A grin crept its way across his face, and his shoulders shook slightly. “Nice, but I’m cancelling the lesson for today.”
“What—why?”
He raked his hand across his chest, ruffling the front of the gray Alternative Apparel shirt he wore. “Because I’ve been thinking about you too much.”
“You’re getting paid to train me,” I pointed out.
He paid attention to merging onto the highway, and the Incubus song playing on the radio. I crossed my arms over my chest because I was more interested in hearing what Cooper had to say than listen to Brandon Boyd sing about picturing someone’s face in the back of his mind. The lyrics were way too close to my own dilemma with the guy sitting beside me. When the song ended, and a commercial for a night club replaced it, Cooper sighed.
“There’s a forty year old cougar paying me to train her and I don’t give her a second thought after our lessons,” he told me.
“Cooper, I—”
“I’m not going to beg you to be with me, Wills. I’m not going to chase you or do any of that. But just know that I want you, and before you say it—fuck the rule.” He cast a tight grin in my direction. “Not that I’ve broken it.”
“You don’t know anything about me,” I said. Just like I don’t know anything about you other than I want to throw myself at you every time we see one another, I thought.
“And I’ve told you before that I don’t have to know you to want you. Sex between us would be . . .”
When he didn’t answer, instead clenching his hands on the steering wheel and squinting at the road as he struggled to come up with the perfect word, I was sure he was thinking the same thing I was.
Amazing.
Shattering.
Catastrophic for my heart.
A moment later we were parked in the empty driveway of my rental and he turned off the engine. “Cooper, what exactly do you want from me?” I asked. He offered me a strained look that made my chest ache and my throat tighten.
“Nothing. Dammit, everything. I needed to get it out there, Wills—how I’m feeling about you. Yeah, I’m your coach but I’m also a guy and you’re digging your way under my skin.” He laid his head back on the leather rest, lifting his chin and squeezing his eyes together. Before I could stop myself, I was out of my seatbelt, pressing my lips to the column of his throat. He groaned. “Don’t. Fucking. Tease.”
“I’m trying to spend this summer focusing on my career,” I whispered, and Cooper opened his blue eyes to take me in. He brushed strands of my hair back from my face. “I just got out of rehab and I’m not—”
“I get it.”
“You don’t,” I said firmly. “I don’t like being attracted to you. And if you think I’m getting under your skin, just imagine what you’re doing to me. I haven’t . . . I’ve not been in a relationship in a long time, Cooper. But here you are and you scare the shit out of me.”
A look of understanding and then pity entered his eyes. A deep burn scorched its way through my stomach, up to my chest, and I reached for the door handle. He closed his hand around my wrist, jerking me back to him.
“Somebody f**king hurt you,” he said in a dangerous voice.
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“Why does it matter? You going to break his legs with a surfboard?” I demanded, but when Cooper pressed his lips together determinedly, I heaved a sigh. “Tyler Leonard.” Even now, three years later, my voice cracked whenever I said his name. I didn’t watch his movies. I pretended not to notice whenever his picture made the cover of US Weekly.
And yet I still couldn’t let him go.
“The actor?” Cooper asked.
I nodded, using every acting chop within me to hide the disappointment. “We met during filming.” Into the Dark. My first and only horror movie and my last successful film before my fall.
“He’s what—ten years older than you? What did you have a crush on him and he turned you down?” Cooper’s voice was hopeful, and for a second, I thought about giving him what he wanted to hear but then I gripped my free hand into the fabric of my dress.
“When you’re in Hollywood, you’ve got all these people who think that you’re so f**ked up, that you’re so jaded, even when you’re just a kid, you know? But I wasn’t back then. I mean, yeah, I went to parties with my friends, but I hadn’t . . .”
“He was your first.” When I didn’t answer, he growled a curse. “And that’s what started . . .”
The drugs.
“No. And yes. Part of it was what had happened between me and him. And part of it was just myself.” I’d wanted a permanent anesthesia to numb away the short memories of what I’d given up.
“Willow,” Cooper said, dropping his fingers from around my wrist so he could rake his hands through his blonde hair. Anxiety pulsed through my veins again, but this time, instead of making a run for it, I pulled him close to me, dragging his lips down on mine to hush out any more pity.
I knew that the center console was jabbing into the small of my back—that the top of my head was shoved up against the Jeep door handle—yet all I could feel were Cooper’s fingertips cupping my face and caressing my skin. His lips on my mouth.
Every hard line of his body on top of my own.
“Wills, don’t do this if—” He started to pull away, but I shook my head and wrapped my arms around his neck, pulling him into me. As his tongue parted my lips and his hand squeezed my breast, I skimmed my fingers beneath the top of his gray t-shirt. My hand brushed over the scar on his shoulder, and he shivered.