Breathe Me (A 'Me' Novel) by Jeri Williams Page B

attention. I wasn’t being cocky when I told her we would happen. I was being hopeful. Me, fucking hopeful to have sex with a chick. If I had friends, they would ride me hard for this shit. Harley was probably so sheltered that someone like me would get her dirty, and if she allowed me to, I’d get her dirty in the best way possible.

Chapter 9
    Harley
    I rolled over in bed, listening and thinking.
    Listening, always in a fight-or-flight state, and thinking about a sexy man with steel-gray eyes that reached my soul. I didn’t even remember walking home last night after leaving the sexiest man whom I had only ever read about, and thoughts of him filled up every space of my brain.
    Deklan.
    Deklan.
    His name was like a marathon runner running laps over and over in my head and overpowering all logical thought processes. But I wasn’t stupid. Once he found out how fragile I was on top of being the biggest liar, he would hurt me.
    Everyone you let in—loved—hurts you. It was something I had never been able to understand. Was it really supposed to be like that?
    I didn’t understand how someone could throw love away so easily like last week’s leftovers and not bat an eye, while others were so desperate for it they would do anything for it. How the people who were supposed to love you hated you and thrived on your pain. How was I supposed to know what love was if no one had ever shown me, loved me? How would I know when it was real? I had my romance novels to compare, and in most of them the guy either started out hating the girl, or was a big asshole to her, and then they had mind-blowing sex, and he confessed his love, or one of them ran then came back and they lived happily ever after. This was what I was yearning hard for, what I would never have.
    Love.
    I slipped back to sleep and dreamed of being happy, except now there was a certain brooding, sexy male starring in my dreams.
    With a smile on my face, I got up to do…well, nothing. It was my off day, and those days were always filled with fear and anxiety because who knew what I would be doing or what I would have to go through on these days.
    I straightened up my room and checked on the remaining books I had hidden last night. I couldn’t wait to be able to read again. I dared not read today; it was too soon. Eventually she would forget about her burning what she thought were all my books, but until then it was too risky. After getting dressed and dry swallowing an anxiety pill, I eased out of my room only to be met with silence. Good, she hadn’t gotten up yet.
    After cleaning up the bathroom and getting rid of the evidence of last night’s trauma, I made myself breakfast and then flopped down on the couch to watch some mindless television. I was deep into a trashy talk show and the people on stage were about to have an all-out brawl when I heard her stir in her bedroom. I froze, my heart going to my throat, causing my breath to catch. I stared at the people being broken up by the security team on TV and wished I had a personal security team. Someone who would stop her or at least push me to stop her.
    Or to leave.
    Her door opened, and she spent a few moments in the bathroom before coming out dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, her normal attire. The house we lived in once belonged to my grandmother, whom I had never met before she died and left everything to my mother. My mother proclaimed, “I’m handicapped” and got a check from the government every month to be able to afford the bills, until she started taking my checks.
    After pouring herself a glass of milk, she walked into the living room and sat down on the couch next to me. I tensed up, hoping she couldn’t sense my fear, and ignored the pain in my achy back. She loved that shit, knowing she was the cause of any reaction from me. We sat for a few minutes, her laughing at the show and me sweating so hard I felt the moisture under my arms.
    “Those people are stupid.” She pointed to the TV. “There