Read Online Fix You: Bash and Olivia by Christine Bell - Free Book Online Page A

Eye on the prize, Bash. And the prize was and would always be getting the hell out of Boston, ASAP. I couldn’t afford to lose sight of that again and I sure as hell couldn’t afford to get lost in this girl’s confused, stormy eyes.
    I adjusted the strap of my bag over my shoulder and resisted the urge to adjust my dick while I was at it. While my mind was made up, that fucker still hadn’t caught on to the fact that his presence was no longer required at this little party, and was pushing insistently at the waistband of my gym pants.
    “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that. Not that I didn’t want to. I…did.” Her tongue peeked out and swiped her plump bottom lip.
    Walk away.
    “It’s fine,” I said, and then cleared my throat of the leftover huskiness. “It was just a kiss.”
    Lies.
    She nodded uncertainly. “Sure. I know.”
    The phone had stopped buzzing and I almost wished it would start again just to break the heavy silence.
    “Do you have to go, though?” she asked softly. “I won’t do that again.”
    But I would. Now that I’d tasted her, I would think of nothing else until I got more. Her mouth was my drug. I knew it the second our lips touched. Hell, maybe before. And the only way to break an addiction was to go cold turkey.
    “I have to get ready for work soon.” Steeling myself against the despair on her face, I grabbed the bottle of water she’d given me and headed purposefully toward the door.
    To her credit, she didn’t ask again. When we reached the front door, I turned to face her, which was my first mistake.
    “Thank you, Bash. For everything.” Her gaze was solemn and the pretty pink that had flushed her cheeks for the past hour was gone, leaving her looking tired and pale. “I’ll never forget what you taught me. I’ll practice every day.”
    Until Andy came home. And then what? She wouldn’t be ready to handle him if he lost his shit when she told him she didn’t want to be with him anymore. That, even assuming she was able to work up the nerve to break up with him at all. What if something happened to her? How could I live with myself knowing that I walked away from this situation when I knew far better than she did exactly how volatile it could become? How could I turn her away when she needed a friend?
    Fuck.
    I raked a hand through my hair and swallowed a curse. No matter what I did, at least one of us was going to get hurt. But if I saw this through, could I muster the will to resist her long enough to make sure that once Andy got home, she was safe?
    She stared at me, wide eyes full of sadness, lips still swollen from kissing me, and I realized it didn’t matter. I’d been fooling myself from the start if I thought I had a choice in the matter. It was all about damage control now.
    “We can do a couple more lessons if you want. But I’m done for today.” I had ninety minutes before work, but at least an hour of that would be spent training until I’d burned off some of this frustration, and the rest would be spent taking a cold shower.
    Her face lit up instantly. “Tomorrow then?”
    “Sure.”
    I let myself out and she waved from the door, the relief plain in her gaze. She seemed to feel a lot better about the situation, but it was only because she didn’t know what I knew. This pie-in-the-sky idea of hers where she thought we could pretend that the kiss had never happened, and that Andy was going to come back and accept their breakup with a Coke and a smile, and that we could be friends, she and I, until school was over or I left? It could never happen. We could never be friends. The pull between us was too strong, the connection too deep, right from the start. I had no doubt that, someway, somehow, the two of us were going to ruin each other.
    The only question now was if we’d each be able to pick up the pieces when it was over.
    ###
    Olivia
Three days later…
    “How ya like me now, you bastard!” I rolled off another quick series of moves Bash