Hate You Still by Lyssa Lemire
CHAPTER TWO
KNOX
The dark blue of my t-shirt floods my field of vision for a second as I quickly pull it over my head.
Damn. The first hand I lost all game.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind taking my clothes off. Especially not at a poker table in front of beautiful women who themselves are showing a lot of skin.
I just hate to lose.
Ever.
I feel the eyes of the women in the room burning on my exposed chest, stomach, and arms as I let the shirt fall to the floor beside my chair.
But now I sense a new pair of eyes fixed on me. A pair of eyes that weren’t there before I stood up and removed my shirt. A new pair of eyes that have only been in the room for just a few short seconds.
And I feel more than a pair of eyes. I feel a presence. A familiar presence. Distantly familiar, but unforgettable.
A name, a face, flash into my mind. As soon as I realize that the person who comes to mind can’t possibly be in this room right now – that it would be a coincidence too wild for reality – my eyes lock on that new pair of eyes that I sense.
And it suddenly feels like I’ve entered a time warp.
The sweet, soft, warm brown eyes staring at me belong to a woman standing still in the doorway of the room.
Her hair is disheveled like she just rolled out of bed. Not a trace of makeup on her face. She wears a loose-fitting t-shirt and a pair of jeans. Her look is a far cry from the girls packed into this house who each probably spent an hour on their outfit and two hours on their make-up before coming over, desperate to make a good impression at the hottest party house on campus.
But she puts all of them to shame, effortlessly. She’s as beautiful as I remember.
No, that’s a lie. She’s more beautiful. Much more beautiful than I remember.
I use my empty right hand to covertly pinch my thigh through my shorts, to make sure I’m not dreaming.
Nope. Somehow, this is reality. Emma Willows is standing in my room right now.
I’m not sure how long I stand here looking at her. Suddenly, I’m no longer in this room mentally.
I’m back in the bedroom of the foster home I lived in for seven months, four long years ago …
I’m sitting on my bed, trying to make heads or tails of my Algebra homework so I can stay academically eligible to play football: something I just started a couple months ago, the first thing that’s ever given me a sense of direction, a sense of accomplishment.
Craig, my latest foster parent, is entering the room and tentatively sitting down on the side of the bed. He’s always been nice. Welcoming. Warm.
And I’ve always been distant, not wanting to get too close because I know what’s going to end up happening.
He’s telling me that I was right all along.
Those aren’t his words, of course. But that’s the bottom line. He has to move. He got a promotion. They can’t take me with them. I’m going back into the system. Leaving the school I’ve been attending since staying with this family.
Leaving the girl I’ve been dating for a couple months. The first person in my life I’ve let myself get close to.
Emma.
It’s probably best for her. I’m not a good influence on her. Her parents have told her that more than once. Shit, they’ve told her that more than once in my presence. I can only imagine how many times they’ve drilled it into her head when I’m not around. I know her Honors and AP teachers tell her the same thing.
Craig’s leaving my room and I’m closing my textbook. No use worrying about homework now. Back to group homes. Back to the crapshoot of foster homes. I got lucky with Craig and Nancy. I think about how next time I might not be so lucky.
I turned out to be right about that …
“Knox? Yo, Knox!” I’m jolted back to reality by Dan, one of my teammates and another player at the table (currently stripped down to his white boxers with pink hearts on them), calling my name.
“Huh? What?” The cobwebs of my head are clearing.
“You still in the game?”
“I’ll sit out a few hands,” I say, walking away from my seat and slowly nearing Emma. My absence doesn’t slow down the game as I can hear everyone else wagering new articles of clothing.
Emma looks almost as surprised as I am. Her brown eyes, large and round like saucers, stare at me with a look I can’t decipher. As I’m about to open my mouth and say my first words in four years to the person I’ve been thinking about every day, she cuts me off.
“Is this your house?” Her voice has a no-nonsense edge to it. Not exactly the tone I dreamed of hearing from her heart-shaped lips in the encounter that I’ve dreamed about for so long.
Suddenly the blank and unsure look on her face, which had so nearly mirrored mine just a moment ago, is replaced by a look that mixes annoyance, outrage, even anger.
“Yeah, it’s my house,” I answer, my defenses spiking to meet her adversarial tone and regard. “Why?” I launch that last one-word question like a challenge.
“Why?” She mimics my question like it’s the most absurd thing in the world – like I should obviously just know why she suddenly barged in from my past, unseen and unheard from for four years, right while I’m taking off my shirt during a game of strip poker. “Because we’re neighbors now.”
“Oh?” I ask, unable to keep a trace of excitement from my voice.
Who would ever have guessed? After all these years, we’re neighbors in Alton. Of all the fantasies that I’ve ran through my imagination of how we might come together again, randomly ending up living next to each other has been one of them. I just never thought it would become reality.
But in just a split-second, she shatters the image I have of what this meeting after all these years might possibly be. Because she has a very different purpose for coming over here tonight.
“Do you realize you’re not the only person who lives on this street?” Glancing down I can see that the hands that hang next to her luscious hips are now balled into fists.
“What?” I ask, the word coming out of my mouth like a gasp of laughter.
“Can’t you keep it down over here! Every night, even school nights, you’re having loud, obnoxious, disgusting parties, keeping everyone up all night and making other people clean up after your mess!”
It’s like once she finally loosed her lips to say what she came here for, an unstoppable torrent of complainst and accusations come tumbling out – all of them seemingly aimed directly and pointedly at me personally.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Why else would she be here other than to tell me off? I’m just a no-good athlete to her, undeserving to be at an academically prestigious school like Alton with students like her – students who earned their place.
I know for a fact that the entire time we dated back in high school, everyone in her social circle was telling her nonstop that she was too good for the troublemaking boy from the wrong side of the tracks. I was going nowhere fast until it turned out I was better at football than anyone could have predicted.
According to many, I’m still going nowhere fast, destined to blow up all my football prospects with my antics off the field.
Not that those criticisms will stop me from living life while I can.
I know what it’s like to be a nobody. Right now, because of football, I’m somebody. I know that can end in a split second thanks to one wrong step on the field or one bad hit. I’m going to live it up while I can.
Make hay while the sun is shining, they say. Well, my hay is booze, partying, and pussy – because it’s not like I have anything else.
I shouldn’t be surprised she’s turned out like all the rest of them. The first we see of each other in three years, she doesn’t say hi, she doesn’t ask how I’ve been doing, she doesn’t want to catch up and remember the good old days (not that any of those days were any good for me, except for the precious moments her and I spent alone together).
She just wants me to shut up and let her get some sleep. As if she’s long since realized that for that brief period of time in high school she was just bewitched by my looks, and now knows that she was a young fool for ever treating me like an equal in the first place.
A bitter smirk grows on my face. Well, if she wants to treat me like the ne’er-do-well delinquent she thinks I am, I know how to play that role.
“You mean you didn’t come over to play a round of strip poker with us?” I ask in a deep, gravelly voice – a voice I know wreaks havoc on the self-control of any woman with a pulse, no matter how self-importantly she might want to look down on me.
I allow my eyes to rake slowly down her shapely body, my gaze trailing languidly and greedily along the bends of her curves. When my eyes rise back to her face, her cheeks are bright red.
Her lips purse in a straight line, obviously unhappy at the undeniable effect my comment had over her. “Does it look like I came here to play strip poker?” Her words drip with disdain at the suggestion.
Well, since she asked about how she looks, I allow myself to scrutinize her wardrobe again. She might be acting like a prissy princess, but, despite her shabby attire, I can’t deny how mouthwatering the body underneath it obviously is.
Bodacious curves sumptuously shaped, full and firm tits, creamy skin.
Fantasies of lifting her up and laying her down on her back right on the poker table behind me and fucking her silly, in full view of anyone who cares to watch, flood my mind. I do nothing to suppress them even as I feel my cock stiffen and swell.
“It looks like you’re wearing an outfit most beautiful women wouldn’t want to be caught dead in. So, yeah, I could imagine you came over looking for an excuse to get out of those clothes.” I level her with a taunting gaze. Her eyes bulge in shock at my comment, before narrowing in anger.
“These are my pajamas. I was trying to sleep, because I have class tomorrow. I’m here because the racket from your stupid party is making that impossible.”
I take a short step closer to her, eliminating the small space that had stood between us. We’re chest-to-chest, the fabric of her shirt separated from my bare chest by millimeters. If I as much as took a deep breath, the swell of my chest would cause my hard, taut muscles to graze against the perfect semi-spheres of her breasts.
“All these years and this is how you say hello?”
For a moment the anger in her eyes is replaced by something else … guilt?
But as soon as I notice it, the briefest chink in the armor of her outrage, it’s gone. “This isn’t about our past,” she says, her words at first unsteady, before finishing her sentence more decisively, “this is about you learning to act like there are people other than you in this world, let alone on this block.”
That last admonition sounds like she’s talking about a lot more than just the parties I’ve been throwing during the last couple weeks I’ve lived in this house.
“That’s why you’re here? To tell me to keep it down?”
“Yes.”
I raise my eyebrow provocatively. “That’s the only reason?”
Her lips pout, a sight that stiffens my cock to the point where there’s now a noticeable bulge in my shorts that she’ll surely not fail to notice if she glances down. “Yes, that’s the only reason.”
I allow two beats of silence to pass between us. “Okay,” I say, with all the affected nonchalance I can summon, shrugging my shoulders.
I turn around and start walking back to retake my seat at the poke table.
“Wait!” I hear her from behind me.
I turn around, the taunting smirk still plastered on my face. “What? Rethinking your decision not to join us?”
“Are you going to keep the noise down or not?”
I look up, putting a transparently phony expression of deep thought on my face, cupping my chin in my thumb and index finger like the statue of a Greek philosopher. “Nope,” I dismissively conclude.
“Are you kidding?” She asks as I turn around and continue back to my seat.
“Nope,” I repeat myself, a big grin on my face. “Shorts!” I wager as Dan deals the next round of cards, drawing some excited giggles from the girls at the table.
Emma stands in her place at the door like she’s bolted to the floor. She looks back and forth incredulously, like she can’t believe she was just blown off like that.
Like she can’t believe she was blown off by someone like me.
“You sticking around to see me take these bad boys off if I lose this round?” I taunt Emma from across the table, patting the leg of my shorts. Looking at my shitty hand, there’s a good chance I will in fact be dropping these down to the floor in just a few short minutes.
Shit, if Emma sticks around, I might just throw the hand to be sure of it. See how she reacts when these shorts fall down my legs and the bulge in my tight boxer briefs becomes undeniable.
In fact, I decide to do just that. I fold, forfeiting my shorts.
“Shorts! Shorts! Shorts!” The other players start to taunt.
I lock my eyes directly with Emma’s. I run my tongue across my lips and slowly stand up. I lightly sway my hips back and forth as my hands feel for my button and zipper, undoing them.
Right as I let go of the waist and allow the shorts to fall down my thighs, Emma lets out a sharp pout of indignation before spinning on her heels and hurrying out of the room.
“Katie!” I hear Emma’s voice a split-second later from out in the hallway, shouting after her friend who was standing behind her and still has her eyes locked intently on me, elevator-eyeing my exposed body. She lets out a peep of embarrassment and hurries to follow Emma out of view.
I sit down now clad only in my boxers and socks. “Fresher!” I yell at a freshman I notice on the side of the room.
“Yeah, Knox?” He hurries over and answers me solicitously, eager to make a good impression on Alton’s newest big man on campus and captain of the hottest party house in town (yours truly, that is).
“Get me another beer. I think it’s time to crank this party up a couple more notches.”