Pucked Over (Pucked #3) (39 page)

He nods. “Getting out of Guelph will be good for you.”

“I think so. How’s Benji?” I don’t ask because it feels obligatory; I’m honestly concerned, especially since he’s sent Benny in his place.

Benny shrugs. “You know how he is. He needs to start figuring out his life. You moving on might actually end up being a good thing for him, too.”

We leave the rest unsaid. Benji needs to do some growing up. “I hope so.”

“Me, too.” He sighs. “Let me get your stuff. I gotta get to work, and the snow’s making it hard today.”

“Yeah, of course.” I’m relieved he can’t stay and chat. Also, it’s freezing out, and my feet are going numb.

He opens the passenger door and pulls out a banker’s box. It’s stuffed with mostly useless crap. There’s a prom picture of me and Benji sitting on top. We broke up that night after one of the guys on the football team asked me to dance and Benji flipped his lid. It’s amazing how seven years of memories can be reduced to one cardboard box.

I tuck it under my arm and give Benny an awkward side-hug. It’s while I’m doing this that I notice an SUV driving by on a slow roll. Snow squeaks under the tires as it comes to a stop beside Benny’s car.

The man in the front seat makes eye contact as I disengage from Benny. I feel like I might be hallucinating, because it sure as hell looks like Randy. He starts rolling again, like he’s about to leave. Which doesn’t make sense if he drove here all the way from Toronto.

I’m in pajama pants with moose on them, my moose slippers, and a hoodie with stains. I haven’t brushed my teeth, and it’s damn well freezing out, but there’s no way he’s leaving before I find out why he came all the way here. If it’s him. Otherwise I’ll be embarrassed by what I’m about to do.

“Sorry, Benny, I gotta—” I drop the box in the snow, make wild flailing gestures, and start running. It’s as slippery as a pool of lube, but I’m determined to catch the guy before he blows the stop sign. I hope I’m not losing it and it’s actually Randy.

Thankfully he’s driving cautiously due to the heavy, unplowed snow. I’ve never been so grateful for poor city maintenance. He comes to a halt at the stop sign at the same time I throw myself over the hood. I grab hold where it meets the windshield and look up to find Randy’s stunned face staring back at me.

Sliding off the hood, I wrench open the passenger door and heave myself inside. I decide to play it cool. I pull the door shut and lean against it, going for casual even though I’m breathing like I’ve run a marathon, my shirt is soaked from the snowy hood, and I’m wearing moose slippers. “Hey.”

Randy looks like sex rolled in bacon and dipped in maple syrup. His hair is seriously fucked. It’s longer again, but it’s not pulled back, and half of it is hanging in his face. His beard is all beardy, and all I want to do is wrap myself around him.

“Do you have any idea how dangerous that was?” He points to the hood and then to me.

“You were driving away.” I say in breathy defense.

“Are you back with that douche?” Randy jerks his thumb in Benny’s direction, except Benny’s already in his car, so Randy’s motioning to an empty space.

“That’s Benji’s brother, Benny. They look a lot alike with facial hair. And no, there’s no way I’d get back together with him.”

“His brother’s name is Benny?”

“His parents are jerks.”

“Obviously.”

We stare at each other for a few long seconds, in which time I consider all the ways to get naked.

Randy taps the steering wheel, and I stop mentally undressing him so I can listen to his words. “So things are finished with him?” he asks.

“Yeah. Totally finished. Benny was dropping off my stuff from Benji. It’s easier than seeing him. I mean, I can manage seeing him, but he can’t manage seeing me. He still wants to get back together, and I don’t, so it’s awkward.” Kind of like this conversation.

“That’s good. You can do better than that dickhead.” He chews on the inside of his lip while nodding slowly.

“He’s insecure.”

“Doesn’t give him the right to treat you like shit or belittle you.”

God, he’s sexy, and the way he’s talking reminds me of when I first met him at Alex’s cottage. He was so cocky, and then he defended me, and I rammed my tongue down his throat. I can’t believe that was almost six months ago. I can’t believe I’m in love with him, and he’s sitting here, and I have no idea why.

“So, what brings you to Guelph at eight o’clock in the morning?” I ask, again going for casual.

Randy stretches his arm across the seat. “You.”

Well, that’s direct. “I… uh…”

“I don’t wanna not see you anymore.” He blurts it right out, like word vomit.

“Um…” I have no idea what that means. If he’s here for a booty call, I think I might punch him. I will not have casual sex with him, even if I want to.

He runs his hand through his hair. “Sorry. Last night was long.”

“I watched the game.”

“Yeah?”

“You’ve been racking up the penalty minutes lately.”

“I’ve been in a bad mood. Happens when the girl I want to be with breaks up with me ’cause I’m not fun anymore.”

Talk about laying it all out there. “I didn’t say you weren’t fun anymore. Wait. Break up with—”

“You said it wasn’t fun for you anymore. Isn’t that the same thing?”

It’s actually very, very different, but I’m still getting my head around the “break up” comment. I need to say something. I can’t look at him, so I drop my gaze to my lap. Shit. I am not dressed for this conversation. I bet my hair’s a mess. This is the most fail reunion ever. If that’s what it is.

“Lily?”

“The sex didn’t stop being fun—”

“I’m glad my fucked-up dick is useful.” He sounds so bitter.

I look up at him. “I love your fucked-up dick.”

“Not enough to want to ride it any more, though.”

I’m angry that he’s come all this way and we’re still just talking about the sex. “Your dick isn’t fucked up, and this is about more than sex, Randy!” I shout. I don’t mean to, but this conversation isn’t going in a helpful direction, and now all I can think about is riding his dick.

A car honks its horn behind us. Randy rolls down the window and gives the person the bird. It’s Benny.

“We’re sitting at a stop sign.” I point to the red octagon.

Randy puts on his blinker and turns the corner. He drives around the block before he pulls over in front of my apartment building and puts on his hazards. He strokes his beard, his expression pensive. “I thought I was just gonna be your rebound. I didn’t expect it to turn into something else.”

I go back to looking at my moose pants. “Look, maybe I should have said something long before I did, but casual sex doesn’t work for me, and you’ve made it clear that’s what you do.”

Randy frowns. “So you’re not good at casual, and that’s all you thought this was.”

“Yes.” Finally, I think we’re getting somewhere. I sigh and shove my hands between my knees. “Everything was fine at first when I kind of hate-liked you, and you were eating at the Vagina Emporium in public bathrooms. Then you started taking me out for lunch, and you bought me clothes and joked about me moving to Chicago. Spending time with you over the holidays changed things—it seemed like it changed things for you, too. It started to feel like something else, but you’d told me it wasn’t.”

Randy stares straight ahead, gripping and releasing the steering wheel. “Was it all the talk about you moving to Chicago?”

“You joking around about me moving isn’t the issue, Randy.”

His jaw tics. “I see.” His chin drops to his chest, and he closes his eyes. “What if what we were doing wasn’t just casual?”

“I think the word
casual
needs to be banned from the rest of this discussion. Can you please explain what you mean?”

“So, like, what if we’re doing what we were doing, but with feelings.”

“Most people call that a relationship, Randy.”

He bites a nail. He looks like a cornered animal.

“If you can’t even say the word, it’s not something you’re ready for.”

“I can say it.”

“Then do.”

“Relationship.” He’s still chewing on his thumb, so it comes out all garbled.

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. My stupid eyes decide for me and start to water. I hate crying. “I can’t—” I reach for the handle.

“Wait!” Randy grabs my wrist. It’s the first time he’s touched me since I got in the vehicle. His skin is warm and rough. It’s still electric. My heart aches so badly, and my magic marble is going crazy.

He licks his lips and swallows hard, eyes darting to me and away. “Look, my whole life everyone’s compared me to my dad. How I look, how I talk, how I act, how good I am at hockey—I’m just like him. And he ruined my mom with all his dicking around. She’s never gotten over it and my sister moved halfway around the world to get away from him. I don’t ever want to do to someone else what he did to them, and to me. I don’t want to put anyone through that.”

The pain this has caused him is clear in his eyes, in the rigid set of his shoulders, in the tremor in his voice. This man, so confident on the ice and in bed, is floundering in the face of feelings.

I sweep my thumb across his knuckles. “You don’t have to repeat the same mistakes, Randy. You’re your own person. You control your actions.”

He says quietly, “I haven’t been with anyone but you since we fooled around in the summer. No one.”

“No one?” I’m kind of stunned. Okay, I’m a lot stunned.

“There was that one girl at the bar who kept touching my arm, but all I could think about was you, and then you showed up. I was so relieved and terrified at the same time because I knew I was your rebound. I think I wanted it to be something else even back then; I just didn’t realize it yet. Or I didn’t want to see it.” He exhales a long, slow breath. “I shouldn’t have reacted the way I did when you brought up how things were getting intense, but you said you’d say something if it got to be too much, and you didn’t, and neither did I, and I panicked.”

“I see that now.”

“I don’t know if you still have those feelings, or if what I said made them disappear, but I still want you. I mean, I want to be with you—and not just for sex. If this is moving too fast and you need this to not have a label, we can do that.” He pauses, his eyes wide, and then he shakes his head. “That’s not true. I want a label. I want to be in a relationship with you.”

“A relationship?” I sound like an idiot. I’m still reeling over the fact that we often went more than a month without seeing each other, and he wasn’t screwing bunnies. I mean, of course I’d hoped he wasn’t with bunnies, but I didn’t expect exclusivity, what with it being casual—or not, apparently, on either side.

“Yeah.” He nods once.

“You haven’t been with any bunnies since the summer?”

“Not one.”

“Why?”

“Because I only wanted you. Sorry, I mean want, present tense.”

“Wow. You went weeks at a time without pussy.”

“I jerked off a lot.”

“I bet.” I glance down at his crotch. He’s definitely got some happy going on down there. He’s still holding my wrist, and his thumb brushes back and forth over the skin, soothing, warming. “So you want to date me?”

“No, I want you to be my girlfriend.”

“You’re going for the big-gun label, eh?”

“Go big or go home, right?” He tugs me toward him. “So? You want to give it a shot?”

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yes. Definitely.”

His smile makes my heart all melty. I don’t realize he’s coming in for a kiss until his mouth is almost on mine. I slide a hand between our faces so he gets my knuckles instead of my lips. “I haven’t brushed my teeth yet.”

“I don’t really care.”

“My mouth tastes like cheese dick.”

“How do you know what cheese dick tastes like?”

“You’ve seen Benji. His beard matches his balls.” I’m pretty sure I ruined what’s supposed to be our first official couple kiss by talking about my ex’s ungroomed ball sac.

Randy pulls a face. “That’s fuckin’ nasty.”

“Sorry, pretend I didn’t say that.”

“Too late.”

He pulls a pack of mints from his pocket, pops one out, and pushes it between my fingers and into my mouth. I chew it a couple of times, rub all the little minty bits over my tongue and swallow. Water would be good, but since I don’t have any, I’ll have to manage. I drop my hand. “’Kay. Ready.”

Randy gives me that sexy grin that makes my panties want to crawl off my body and into his pocket. Except I’m not wearing any. All my girl parts get tingly as soon as he cups my face in his palms. He smoothes his thumb along the contour of my bottom lip, wiping away a mint crumb. Then he leans in.

I can’t help myself. I still don’t understand what it is about him, but all I want is to hump all over him the second he starts touching me. I immediately shove my tongue in his mouth and moan. His laugh is muffled by my tongue thrusts.