Shawn
Monday afternoon
Tristy’s coffee shop
Lilly told me about the costume party, and how she’d been roped into planning it alongside Stacey. I wasn’t surprised. The sorority president was great at getting Lilly to do whatever she wanted.
And I heard all about Trevor. All about how he pinned her to a wall and stuck his fucking tongue in her mouth.
“What’s wrong? You don’t like Trevor?” she asked, looking up at me.
I almost didn’t hear her. I was too busy thinking about slicing Trevor’s tongue with a cheese knife.
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“Are you sure? You look kind of angry.”
“I’m not angry.”
I tried to leave. If I didn’t get out of here, I knew I’d say something I’d regret.
Her hand wrapped around my arm. “Shawn–”
“I’m fine, Lilly,” I said, faking a calm I didn’t feel as I eased out of her grip. “I just… want to get back to work.”
“But we’re on break,” she blurted at my back, “and I’ve been holding this in all day.”
I turned to face her. “Then talk to Mia about it. We both know she lives for this shit.”
Lilly looked like she was close to begging. “But I already know what she’ll say. She’ll tell me to break up with him.”
I raised a brow at her. The thought of her dumping Trevor lifted my mood, and just like that, I wanted to know the rest.
“Why would she do that?”
Lilly made a face, like she’d sucked on a lemon. Her freckles bunched around her nose, and it was so adorable, I almost forgot why I was mad in the first place.
“Because… the kiss wasn’t great.”
Well, I loved hearing that.
“But you’ve kissed before, right?”
She shook her head. “Not like that. Not with–” she pulled another face “–tongue.”
My smile was instant, and at seeing it, she groaned. “You’re going to tease me, aren’t you?”
I folded my arms and shrugged. “No. I just never thought of you holding out like that. But I get it. He doesn’t get my panties wet either.”
She smothered a smile, gave me an unconvincing, “Shawn,” and I laughed.
“What was it that you didn’t like?”
She lifted a shoulder and I stepped closer. The sound of the coffee grinder hummed through the walls, loud enough to remind me that no one could hear us.
We were alone in the back room while Tristan and Uncle Henry managed the front, which, I knew, wasn’t a smart move. I shouldn’t have been alone with her.
“He grabbed my chin, and… he’s so tall. It was like this.” She held her jaw and jerked it up. Her neck was hinged at a ninety-degree angle, and judging from the look on her face, the position wasn’t her favorite.
“Ouch,” I said, my smile growing by the second.
“And then he just shoved it in. I couldn’t even move.”
“Or breathe, I bet.”
I was getting way too much out of this.
What a fucking kick. To know Trevor wasn’t satisfying Lilly the way she deserved. And with something as basic as a kiss, too.
It was like all my Christmases came at once.
She let go of her chin and looked at me. “Exactly. What am I supposed to do? Do I just pretend it wasn’t bad? Or do I wait and see what the next one is like?”
I snorted. If Lilly wanted me to give her advice on how to kiss her boyfriend, she was looking in the wrong place.
“I’m with Mia on this one.”
“But it was one kiss,” she grumbled. “I can’t end it over a kiss.”
I shrugged. “You can do whatever you want. If you’re not feeling it, you’re not feeling it.”
“But I don’t know if that’s what this is. I don’t know what ‘feeling it’ looks like.”
I shook my head, willing myself not to say–
“I could show you.”
And there it was.
I should’ve left when I had the chance. I knew I’d do something stupid if I stayed. But I was a moron, and now here we were.
She frowned, confused. “How?”
I grunted, taking a moment, and I needed it because just the thought of teaching her what it meant to enjoy a kiss was making me so hard, I couldn’t think straight.
But, it didn’t take long before I said, “Take out your hair.”
Her frown deepened, but she lifted her hands to her topknot. As her long, brown strands unraveled, she started to work her fingers through it.
“Don’t,” I told her, gripping her wrist and pulling her closer.
She stumbled into me, surprised. “Don’t what? Touch my hair? Why–?”
“This is why.” I let go of her hand and threaded my fingers through the nape of her neck.
Whatever she was about to say faded into a low moan. I pressed my fingers into her, moving them slowly, letting her drop her head back into my palm as her eyes fluttered shut.
“You like that, don’t you?”
She murmured a slight, “Mhm. But Trevor wouldn’t just…”
My thumb grazed her chin as her voice trailed off, smoothing the spot she’d roughly gripped earlier. The noise she made was soft, but it went straight to my gut.
One eye opened, and she looked up at me, put a hand on my chest and smiled. “This is nice, but it isn’t the same as–”
Her voice slipped into another moan as I cupped her chin with my other hand. We were so close that if she shifted just an inch closer, she’d feel how hard she’d made me through my jeans.
But she stayed where she was, letting me wrap my fingers around the base of her neck.
Having her here like this made it easy to forget. All the reasons I knew I shouldn’t touch her–gone, just like that.
The way I held her took the pressure off her neck, and, from the look of her soft smile and half-closed lids, she trusted me enough to relax.
I wished I could’ve said the same for myself.
She smelled so sweet, so good, that it wiped every thought from my head. I bet she’d taste even better, and fuck me, I wanted to find out.
I dropped my mouth to her ear.
“This is when I’d kiss you. While you’re nice and comfortable. I’d take it slow, just like this, then I’d–”
“Hey, have you guys seen–” Tristan rushed into the room, stopping just inside the doorway.
I let go of Lilly and stepped back, but it was too late. He’d seen us.
He looked from Lilly to me with a growing smile.
Lilly’s eyes opened, and she murmured a little, “Hmm?” as she noticed Tristan. She gathered her hair and twisted it around her head as she dreamily asked him, “What did you need?”
“Uh.” He put his hands on his hips. “The takeout cups. I need a new sleeve.”
She blinked a few times, like she was waking herself up. “I know where they are. I’ll get them for you. Are Karim and Dean here?”
The trainees were rostered on for the afternoon shift, which was about to start any minute now. Tristan nodded.
“Great. I’ll show them where they are.”
As Lilly drifted off, I realized she had no idea that I was a second away from kissing her. If Tristan hadn’t walked in, my control would’ve snapped.
I was on edge, instantly frustrated. I knew it was a good thing that nothing had happened, but I couldn’t just… switch off this fucking need to touch her.
I needed to be alone. To calm down and think.
But judging from the look Tristan gave me, I wasn’t going to get that.
“What was that?”
“Nothing.”
I drifted to the loaded shelf of coffee beans and picked up the inventory ledger, pretending to study it without actually seeing it.
“That didn’t look like nothing. It looked like you were about to–”
“We don’t have time to talk about this. Lunch rush is about to start.”
“Shawn, wait. I get it. I know how you feel about Lilly.”
I stared at him for a few seconds, not sure of what to do or say. Tristan just blindsided me.
“I don’t… we’re just friends. That’s it.”
He grinned then, probably thinking about his wife.
“So were Nikki and I. For years.” As quickly as it came, his smile faded. “For too long. I should’ve told her how I felt sooner.”
I shrugged. “You’ve got her now, and that’s what matters, right? Anyway–”
“You should tell Lilly,” he said, cutting me off.
I scoffed, trying to come up with something to say. “Tristan, it’s really not like that.”
“Why not? Did you already talk to her?”
He sounded so sure, like he knew what he’d seen and nothing I could say would convince him otherwise.
And, well… shit. Between him and Mia, I must’ve been pretty bad at hiding how I felt about Lilly.
Was there even a point to denying it? With Tristan, at least I knew I could trust him.
So I lowered my voice and admitted, “I can’t. She’s dating another guy.”
Tristan paused, frowning like he’d just remembered that Lilly was already with someone else.
“Okay yes, there’s… Trevor. But if she knew how you felt, maybe she’d–”
This time, I cut him off. “I’m not doing that.”
He instantly deflated. “Why not?”
I gave him a look. “Maybe because it’d be a shitty thing to do?”
“I think not telling her is worse. She should know.”
I shook my head, then tried to explain it in a way I knew he’d understand.
“Tristan, if I told her, she’d try to fix it for me. Because she’d hate knowing she was the reason I felt like this.” I couldn’t put how I felt into words, but I didn’t need to. Tristan got it. He’d been here before. “I’m not doing that to her.”
I could see it on his face. He was about to argue with me. He might’ve understood, but that didn’t mean he agreed with how I was handling it.
But I’d had enough.
“We’re not you and Nikki. We don’t have what you guys have.”
My boss put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed.
“I don’t think you’re right about that. I think if you tell her how you feel, things will change.”
I was done talking about this. I stepped out of Tristan’s grip, still holding the inventory ledger.
If I told Lilly, things would change. That was true. But it wouldn’t be for the better.
I knew Lilly well enough to know how she’d react. She’d be torn between Trevor and me. She’d twist herself in knots trying to figure out how to please the both of us.
It would hurt her to know this was hurting me, and she didn’t deserve that kind of pain.
If I was going to do anything, I’d do it knowing we’d both be better off by the time I was done.And that meant letting her move on without me.
REVISION RELEASING SOON IN 2025