moving on.”

“Well, I did call you. Dozens of times. But your mom answered every time and so I just hung up on her. I was so damn intimidated by you,” Liam purred, his voice a soft rumble that made desire curl around my spine. “I didn’t know you liked me that much. I just thought I was some guy you found that night.”

“Tasmanian Chloe strikes again.” I said with a sad smile.

He didn’t mean for that comment to hurt me so much… but it did. I’d tried so hard to get Liam’s attention in high school. I had tried to show interest in his interests… to talk to him about food and cooking and the books that he read. But he had still only seen the party girl cheerleader.

“No,” he said quickly. “It wasn’t that. I just couldn’t fathom that you could possibly want me. You were Prom Queen and a varsity cheerleader and in the National Honor Society. You weren’t just beautiful and fun, you had brains. You wrote this passionate essay about Jack Kerouac in English class and we had to read them out loud and…” He faded off, chuckling. “I remember it so clearly. You hated On the Road while almost every guy in class worshipped that book. And you made it clear that Kerouac was a directionless nobody and the women who fell for that beatnik bullshit deserved to live in a flea-ridden room and travel in truck beds.”

I laughed, too, remembering that essay clearly. “I stand by that. Kerouac was a rambling narcissist. And he needed an editor.”

“See? And most importantly, on top of everything… you were nice. Genuinely nice to everyone in school. You