Lie to Me by Chloe Cox Read Free Book Online

massaging out a cramp. It was so much more than that to me.
    I think it was for him, too. We both forgot ourselves in that moment. His hands kept working up my leg, to my quads, my thigh. Oh God, his hands on my thigh. Even the memory…
    I will remember this until the day I die. Such a little thing, but it felt like fire. Marcus looked up at me, locked his beautiful pale eyes with mine, and I was rooted in place. His fingertips grazed the delicate skin on my inner thigh as he shifted his grip, and the sensation shot straight to my core, pushing the pressure up over what I could handle. Overwhelming me. I dug my fingers into the floor mat and gasped audibly, my lower abs contracting in that distinctive way.
    I was so mortified.
    There was literally nothing else it could be. I was sure I’d just given away what I was feeling, and that made me acutely aware of how inappropriate it was, how almost skeevy it was, to be totally turned on by something that was supposed to be innocent. I yanked my leg away from him, drawing it up close to me, and then just stayed there, awkward and off balance, trying not to breathe too hard.
    Marcus was silent a moment.
    Finally he said, “Lo, why are you mad?”
    I think he was trying to figure out if I was mad at him, if I thought he’d been trying to molest me or whatever. But that didn’t occur to me until later. I was mad, and I guess that was obvious in my expression, but not at him—I was mad at myself for being so pathetic, for being humiliated yet again, for wanting something I couldn’t have.
    But I couldn’t say any of that, so of course I blamed it on my poor dad.
    “He didn’t have to humiliate me,” I said bitterly. I put my leg back down, still resting on Marcus’s, greedy for the contact, and leaned forward so I could stare at the small diamond of floor mat between us.
    “What are you talking about?” he asked.
    “My dad.” I sighed, like I was sorry to even have to explain it. “Grounding me? I mean, honestly.”
    “You’re mad at your dad for this morning?”
    He sounded genuinely confused. And in retrospect, I understand why. At the time? Not so much.
    “Yeah,” I said, like it was obvious. “He was a freaking jerk.”
    “Look at me,” Marcus commanded.
    Believe me, I’ve never obeyed anyone so quickly in my entire life. And when I looked up? Those eyes. Staring right into mine. Serious. Intense.
    Everything still.
    “Don’t say that,” Marcus said. “I don’t know, maybe he is a jerk sometimes. But not for this morning. He cares about you. He came down here because he was worried. And he didn’t have to be, you could’ve told him what you were doing. But you didn’t. And now you’re mad at him for caring enough about what happens to you to be worried.”
    His eyes never left mine. He was serious, yes, but more than that—it was like he was looking for something in me. Like this mattered to him, like it was important that I understand what he was saying. And that’s when I had one of those little epiphanies, the kind I remember from growing up, when I would suddenly understand where someone else was coming from.
    Marcus needed to see that I understood, because it would be like understanding him. His reaction was all out of proportion to my calling my dad a jerk, and it was because Marcus knew what I didn’t, in a very real way: not all fathers care for their children. Not all dads get worried. Not all of them show up.
    Marcus knew that already.
    I thought about how I’d never heard anything about Marcus’s dad. Or his mom, even. He never talked about them, not even in passing. And I thought about how weird that was for a seventeen year old. How much could I reveal about my life without reference to my family? Barely anything.
    Right then, I got that about him. He was alone. Maybe he lived in the same house, but physical proximity only goes so far. That’s why he spent all his time in a gym. I had so much more than he did, and I didn’t even