A giant clock hung over the kitchen sink, ticking seconds away without care to the gravity of what had just been said.
She couldn't be serious. She couldn't stand there, sitting on the kitchen table, looking at him with those eyes, and asking him questions like that, while being serious.
“There is no bloody way you're serious.”
Savannah frowned and shrugged in a manner much too cavalier after what she'd just suggested. It only furthered his conviction; seriousness had left the building. She couldn't appear that casual about something this huge.
Only of course she could, because this was what Savannah did: turn his world upside down.
“I don't see the big deal,” she replied. “You've been my best friend since diapers, Wesley.”
“Thorn,” he corrected, though mostly out of habit. He'd known the second he'd assumed a nickname that Savannah, much like his mother, wouldn't give him an inch. And she hadn't. Point of fact, she'd laughed so hard the second he'd introduced the name that milk had shot out of her nose, something he'd honestly thought impossible until he found himself drenched. “And if you can't see why this is a big deal, it just goes to show why we shouldn't do it.”
She rolled her eyes. “It's just sex.”
“It's more than that.”
“What is this, 1953? Are you my mother?”
Thorn made a face. “I just wish you wouldn't be so casual about it.”
“Oh my God, you are my mother.”
“Would you stop that?” he barked. “I'm not shagging you, so let's just drop it.”
Savannah frowned, taking the sun with her. He swore the world lit up with her smile. Made sense the lights would go out with the opposite. She clearly hadn't expected him to object, and fuck, why should she? Savannah existed as every man's wet dream, and now she was presenting herself on a plate for his pleasure. She'd offered him something he'd wanted since they were five, even if he hadn't known it then. She'd offered, and he was turning her down.
Because it wouldn't mean anything to her aside from getting her cherry popped. She wouldn't feel what he felt, and he loved her too damn much for it to mean nothing.
“Why?” she asked a minute later, swinging her legs under the kitchen table. So many afternoons had been spent like this: a walk home from campus, an exchange of study notes from the classes they'd skipped, a junk-food binge, and a syndicated episode of Seinfeld before she went home for dinner. They did it every day: the best-friend thing to do.
Best bloody friends. She wouldn't cram Oreos down her throat around a bloke she fancied.
“Why? Why, she asks.” Thorn shook his head with a laugh, collecting a glass from the cabinet and filling it with water. “How long you got?”
“Am I repulsive?”
His turn to roll his eyes. “No,” he replied, casting a hand through his chestnut hair, “and you know it, so don't play that line.”
“Hey, I don't know how you men-shaped people think! Look, I know the idea has its ick factor. You typically don't wanna have sex with anyone who's thrown up on you—”
“It was just once; I had the flu.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Still…gross.”
“Well, your fault for dropping in unannounced and refusing to grab the waste can.” Thorn shook his head again, turning around. “And no, love, the idea doesn't repulse me. I'm just not doing it.”
She looked puzzled. “It doesn't repulse you?”
“No,” he replied, a bit too harshly. “But it does repulse you.”
“It so does not repulse me!”
“Yeah. That's why your offer swept me off my feet.”
“Would I have offered at all if it did?”
Thorn sucked in his cheeks and took a step forward. “Don't know. You have any other blokes you hang around? You said it. You want your first time to be with someone you trust.”
“Yes, and doesn't that make me a horrible person?” she drawled.
“But without the baggage.”
“A girl's first time shouldn't be about getting it perfect,” she pointed out. “It should be about getting it… I don't know, but perfect isn't going to happen. It's messy and awkward, and while I can't speak for my whole gender, I can tell you right now I'm not gonna know what to do other than lie there.”
At that, he had to laugh. “Way to sweeten the deal, sweetheart. If this is you trying to talk me into it—”
“Jackass.”
“Watch it!”
“The point is, if I get it over with—the painful, icky part—I can have a real first time with the candles and the romance.”
And someone who's not me, Thorn thought grimly, raising his glass to his lips. “No,” he said. “That's final, you hear? I'm not gonna be your test-drive.”
Savannah sighed dramatically, her lower lip poking out. “This is important to me, Wesley,” she said. “I really want to experience this with someone I trust.”
“And you should.”
“So it should be you.”
“I'm not helping you shag Daniel,” he said at last, harsher than he intended. “And that's the rub, innit? The berk wants into your knickers, and you're not showing off the goods unless someone approves them first. Sorry, love, not your guy. Find someone else to fuck.”
He regretted the words before he said them, which made the deafening silence that followed the longest of his life. Thorn inhaled sharply and kept his eyes on the ground. God, he could be such a git…but that was just part of the gig. He was in love with his best friend. An owner's manual simply didn't exist for these kinds of problems.
Funny… He thought himself a handsome enough bloke. Worked out every day, always ate his greens, cut red meat out of his diet, and despite the racy social circles in which he and Savannah ran in school, he existed, for all intents and purposes, as a popular student. Popular enough to appear resented by other blokes, coveted by cheerleaders, and all the other clichés into which he fell. The accent probably did half the work for him; if anyone caught a glimpse of his grades or understood the books he read, he'd be the laughingstock of the whole town.
Savannah never saw it. Never saw Wesley Manor as a sexual being. Of course she wouldn't; she'd known him practically her whole life. Back to when he and his pop had moved to the States and next door to Angela Evans and her golden daughter, Savannah. Thorn hadn't been very old then, but he remembered hating everything about America until he saw Savannah. Her pretty round face, her blonde, curly pigtails, and the chocolate ice cream smeared across her mouth. They'd become friends almost immediately, latching onto each other.
As a child, he would tell people he and Savannah would one day marry; he well remembered the condescending looks and the chuckles from his elders, those who said, “Of course you will,” before resuming their adult conversations. But Thorn had been quite serious. He'd lived for Savannah since the second he laid eyes on her chocolate-covered cheeks. They'd gone through everything together, starting with G.I. Joes to sneaking into R-rated movies. When Savannah's sun-colored hair had darkened to a pretty brunette, he'd helped her find the right product to turn her wavy blonde again. Everything they'd done, they'd done together. Thorn had had Savannah at his side every step of the way, and not once, not until they'd gotten to high school, had Thorn doubted he and Savannah lived in the same boat. That she loved him as fiercely as he loved her.
And she did…as a friend. She loved him as a friend. It ended there. The second they'd become freshmen, Savannah's heart had become the property of Daniel O'Malley, resident big-headed stereotype. Flash a smile, offer an arm, fuck a girl silly, and cast her aside. Thorn had never known hate until he'd met Daniel, a world-class womanizer, and no female, intelligent or otherwise, saw it until she got a close-up look. Thorn had warned Savannah left and right, but a girl in love couldn't be talked down, even if the asshole barely acknowledged her existence. For two years, Savannah had embarrassed herself with a variety of techniques to get Daniel's attention, all failing until last year when she'd lost the braces, dyed her hair blonde, learned how to apply makeup, and essentially morphed into every man's fantasy.
Every man's.
Including Daniel's.
God, those months had been the longest of his life. Imagining her and Daniel together, filing Savannah's face into the roster of women Daniel had used and abused. Picturing her smiles aimed at the last person in the world who deserved them. Tormented by images of the enormous ponce's hands touching what belonged to Thorn.
The only reason Thorn had dated Paige had come from an attempt to one-up Savannah, and God, talk about rotten mistakes. But he'd needed a distraction, and she'd provided it. Provided it and taken his virginity in the process… Something he wasn't particularly proud of, but he couldn't do anything about it now except learn from his mistakes. Sex for the sake of getting back at Savannah had only made him miserable. And Paige, God's gift to drunkards and desperates, had become exceptionally clingy.
But she'd known. Paige couldn't tie her shoelaces, but she'd known he only dated her to get over someone else. Thank the bloody gods she'd never figured the someone else had Savannah's face.
He'd only gone that far with Paige because he stood convinced Savannah had gotten it from Daniel, who operated only to fulfill his own pleasures. Daniel used the girls who hung on his every word; if he didn't get laid, he didn't see a reason to spend money on them. But Savannah hadn't given it up, and ultimately she'd found herself single.
She hadn't felt ready.
Neither had Thorn, but only because he'd made the leap without her. His body belonged to Savannah. She just didn't know it.
All Rights Reserved
