Falling for Hadie (17 page)

Without further hesitation, Lincoln leaned over and started kissing me with a ferocity that took my breath away. My hands grappled around the smooth skin at the back of his neck, bringing him closer so his bare chest was pressed against me. His abs were exactly how I’d always imagined them to be—hard, solid, and smooth. I ran my fingers over each ridge of his stomach, savoring the firmness of them against my soft hands.

Lincoln Bracks was as hot and sexy as I’d thought he was and now he was lying on top of me. I felt like I was in a dream because my head was definitely fuzzy enough to believe that. Only in my dreams would I ever be bold enough to kiss Lincoln myself. But everything felt too real to be a dream. Lincoln really did want me and that thought excited me.

His lips trailed hot kisses along my neck and my collarbone before finding my mouth again and rewarding my patience with a crushing kiss that sent my head reeling. With whatever coherence I had left, I managed to wriggle out of my coat so that I was left in that ridiculously tight top.

Lincoln watched me closely, each azure glance filled with lust. When my coat was on the floor of the car, Lincoln placed a hand on the sliver of stomach that was peeking out and slid his hand under the fabric of my top. His touch had my skin covered in goose bumps, and a moan escaped my mouth.

It was kind of embarrassing the way I was reacting to his touch. I’d thought that I’d have way, way more self-control than this, but it was so hard to contain my feelings. Lincoln made me feel things that I’d never felt when I’d been with that loser, douchebag, jerk, Bennett. Kissing Bennett had been nice, but kissing Lincoln was so much more.

Closing my eyes, I relished the way his fingers stroked my skin and made their way higher. Finally, he paused and pulled my top up higher before planting slow kisses on my stomach. A thrill shot through me as his mouth moved lower towards the button of my jeans, and I wriggled beneath him impatiently. He glanced up at me, a smile lingering around his mouth, before tugging the button undone with his teeth.

“Lincoln, I want you so, so, so much,” I said with a sigh as he came back up again and nuzzled my neck.

Lincoln froze and slowly he raised his head to meet my eyes, a crease appearing on his forehead. “Oh, shit, Hadie. Shit, shit, shit. I took this too far.”

I squeezed his arm in what I hoped was a reassuring way. “No, no, no! This is perfect! This is what I want! I’ve been imagining you naked since I met you.”

Something changed in Lincoln’s eyes and he moved away from me until his back was pressed against the door. “I can’t believe what we just did, what we were about to do. You’re drunk and I’m taking advantage of you.”

“Lincoln, I want you!” I reached out for him but he didn’t make a move to hold me.

Instead he shook his head, his eyes lost and forlorn. “You’re too drunk to know what you want, Hadie. You’re going to wake up tomorrow and not remember much of what happened tonight. I can’t do this to you; I can’t do this with you. Your sober self would kill me. The things you’re saying, you would never say if you weren’t drunk.”

“You don’t know what I’m feeling!” I argued, balling up my fists. “Getting drunk was the push that I needed to tell you how I really felt because let’s face it, you were never going to do it!”

“Hadie, there’s no reason to yell at me,” Lincoln said in an infuriatingly calm voice. “You’re not in the right state of mind to be having this conversation with me. Stay here in the back. I’m going to drive you home.”

“Lincoln, no! I’m not done talking to you!” I could hear how childish my tone was, but I didn’t care. I wanted him back in my arms; I wanted him to hold me. I didn’t want to see the disappointment or regret in his eyes.

“Well, I am,” he said, before getting out and leaving me alone in the back seat.

My dream of being with Lincoln had quickly turned into a nightmare.

Lincoln

When I got up the next morning and walked into the kitchen, three pairs of eyes swiveled in my direction and shot me looks of intense disapproval.

This wasn’t out of the ordinary considering I got blamed for pretty much everything that happened around here, but I’d only just woken up. What could I have done in the last five minutes to piss my family off?

“Morning,” I said, keeping my tone light as I poured myself a glass of orange juice.

“Where were you last night?” Mom demanded, folding her arms across her chest.

I gulped down my orange juice and shrugged, trying to appear casual. “Uh…asleep in my bed?”

“Don’t lie to me, Lincoln!” she snapped, her eyes narrowing. “When I came in to check on you, you certainly weren’t in your bed. That’s when I noticed your dad’s car was gone too. You know you’re not supposed to be driving! And you’re definitely NOT allowed to go out that late at night by yourself without telling anyone. So where were you?”

I sighed and stared up at the ceiling. “I went out to see a friend.”

Mom was livid. “A friend? You went out to see a
friend
? I thought the reason you wanted to leave New York was to get away from your friends, not make new ones.”

“Hadie is different!” I insisted. “She gets me.”

“She?” Mom’s eyebrows shot up. “Does this Hadie girl know about you?”

“No,” I said, weakly, “but I’m going to tell her soon.”

“And she’s the reason you took the car out last night?” Mom pushed.

I nodded. “She needed me.”

Mom seemed even more furious. “You put yourself in danger for some small town girl? Do you know what your recklessness has cost you, Lincoln? You are grounded! You are not allowed to go out and you are definitely not allowed to see any
friends
!”

Instead of being upset, I actually let out a dry laugh. “You’re joking, right? You’re grounding me? For how long? A week? A month? A year? Is that even possible?”

“Don’t try and guilt me out of this.” Mom’s nostrils flared and her mouth formed a tight line. “You know what the rules are, yet you went ahead and broke them anyway.”

“Because they’re stupid!” I yelled. “Because you can’t control me for the rest of your life. One day I’m going to leave you guys and then you’ll be sorry!”

Becky gasped and jumped up from the kitchen table. She grabbed me by the arm and dragged me down the hall outside my bedroom door. When she turned on me, her face was a mask of anger and disgust. She looked like she wanted to slap me at the very least.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” she demanded. “Don’t you know what Mom has done to accommodate you, yet you treat her like absolute shit. She is going through so much right now, having to deal with so many things, and then you say that to her! Are you out of your damn mind?”

I couldn’t believe how naïve Becky was. Didn’t she get how stifled I felt? Didn’t she realize how stupid the rules were? The rules weren’t put in place to protect me; they were put in place to stop me from living.

“You don’t get it,” I said, feeling frustrated. “You don’t know what it’s like. You’ll never know.”

“Mom’s done a lot for you, for all of us. She’s the one holding this family together. She isn’t your enemy, Link. She’s your mother and you need to acknowledge her feelings.”

My mouth fell open. “Acknowledge her feelings? What about my feelings?”

Becky sighed and pushed her hair out of her face. When she spoke next, her tone was gentler. She hadn’t spoken to me like that in a long time.

“Look, I understand that all of this is hard for you, but spare a thought for Mom. She is hurting so much. She worries about you constantly. She feels like you’ve changed and that she’s losing you. And then she has to hear about some girl you went to see last night. Can you, even for a second, imagine how that makes her feel?”

Dropping my head, I let my sister’s words sink in. No matter how many times I tried to tell them that I did care about them, they never seemed to get it. They didn’t get that I needed space and I needed time to find myself. I wasn’t doing any of this to hurt them. I was doing what I felt was right even though I would probably end up regretting it soon enough.

“I can’t explain to you what Hadie means to me. She was in serious trouble last night and I had to go to her. Okay, I shouldn’t have taken the car, but I couldn’t see another way around it. Hadie is important to me.”

Becky’s tone turned snarky. “She’s
that
important to you? Are you going to marry this girl one day? Have kids with her? Or is this just about having sex?”

“Hey, that’s not fair.” It hurt me that my own sister could be so nasty about something that was so important to me. “I would never base a relationship solely on sex.”

“You have in the past.”

“I was a different person back then. If you haven’t noticed, I’ve changed since then. I guess that’s the part that’s hardest for you guys to accept. The fact that people can change.”

Becky leaned against the wall and folded her arms across her chest in a defensive pose. “You can’t blame us for thinking like that, Link. You may have changed but when you do stupid, reckless things like take the car out, it makes Mom think of the old you. Sometimes you have to prove yourself more than once.”

“And sometimes you have to give people the benefit of the doubt,” I countered.

“Okay, whatever you say,” she said, straightening up and looking down at her nails. “I think you just snuck out to take your girlfriend to the field party last night.”

I didn’t bother correcting her about Hadie being my girlfriend. She wouldn’t believe me anyway. With that, Becky returned to the kitchen, no doubt about to repeat our entire conversation to Mom.

A few seconds later I walked into my room and collapsed onto the bed, feeling completely exhausted.

My family absolutely exhausted me. I wasn’t saying I was right—I definitely wasn’t right all the time—but sometimes I just wished they would really listen to what I was saying or to what I wanted.

How could I feel connected to a bunch of people when they didn’t even acknowledge me? Sometimes they felt like strangers, not like my family.

I must have fallen asleep at some point because I jerked awake at the sound of my phone ringing. Groaning, I rolled over to grab it off my bedside table and noticed that it was 12:11 in the afternoon. Crap, I’d slept for most of the morning.

Glancing at my phone, the caller I.D. informed me that Hadie was the one calling. Without hesitating, I answered on the third ring. “Hello?”

There was a pause. “Um…hey, Lincoln. It’s me.”

“Hey, Hadie. How are you feeling?”

“My head kinda hurts, but I’m mostly alright,” she said, sounding embarrassed. “Um, listen, I’m not doing anything today so I was wondering if you wanted to hang out? Maybe go to the lake? I could come by your house and pick you up.”

Oh, shit! Of all the days to be grounded, it just had to be today when Hadie was practically asking me out. Well, I didn’t care. I was going to see her anyway even though the logical part of me was telling me that it was a bad idea to spend time alone with Hadie, especially after she’d confessed her feelings for me last night.

“Are you alright to drive?” I asked, and then realized that the alcohol had probably left her system by now. It had been well over fourteen hours since her last drink.

“Yeah, I don’t feel tipsy or anything and my mom made me drink lots of water. I basically spent the entire morning throwing everything up. So, should I come get you now?”

Panicking, I sat up dead straight and ran a hand over my hair. “Uh, no, I’ll walk over to your house and we can go from there.”

Aside from the fact that I was grounded and couldn’t go out, I was pretty sure my mom would have a major freak out if Hadie turned up on our doorstep unannounced.

If Hadie thought my request was weird, she didn’t mention it. “Okay, sure, I’ll see you soon.”

“See you soon,” I echoed, hanging up the phone.

Since I was still dressed in my boxers from the night before, I quickly changed into some clean clothes and then opened my bedroom door a fraction. The TV was on in the living room and I could vaguely hear the voices of my family mixed in with the sounds coming from the TV.

Shutting the door again, I walked over to the window and slid it open. Placing my leg over the ledge, I jumped out and landed on my feet. Thank God I lived on the first floor.

Looking over my shoulder and finding the coast clear, I headed to Hadie’s house.

***

Hadie and I sat by the lake, eating out of the picnic basket that she’d packed for us.

I was kind of grateful that she’d thought ahead because I was actually pretty hungry. She’d used the leftover meatballs from her Mom’s Bolognese sauce last night and had made them into sandwiches.

The weather was pretty sucky today—dark clouds were rolling overhead, threatening us with the possibility of rain—but at least the food was good.

“Your…mom…is the…best…cook…ever,” I declared in between huge bites.

Hadie smiled as she watched me, her eyes bright. “She really is. I wish I was half as good as she is. What about your mom? She must be a great cook too.”