Painting Sky (16 page)

“I thought—I mean, he slept in your room and, I mean—sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.” He looked away, uncomfortable.

“You called me ‘Cody’s little virgin’ days ago,” I muttered.

“I was mad. I had no right to talk to you like that. Sorry.”

Keith got up and paced the room. He looked sorry, but it didn’t erase the empty feeling inside me.

“Do you think Cody will tire of waiting?” I whispered so low that I didn’t know if Keith had heard me. I wished with all my being that he hadn’t. I hadn’t meant to ask out loud. I just needed to ask someone—talk to someone—and Keith was the only one around.

I shut my eyes. “Forget what I just asked, please,” I begged.

“I can’t.” He sat back on the bed. “Why are you asking me that now?”

I pried one eye open and swallowed. He wanted me to spill my most secret fears, and to him, of all people. He hated me. We weren’t even friends, much less close friends. He was a womanizer, had kissed me against my will, well, kind of, and had forgotten about it.

“You made a lot of remarks about Cody. Do you think he’s cheated on me?” Just shoot me now. Maybe I did have a concussion. Maybe I had gone to the other side without realizing it.

He looked away, not helping with my unsettled stomach.

“I don’t know, Sky. You see him as much as I do, and last year was similar. I never saw anything, if that’s what you’re asking. I’m sorry if I planted the thought in your head. It was wrong of me.” He didn’t look me in the eyes, and I had no reason to trust him, but I did. “About waiting—he would be a fool if he didn’t. You just do what you feel comfortable doing, you hear me?” He grabbed my wrist to force me to look him in the eyes. “Never jump into anything you don’t want to, okay? Promise me.”

I have no idea why I obeyed him. “I promise,” I whispered. I didn’t know what was with him and this promise, or why he cared so much. It was especially strange coming from someone who jumped from girl to girl without a care in the world. Had he cared what the girls he’d slept with felt?

“What about the girls you sleep with?” He flinched and let my wrist go.

“That has nothing to do what I’m asking of you. I’ve never been with a virgin before.” He looked away before mumbling. “I’m not worthy of that.”

That statement left me speechless. He’d said it so quietly that maybe he was the one speaking his thoughts, now. The look on his face told me as much: he didn’t want me to hear that last part.

“Why?” My voice sounded incredulous. Keith Hale was one of the most confident people I had ever met. He exuded confidence. He looked like someone who didn’t think anyone was worthy of his time.

“It doesn’t matter. It’s something you need to give to someone you love, who you think will stay with you forever, even if, eventually, things don’t work out. At the moment, you need to think he’s the one.”

“I-I… don’t know what to say. I never thought you would be this… philosophical.”

He laughed and sat back on the bed. The laugher died quickly. “What happened today? Why were you crying?”

“It’s actually your fault.” I lowered my eyes to the blanket he had placed over me. “Shelby told me about the party.” I glanced up and saw him flinch.

“I’m sorry, Sky, it’s—”

“It doesn’t matter, anymore,” I interrupted his apology. “I went to confront Cody about it and we had a huge fight. He accused me of not caring about him, anymore.” That was a messed up conclusion, but that had been one of the things that had me crushed. He’d made it seem that it was my fault we were growing apart.

“Because you don’t sleep with him? Is he fucking crazy?” Keith jumped to his feet and turned around to face me. “You’re not falling for that shit, right? Is that what made you cry? I’ll kill that mother…” I groaned and he stopped cussing. “Sorry,” he muttered, but he wasn’t any calmer.

“Is not that I’m falling for that crap, it’s something I have been thinking for a while. He’s never home to talk to, so…” I shrugged.

“You’ve been cooking this inside your head. He’s the stupid one, okay? Now I practically forbid you to sleep with him. He’s the wrong one, okay?” He cradled my face in his hands and it was so similar to the night he kissed me that my heart went into overdrive. He just wanted to check how my head was, though, and I exhaled in relief. It didn’t go unnoticed.

“What?”

“Nothing. It… stings a little, that’s all.” I bit my lower lip unintentionally, but Keith noticed.

Oh God, I’m so stupid. Just a few hours ago, my boyfriend accused me of cheating, and, now, here I am, lying on his brother’s bed.

I swear I heard a low groan from Keith before he got up again. “I think it’s okay—your head. Do you want something for the pain?”

I shook my head, as it was just a light throbbing, now. My period gave me worse headaches. I wasn’t going to tell him that, though.

“Do you want to watch a movie?” he asked, removing his laptop from his backpack. I nodded as answer and gave him space on the bed, pulling a blanket over my body.

I didn’t need to point out that my brother hadn’t come home, and neither did Cody. Cody should have come home to check on me, to apologize, or at least to see if I was okay, but no, his study date was much more important.

Keith brought me a sandwich for dinner and a glass of orange juice. A second after I finished with the sandwich, he picked me up again.

“What are you doing?” I asked, grabbing his shoulders for support.

“Taking you to your room. I need to stay in my bed to check on you during the night.” He tucked me in, as if I was still a child, and kissed my forehead so fast that I didn’t have time to realize what he was doing. He left the door open and went to his room.

How wrong was it that my boyfriend’s brother was more concerned with my well-being than my own brother or boyfriend? This was the side of Keith I liked the most—the one that made him human and that no one else saw. Either he played the man-whore part, or the cold-shoulder part. I guessed my brother was the only one who’d escaped these two sides of him. They had a real friendship.

I thrashed all night. It wasn’t the cut that bothered me, it was Cody, our fight, and the fact that he hadn’t come home. I got up twice to check his room, before giving up and trying to sleep. I felt Keith’s presence a couple of times, to check on me.

The next day, my head throbbed and I groaned every step until I reached the ground floor, where the TV had its volume turned up pretty high. Keith was eating cereal, while bouncing his head. I turned the sound down before he noticed I had arrived.

“Good morning to you, too. The head’s that bad?”

“It’s like I’m hungover without all the fun of the night before.” I sat down slowly to avoid shaking my head while he laughed.

“Next time, you can open the door more ladylike, and not throw it into the wall.”

I ignored his remark and changed channels to something with less noise.

“Do you know where Cody is? Did he come back last night?” I asked without meeting his eyes. I didn’t want to see the pity in them.

“Nope, didn’t see him, and he never called. I’m sure he’s studying somewhere.”

“Yeah, yeah, no need to defend him.” I waved my arm and went to get my breakfast. When I returned, I said, “By the way, our fight started because of the Halloween party. Why didn’t you tell me?” I sat back on the couch with the bowl on my lap.

He frowned and turned to me. “I thought you knew. It isn’t a secret. I’m sorry if I didn’t ask you, but it’s kind of mandatory for us to set up the party.”

I shrugged, finished eating, and left for my room to get ready for classes. A thought was settling in my head: I would go to the damn party, with or without Cody, and I would have fun. I was going to prove to everyone that I knew how to have fun. The anger that still ran through my veins was pounding with the need to do something reckless—to just let go, for once in my life.

I lied to Shelby that I already had a costume ready. I would use some of my clothes and make a few changes to them. As soon as I got home, I turned my laptop on and connected to the internet. I still needed a couple of things: fake vampire teeth, fake blood, and red contact lenses. I also found out that the natural color of my eyes was so freaky that they made special Halloween lenses in the same color.

The moment I spotted the all-black contact lenses, I changed my mind about the red ones. The teeth were kind of weird, but it was mandatory for a vampire. I was going as a sexy vampire with black shorts, a dark purple bodice, and black boots.

I paid my order and closed the laptop, smiling.

“Hi. Can I come in?”

My smile dropped instantly. I hadn’t seen Cody since our fight and the surprise of seeing him in my doorway was clouding my mood. “Sure. It’s your house, right?” I crossed my arms.

“Not really—it’s Keith’s.” I frowned, not believing that he was giving me the information he so carefully kept hidden, but he waved me away. “Another story.” Cody sat on the bed, uninvited. “We need to talk.”

“I waited for you yesterday.” I shrugged and looked away to a beautiful picture on the wall, next to the door. It was an oil painting of a green field with poppies and a lady with her back to us, walking hand in hand with a little boy.

“I had a quiz this morning and had to study half the night.”

“And the other half?” I asked in an accusatory tone. I didn’t want to fight, but he made it so easy.

“Don’t start. I crashed in one of the guys’ dorm rooms. I still don’t know what happened yesterday.”

“I was mad because none of you tell me anything that goes on in this house, and then you’re never around. You’ve been so far away from me that I don’t know what to think, anymore, Cody. Do you still love me? Do you want to break up?”

“Of course not,” he interrupted.

“Do you want me to move out?” I whispered and looked up to meet his eyes.

He shut his for a second and then lowered himself in front of me. “I still love you and I’m sorry about what I said yesterday.” He kissed me softly, grabbed my waist, and sat me on my desk, hugging me closer to him and deepening the kiss. If he wanted to keep going, I wouldn’t stop him this time. I couldn’t, in spite of what Keith had said. I had to give Cody something, and not just hope that he would be there the next day. I needed to show him I loved him, too. Words wouldn’t work, anymore.

Cody undid the first button of my shirt and kissed my collarbone, which made me shudder. He undid the rest of the buttons, then, exposing my white bra, and he kissed the top of each breast. I got my hands under his shirt and let them travel up and down, feeling his muscles tightening under my touch.

“You drive me crazy, Jane. Can you feel how much I want you?” he whispered in a ragged voice near my ear and stepped forward to align his body with mine. It still bothered me that he would think about sex so soon after our fight, but I kind of let it go. I tried, at least, to let go of my anger and disappointment. I didn’t fight him when he unzipped my jeans and when he helped take them off of me. My shirt followed. I wanted this. I felt that same excitement as when we made out—that tightening at the bottom of my stomach.

A groan escaped my throat and he heard it as encouragement to keep going. He picked me up from the desk and whirled around to sit me on the bed, unzipping his jeans before coming to stand over me. My heart was beating so fast. This was it: I was going to save our relationship. If only that nagging feeling that something wasn’t right could have been peeled away, like our clothes.

“Jane,” Cody whispered near my neck. He lowered himself to kiss my chest and moved down to linger at my bellybutton. That’s when a nice bucket of icy water was thrown over us—figuratively, of course.

Keith’s voice sounded in the hallway a second before his head popped into my doorway. Cody had left the door open when he’d come in.

“Sky, how’s your head—” He looked at us and stopped talking. Cody jumped back, leaving me even more exposed to his brother. I might have seen him naked, but him seeing me like this was completely different. I pulled a pillow over my lap.

“What the hell, Keith. Don’t you know how to knock?” Cody got up and pulled his shirt on, already anticipating that I wouldn’t be interested in proceeding after this. He picked up his discarded jeans and left before Keith could say anything or leave.

Cody and Keith bumped shoulders and, a second later, I heard the front door closing. How could Cody leave so fast, and leave me here, almost naked, in front of Keith, who was still staring at me like I had grown two horns.

“That son of a bitch,” he cursed, stepping inside my room. I hadn’t noticed that a couple of tears had left my eyes.

How could half a minute ruin my life even more? It had been Cody’s fault for leaving the door open. He’d just cared about getting me in bed as fast as possible.

I flinched from Keith’s hand and he turned around to pick up a quilt from the chair, which he wrapped around my shoulders. “I don’t know what’s gotten into him lately.”

I choked back a sob and squeezed the quilt around me.

“Shit. Shit.” Keith leaned over the pillow still in my lap and pulled me against him. “It’s okay. He’s the asshole, okay? You didn’t do anything wrong, Sky. I just don’t understand what changed between our conversation from yesterday and today.” He grabbed my chin and turned my face to check my forehead. Cody hadn’t even asked why I was wearing a bandage. This was messed up.