“It was me,” Jena said quietly, not looking at him.
Jaci’s holier than thou, prude of a sister? Impossible. “Junior year. The gazebo at the Parks’s Fourth of July barbeque,” Justin said, remembering a friendly hug after a win at horseshoes that had morphed into a frantic, heated groping session where he’d touched her bare breasts for the first time. And though he’d touched dozens of breasts before them, the smooth, rounded, silkiness of Jaci’s, capped off by the hardest, most aroused nipples he’d ever felt, left a lasting impression.
“Me,” Jena said, looking at the ground.
That’d been ice-water-in-her-veins Jena hot and breathless and begging for more in response to his touch? No way. “Down by the lake,” he went on. “The bonfire after senior skip day.” Where they’d paired off out of sight and explored each other’s partially clothed bodies to the point of orgasm.
Jena inhaled a deep breath then exhaled and looked up at him apologetically. “Me.”
Holy crap.
“Jena Piermont. You little slut,” Jaci teased with a smile.
“You used to ask me to pretend to be you an awful lot back then and I got pretty good at it,” Jena said to Jaci.
She’d managed to fool him, that’s for sure.
“To take a trigonometry test or give an oral presentation,” Jena said. “To make an appearance at a party while you went off I don’t know where with I don’t know who.” Jena looked up at him. “I used to fake migraines and lock myself in my room, then climb down the trellis outside my window.”
“No wonder I had such a bad reputation,” Jaci said. Amused.
“You had a bad reputation because of your big mouth, your wild spirit and your lack of respect for authority. Not because you deserved it,” Justin clarified.
“And not because of me,” Jena added. “It only happened with Justin.”
For some reason that pleased him.
“And it’s not going to happen again,” Ian asserted himself into the conversation, his eyes focused in on Jena accented with a raised eyebrow. “No more switching places.” He moved his gaze to Jaci. “For any reason,” he emphasized.
“No,” Jena said, shaking her head. Contrite. “Never again. I promise.”
Jaci, however, chose not to commit. “Let’s go.” She took Ian by the hand, again, and tugged him toward the bedroom, again. “They need to talk.”
This time Ian allowed himself to be pulled away.
Well that had gone better than expected. Justin felt lighter. Freer. Except now he had to deal with Jena. A girl he’d despised in high school, who, apparently, was the very same girl with whom he’d shared some of the more special boy-girl moments of his teenage years. With Jena, not Jaci.
Jena who used to look down her snobby nose at him.
Jena, who’d enticed him into bed by pretending to be her sister.
“But I made snacks,” Jena called after Ian and Jaci, seeming nervous, her confidence slipping.
“I could sure use one of those beers.” Lined up on the coffee table. His favorite brand.
Jena rushed to open one and held it out to him.
Ian closed the door to Jaci’s bedroom, leaving Justin and Jena alone. He took a swig of brew. Cold. Refreshing.
They stood there in awkward silence.
Justin smiled. “You’re no better than all those girls you criticized back in high school, whose reputations you disparaged for dating me.”
“Dating you?” she asked, looking him straight in the eyes. “Don’t you mean rubbing up against you and sucking face with you in the hallway of our high school or bragging about giving you oral sex in the boys’ locker room and going all the way with you on school grounds?”
Good times.
“I refuse to lump myself in with those girls. But I’m sorry.” She fidgeted with a button on her blouse. “I was wrong to let you to believe I was Jaci. It was dishonest and repugnant and I ran away like a coward afterwards.” She shook her head. “I am mortified by my behavior.”
“And so you should be.” Fancy that, Princess Jena Piermont capable of apologizing and offering a convincing show of remorse. “But I think repugnant is taking it a bit far.” Because he’d enjoyed every minute of their time together, until the dawn of a new day brought with it insight and hindsight. And a hellacious hangover he would not soon forget.
Now for two issues that had been burning his gut for months. First, “Please tell me you were a virgin.” As horrible as it was to think he’d taken her virginity without the care of a knowing, sober bed-partner, the alternative was even worse. That he’d unknowingly been too rough and hurt her. Either way the evidence had stained his sheet.
“I’d rather not—”
“Please,” he took her by the arm, gentle but firm, and turned her to face him. He didn’t like her, hated the upper class lifestyle she embraced and the elitist, unlikable people she called friends, but she didn’t deserve … “The thought that I might have hurt you …” tore him up.
“You didn’t,” she assured him. “A little pinch from it being my first time, that’s all.”
“Was it …?” Good. He cursed himself for not remembering every vivid detail.
“It was fine,” she said quietly. Shyly.
Justin cringed at her bland choice of adjective. Fine, as in acceptable? Adequate? Nothing special?
“Until the next morning.”
When he’d totally lost it. “Yeah, about that. I woke up and noticed the condom from the night before draped over the trashcan beside the bed. With a big slice down the side.” And his heart had stopped. “I don’t know if it happened before, during or after, but on top of thinking I’d ruined my friendships with Jaci and Ian, I realized there was a chance she, well, you, could get pregnant.” He took another swig of beer. “I panicked.” How could he have been so carless? So unaware?
“Especially once you’d found out you may have gotten me pregnant and not Jaci,” Jena said. “If I remember correctly your exact words were, ‘Oh, God. That’s even worse.’”
Had he really said that out loud? From the hurt look in her eyes, yup, he had. Dammit. “Because we have nothing in common. We don’t even like each other. But bottom line,” after years of being treated like an afterthought and an inconvenience by his father, his only parent for as long as he could remember, Justin had decided, “I don’t want kids. With any woman. Or marriage.” He didn’t do relationships. Never could manage to give a woman what she needed outside of the bedroom. Too emotionally detached, according to numerous women who’d expected more than he was capable of giving, too self-centered to share his life with another person. Like father like son, apparently. “I like my life the way it is.” Women around when he wanted them, gone when he didn’t. Doing what he wanted when he wanted, on his own terms, without negotiation, explanation or altercation. “But I handled the possibility that our night together may have had long-term consequences poorly. I’m sorry. You deserved better.”
She looked on the verge of tears.
Some unfamiliar instinct urged him to take her into his arms to comfort her.
He resisted.
“Hey. No tears,” he said, trying to keep things upbeat. “It all worked out. Wherever you took off to has obviously been good for you. You look great. And no consequences.” Now what? He should leave. Except he didn’t want to, was still coming to terms with the fact he and Jena had shared some magical moments back in high school. Jena,