Page 3 of Surrender to Me

Chapter 2

We found a Thai place nearby at Owen’s suggestion. I knew it was too close to that first meal we had together, what I thought of as our first date, but I wasn’t going to turn down a Thai iced tea. It seemed sacrilege. At least, that’s the excuse I told myself. I drove myself; he tailed behind me. Inside, it was almost like our late night dates from before, except this time I refused to look at Owen. I looked at anything else: the tattered menu, the blond man bun bobbing up and down behind Owen, the sweater-clad aspiring actors crossing the street after a late night meal, the lit up signs advertising Karaoke! Open Now, the moonlight glimmering on the oily asphalt.

Owen let out a long breath, and the sigh reminded me of the night we first made love. The sound had been deep and purposeful, full of melancholy, and after it, he disappeared, leaving me lost and confused about what I meant to him, if anything at all. And then there was his ex showing up out of nowhere. I wondered why I was having a late night meal with him again. “You’re up for review,” he said. Up for review? It sounded like a way to torture a student into thinking their entire acceptance was jeopardized. “You’ll be getting a summons in less than a week. Michael convinced other students to file reports about our relationship.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“It means your acceptance and your scholarship will be reevaluated,” he said. He closed the menu in front of him. “I believe it’s more of a formality to show the students that the faculty hears them. But I wanted to warn you.”

Hearing those words made me flush. I hated that involuntary impulse. I guess my heart liked knowing that he wanted to protect me, whether my brain liked to acknowledge it or not. Damn it. He didn’t want to protect me; he wanted to warn me. That was different; there was less at stake for him. I was getting too ahead of myself. And then there was Michael. It seemed like an extraordinary amount of hostility for getting the scholarship when I wasn’t even in his year, and yet I wouldn’t put it past him. I knew Michael was willing to do anything to get what he wanted.

“I’ll be interviewed as well,” Owen said. “I already spoke with Stevens.”

“What did you say?”

“The truth.”

If only I understood what ‘the truth’ was. On the one hand, I knew I should be irritated at Owen for swooping in and making his presence in this situation known. He knew I hated it when people helped me, especially when I didn’t ask for it. I could handle my problems and their intricacies on my own, scholarship and acceptance included. But on the other hand, he was as much of a part of this screwed up situation as I was, and though it seemed like it shouldn’t be a big deal, I was secretly grateful that he had gone out of his way for me, to tell me what was going on and to talk to Wile Stevens, especially when not only my scholarship, but my acceptance was on the line. Even if I hated admitting it, it was respectful of Owen to let me know what was going on and to accept the fact that he had as much to do with this as I did.

“Thanks,” I said quietly.

After the server took our order, we sat in silence. The space between us was heavy, like fog. His dark green eyes stared out at the restaurant, watching everyone around us, as if he was thinking of what to say too. I wanted to ask about Poppy, find out what had happened since I’d left. I didn’t want to know the details, but I did want to know if she was still around, if he was rekindling his relationship with her. Not that I cared. But this was business. It had everything to do with what was at stake: my scholarship and acceptance to my dream school. It had nothing to do with us, whatever we had been, what we were now.

“How do you like the area?” Owen asked. He was looking at me now. I remembered how his gaze held me, locking in me in, pulling me closer to his trap. My mind ran through images of us—his hands raking me on the pier, how exact his interpretations were of my sculptures, how his breath on my neck and his beard stubble on my skin made my knees buckle.

“It’s fine,” I said. Then I realized that although I had answered his occasional text with one-word responses, I hadn’t told him where I was living. I had told him my mother was moving to Southern California, but that was the whole bottom half of the state. “How did you know where I would be?” I asked.

“I have my ways,” he said. I didn’t care enough to argue. I shrugged.

“I’m ready to go back,” I said. The urge to let my feelings go was filling me up, at the verge of spilling out. “I miss the Bay,” I whispered. I had to look out the window. The night was cool and lonely; hardly anyone passed on the street now. I could feel my emotions sucking me into what I really wanted to say, but I had to stop myself. It wasn’t San Francisco that I missed. It wasn’t my time in the studio, or even going to the galleries. It was Owen. It was the fact that he was the first person I had let into my heart, that I had been vulnerable with, who truly understood me. Who I thought I understood too.

“It’s not the same without you,” he said.

I bit my lip, still looking out the window, at anything but him. I wanted to ignore what he had said; I didn’t want to think of what he meant. But I couldn’t. I heard every word: without you. He missed me too. No, he didn’t. He said it; ‘it’ wasn’t the same. ‘It’ was a general pronoun meaning the city, meaning anything, meaning not him. I shook the thoughts from my head.

Owen walked me to my car. I gnawed on my tongue, refusing to say the words I wanted to say. If I knew what was best for me, I would accept our current state. It was just business. We were acquaintances who both happened to appreciate the arts. We had a past, but we were strangers now. We didn’t have a future. But it seemed stupid to pretend like that when I knew what I needed, even if I also knew he would hurt me in the end.

I leaned against my car. “This is me,” I said, patting the door. I turned and started to pull the handle when Owen put his hand on my arm, the touch sending an electric wave through my body. I froze. He pulled me so that I was facing him again.

“When are you moving back?” he asked.

I ignored the fact that he assumed I was moving home. I could just go up for the review, I thought. But it wasn’t a fight we needed to pick then, especially when he was right anyway. “I guess tomorrow,” I said, the words hot in my mouth, afraid of what I might say.

“When?”

Why did he want to know? “Whenever I want.”

“Riley,” he murmured. And it was the cadence of his voice that melted me almost instantly, bringing me to the red-lit room in his house. “You know I won’t ask twice.”

I held my breath, trying to gather all of the strength I had not to do anything I would regret. “Ten,” I said. He let go of my arm. I rubbed where he had touched. It felt heavy, like he had left a hex of lust on me. I shook my head.

“Owen, I—”

And before I could say the words, his lips were on mine, flooding me with a blinding heat. His lips and tongue and teeth were as persistent as his presence in my mind, nipping at me, struggling against me, greedily sucking in what he could, as if he knew he shouldn’t, like he knew he would starve without me. His hands toyed with my hair, pulling me in, gripping me like he was taming a wild beast. And I gave back, sweeping our tongues together, staggering into his body, giving what I had left. Because I wanted to give him everything, and I wanted to take everything he would give me too.

When we broke apart, his tongue stroked my lips lightly, reminding me of his fingertips gently touching my back. I shivered. Had I already made a mistake, giving into a kiss like that?

“What are you doing?” I stammered.

“I wish you had stayed,” he said.

And there it was, what I had wanted since I had first seen him, or felt him walk into the Devil’s Dream: words defining his feelings for me. It was relief and agony wrapped into one, like the ache of looking at his perfect, plush bottom lip. I wanted to tell him that I wished I had stayed too, that I missed him, that I needed him because he was the only person that got me, that made me feel safe. But then her name flashed through my mind, and I knew that even if he was over Poppy like he had said he was, he had still kept her return a secret from me. And how could I trust him after that?

I opened the car door and slid into my seat, trying to be as icy as possible, because I knew I was on the verge of giving in at any second. “We all wish a lot of things,” I said. I didn’t look back as I drove away.