Blind Love (The Complete Box Set Romance Series) (14 page)

I leaned on the wall. “It’s okay.”

Silence, but I didn’t want to leave, so I
pushed off the wall and came closer. “I had to tell my mother that I wasn’t
moving back in with her.”

“That had to be hard. I’m sorry.”

She rose and approached me. She probably
wasn’t sure that I had forgiven her.

“I guess all I can do is hug you and tell
you that if you want to talk, I’m here,” she said.

That was enough, just that she wanted to
do something for me. This was a whole new concept for me. I was still getting
used to it all – this idea of family. I guess that made her my sister.

She wrapped her arms around my middle.
Suddenly, I wasn’t having sisterly thoughts about her. Her tiny breasts were
smashed up against my chest. Well, mostly my stomach because I was that much
taller than her. And, there was my boner. Like an unwelcome old friend. I
shifted my away from her slightly, but my face was pressed into her hair.

It smelled amazing.

When she finally let go, I felt the loss
to my soul. Oh shit.

She didn’t move far. She still stood
within my personal space. She looked up at me with her wide blue eyes. “You
need to talk?”

Right now, I needed a cold shower. At the
very least, I needed to adjust myself. That wouldn’t go over well. Girls didn’t
like when you did that in front of them. No scratching. No adjusting. My mother
had drilled into me.

“Uh, no, I’m fine.”

I started to back away. She grabbed my
hand. “
It’s
okay, Dylan. I want to hear about it.”

Her touch sent a tingle up my arm. This
wasn’t helping my hard friend in my pants. “No, really. We can do this another
time.”

She tugged me over to the bed. She sat
then patted a spot next to her. I spied a bean bag chair and sat in that. There
was no way I was going to sit on her bed, not when I could still feel her tits
against me.

Taylor gave me an odd look as she sat next
to me on the floor. I could still smell her hair. Strawberries, I thought. No
product in it because it had been soft on my skin.

This was bad. This was not going to end
well for either of us. I really needed to get out of here.

At least her bedroom door was open so no
one would suspect the thoughts in my head. If anyone walked by, they’d see us
just talking – nowhere near the bed.

“How is your mother?”

“Upset that I’m not coming back. I’m
afraid she’s going to do drugs again if I’m not there to stop her.”

“Then again, maybe your absence will be
enough to make her not do them again. She’ll realized what she lost,” Taylor
said.

It did make sense. I hadn’t looked at it
that way.

Taylor put her hand on my arm. “She’ll
miss you, but if she can’t give you a good home, then you have to do this for
you. You have to stay here.”

I looked up into those earnest eyes and I
was sunk. I leaned in to her. She didn’t back away. My lips hovered over hers
as I wondered what she tasted like. When she didn’t move, I saw it as an
opening and kissed her.

Her hand gripped my arm tighter, and I
realize just what I was doing. I was kissing Taylor Dean.

I pulled away. “We can’t do this.”

I scrambled to my feet and left her room.

***

I leaned against my closed bedroom door,
wishing that Mr. or Mrs. Dean had walked by at some point. I wouldn’t have
risked it, then.

Her taste was still on my lips as my chest
heaved. Damn, I had a boner. I adjusted myself and vowed that I would stay away
from Taylor. She was probably mad at me.

Then, I heard soft knocking on the door.
“Dylan?”

Oh, shit.

“What do you want, Taylor?”

“Let me come in.”

I sighed. “I think that would be a bad
idea.”

“No, I don’t think so. I’m going to stand
here until you let me in.”

Then, Mr. or Mrs. Dean would ask why I
wasn’t letting Taylor in. I didn’t want to have to explain that I’d kissed
their daughter. Taylor didn’t say that, but I’d bet she was thinking it.

I shoved away from the door and opened it.

She stood in the hallway, her lips a
little swollen from my kiss. I had assaulted the poor girl. I was the
experienced one here. I had been the aggressor.

“I’m sorry, Taylor.”

She put her hand up. “Don’t you
dare.
”

Huh? She wasn’t mad at me?

“It doesn’t look like dinner is anytime
soon. Let’s go for a drive.”

I blinked. “Uh, okay.”

I followed her down to the garage. The
rest of the Deans were not in sight. Was dinner even going to happen? I doubted
they would forget. Maybe they got involved in something.

“Let’s leave a note,” I said.

No need to get into trouble, I thought. I
wrote on the blackboard in the kitchen. “Taylor and I went out. Don’t wait
dinner.”

Taylor’s driving skills were pretty good,
so I settled back into my seat. She brought us to a deserted park where we sat
on a picnic table.

“Look, Taylor. I shouldn’t have.”

“I participated in that kiss Dylan,” she
said.

The implication of that hit me. She’d
wanted me to kiss her. “I don’t understand.”

“I’ve developed feelings for you.”

I was speechless. She felt something for
me? Taylor Dean, the most popular girl in school, liked me? “Wait.”

She took my hand in hers. Mine was
calloused her soft and small hand. How could this sweet creature like me?

“No, Dylan. I want to pursue his.”

“We can’t.”

“Why not?”

I retrieved my hand from her grasp. I
admired that she saw no obstacles, but one of us had to think straight. Since I
was the one who would lose the most, I had to be the voice of reason.

I stepped away from her. “Taylor, your dad
took me in. I can’t betray his trust.”

“How would this betray his trust?”

“Because I would be dating his daughter.
That’s not what he had in mind. He wanted to help me. Save me. He didn’t want
to match me up.”

“You really think they’ll have a problem
with us?”

“Yes, I do. And they should. We can’t do
this.”

“Maybe we can do this without them
knowing.”

“How are they not going to know? Your
mother watches me like a hawk and your father is not a dumb man.”

Taylor tapped her chin, which meant she
was thinking. I had to get this idea out of her head. “No, Taylor. Just no.”

“But we’re adults.”

“We’re eighteen, but we aren’t that
grownup. Neither of us have a job.”

“Okay. Maybe we’re aren’t adults, but we
both know our own minds.”

“This isn’t some teen movie, Taylor. This
is real life. And, real life has consequences. I don’t want to lie to your
parents.”

She frowned. “Is it because you don’t like
me that way?”

“That is not the case, but I am the one
who will be living in a trailer if I do anything wrong. You might get punished,
but I’ll have the best thing that has happened to me get taken away.”

“I didn’t see it that way. At least, we
could be better friends.”

“I don’t feel friendly toward you, Taylor.
I feel more.”

She smiled and I melted. “Don’t you want
to see what can happen?”

“We can’t, Taylor.”

I rubbed a hand down my face.

“Anything is possible, Dylan.”

God, she was driving me nuts. I strode to
her and kissed her. She clutched my shirt when I tried to pull away. I finally
let her loose and rested my forehead on hers. “We can’t. Not while we’re in
high school. Not while I’m living in your house.”

“We can do this, Dylan. We can keep it on
the down low. Keep it from my parents.”

“Do you really want to lie to your
father?”

“Yes, if he can’t see that if you are good
enough to save, then you’re good enough to date his daughter.”

She had a point, but I doubted it was a
valid argument to a parent. It would feel wrong. “I don’t think I want to lie.”

“Can you trust me?”

“With my life, Taylor.”

“Then trust me that we can do this.”

I sighed. I really wanted to spend time
with her. “We need ground rules.”

“Okay.”

“We can’t be in public. We can’t do any
PDA in the house,” I said.

She frowned. “We’ll have to sneak around.”

“Yes. Do you really want to do that? It’s
hard.”

“I can do it. Can you?”

I sighed. This was a bad idea, but my body
and heart wanted to be with her. I wanted to be happy because I had so little
of it in my life. Taylor was light and beauty, and my life lacked that.

And, she was hot. I couldn’t deny it. I
wanted her in ways that might make her blush at this point.

“We’ll try it.”

She squealed. If anyone had been in the
park, they would have heard her. Thankfully, no one was. So, I kissed her to
seal the deal.

Chapter Twenty

Taylor

I couldn’t sleep, so I scrolled through
Twitter while I lay in bed. A text came through with a picture.

It was of me and Dylan, kissing at the
park. It was from Bailey. “Call me.”

Oh shit. So much for being on the down
low. I called Bailey, who hadn’t spoken to me in days. Not since the incident.
They were all mad at me because Greg had been kicked out of school.

None of them could grasp that I was the
victim in all of this.

“What?”

“I saw you and Dylan today at the park.”

Shit. “So?”

“I would bet Daddy would love to know what
delinquent boy is doing with his daughter,” Bailey said.

Maybe this hiding thing wasn’t going to
work so well. “Where were you?”

“Going for a walk and I hid behind a tree.
Very
Romeo and Juliet
.”

We were not star-crossed lovers. Shit.
Shit. Shit. “Very classy, spying on people.”

“If you we doing something you didn’t want
anyone to see, you shouldn’t have been in a public park.”

“What’s the point of his conversation?” I
asked.

“I have demands.”

“You have demands?”

“If you don’t do them, I’ll tell Daddy,
and guess who will be back in his trailer faster than you can say drug addict.”

Bailey was right. My father would kick
Dylan out if he found out. What had I been thinking? I’d hoped to ease my
father into the idea. He gave me just about anything I wanted. If I wanted
Dylan, couldn’t I have him?

“What are your demands?”

“I’ll send them to you in a text. Sleep
tight, Taylor.”

Bailey hung up on me. I wanted to throw
the phone across the room. This was the worst. Why did Bailey have to see us? I
called Helena.

“Lo.”

“Did I wake you?”

“That is what people do at night,” she
said.

“I have two things I have to tell you.”

“Okay, but ignore my snores. I’m really
listening.”

“Helena.”

“Okay, I’m awake. Go ahead.”

“Dylan and I kissed today.”

I heard her covers rustling. “Okay. Now,
I’m really awake. When did this happen?”

I guess I had to tell her everything.
“Well, I gave him that present I bought him.”

“Obviously that went well.”

“Yes, it did, ultimately. I left it for
him, and he came and found me. He ended up kissing me. We went for a drive and
we talked about being together.”

“That’s great, but what about your
parents?”

“Yeah, that’s part of the problem. We
weren’t going to tell them. Just keep it to ourselves.”

“Did you really think you’d get away with
that?”

“We’d hoped.”

“I’m sensing a ‘but’ here.”

“Well, apparently Bailey was at the park.
She took a picture of Dylan and me kissing.”

“That bitch.”

“
It’s
worse,
Helena. She told me she would tell my parents if I didn’t do what she asked,” I
said.

“What exactly does she want you to do?”

“I don’t know yet. She’s going to text me
her demands.”

“You need to tell Dylan.”

“I am not telling Dylan,” I said. “This is
my problem. If my parents find out, he’ll be back at the trailer. He has a lot
to lose.”

“But it is both of you going through this.
And knowing Dylan, he would want to know. He wouldn’t want you to go through
this alone. He certainly wouldn’t want you to capitulate to Bailey.”

“Then, I’m in a bind.”

“You need to tell him.”

“I’m going to wait until I see the demands.”

“You know they are going to be outrageous.
This is Bailey we’re talking about.”

My phone dinged. “Let me look at them and
I’ll call you back.”

I read the text. The first thing on the
list was to retract my statement to the police about Greg. What the hell? I
couldn’t do that.

I called Helena and told her.

“You know you can’t do that. You and Dylan
haven’t done anything wrong. You can stop this now and never have to tell your
parents.”

“But I don’t want to lose Dylan.”

“Come on, Taylor. Don’t be so dramatic.
You can still be friends.”

“But I don’t want to be friends.”

“It’s better than Dylan going back to the
trailer. He’ll have a future. If you really care about
him,
that
should be more important than the short term.”

Leave it to Helena to tell me what I
didn’t want to hear. She was a true friend because she was not going to enable
bad behavior. She wasn’t going to let me get away with anything. “You’re
right.”

“I am, Taylor. Break it off with him. You
can’t do this. It’s selfish.”

I hated when she was right. And, she was
very right. I couldn’t hold Dylan back with my selfishness. My head knew the
right answer. My heart didn’t like the answer.

“I have no argument, Helena. This really
sucks. He’s the first guy I’ve liked in a few years. And, he’s a really good
guy.”

“Well, he can’t be
your
really good guy.”

I groaned. “I know. So, what do I tell
Bailey?”

“After you break it off with Dylan, tell
her what you’ve done. She will have no hold over you. If she still tells your
dad, tell him it was a moment of weakness and that you’ve broken up with him.
Blame yourself so it doesn’t reflect badly on Dylan.”

Helena was so much smarter than I was.
“What would I do without you? You are the best friend a girl could have.”

“You don’t want someone who will yes you to
death?”

“No. You save my ass. That’s better.”

Helena laughed. “I got a test in the
morning. Can I go back to sleep?”

“Love you, girl. Sleep tight.”

We disconnected. I hated what she had to
say, but she was right. In the morning, I’d have to talk to Dylan. He’d been
right, after all. Everyone else was right. I sighed.

Story of my life.