Love Obsessed by Veronica Short Read Free Book Online Page A

toward. “My hands wouldn’t be sleazy on Erin!” I yell back. He keeps on walking, slamming his bedroom door behind him.
    “Talk about drama,” Ryan pitches in.
    “Shut up,” I snap.
    ***
    Knowing that Erin was going a date had stung, but learning that she had already had that date, and had spent the night with him sucks. I’m miserable, and she’s out hooking up. I fucking hurt. There is no simpler way of putting it. I want to be everything for her, and she doesn’t want me, and that fucking hurts.
    Erin
    “You understand that we can only be colleagues at work,” Jake says quietly into my ear. We’re lying in his bed, and he’s playing with a piece of my hair that fell out from my bun.
    “I know. We need to keep it professional.”
    “It’s going to be so hard.”
    “We’ll still see each other.”
    Jake rolls on top of me, “I won’t be able to touch you. Seeing you but not touching you...” He shakes his head, leaning down to kiss my lips.
    “We still have some time before I need to leave.”
    “Stay the night.” He kisses my neck.
    “Ok, I don’t have any clothes, though.”
    “You won’t be needing them.”
    ***
    Jake was right; seeing each other, but not being able to touch each other, is torture. I’ve seen him watching me, and I admit, my eyes have lingered on him at times too, the memory of my weekend spent with him on replay in my head; the sight of his bare body, the feeling of his stubble against my skin as he kissed my body. I didn’t see Brandon this morning when I went home to get dressed. I texted him, letting him know that I had been home and that I had missed him. He sent back one word, ‘ok’.
    I’m in the kitchen at home, cooking dinner, when Brandon barges into the apartment. “Hey,” I offer when I see him enter. He just looks at me for a moment before he walks off to his room. I stand here in the kitchen, stunned, feeling lost and confused.
    “Brandon?” I enter his room and see him sitting on the edge of his bed, his hands covering his face. “Brandon,” I whisper again, eyeing him cautiously. I’ve never seen him like this. I just watch him, tears glistening in my eyes, at a loss on what to do. He’s always been so confident and head strong, but now it feels like he’s hiding from me.
    “Yeah,” he says, lowering his hands and still not making eye contact with me. He looks defeated.
    “I....” I take a deep breath, “What’s wrong?” He’s breathing heavy and I don’t know whether I should go sit by him, or stay where I am.
    “If I ask you not to do what you did last weekend again, would you hate me?” he asks quietly, still not looking at me.
    “What part?”
    He looks at me now, stating, “All of it.”
    I sag against the door, my eyes closed. When I open them again, Brandon is standing a foot in front of me. “You disappeared with a stranger. I had no idea where you were, and you wouldn’t let me meet him. Why wouldn’t you let me meet him?”
    “I like him.”
    He leans toward me, one hand on either side of me, and his forehead resting on mine. “You don’t know him.”
    “I want to get to know him, and I’m afraid that you’ll scare him away. I know you mean well, and I love you because of it, but Brandon, I need to find myself away from your big, brotherly protection.”
    “I’m not ready to let you go.”
    “I’m not going anywhere.”
    “You changed my life, Erin. When I saw you in that bar, you changed something in me. I needed you more than you needed me. You gave me something to care about, someone to love. I will never stop looking out for you.”
    “I don’t want you to stop. Just trust me enough to let me make this decision on my own, and be there when it fails and I need to be picked up.”
    He places a hand on the side of my face, his thumb running over my cheek. “Always, baby.”
    Cole
    “To Erin,” I toast, raising my shot glass filled to the brim with bourbon towards Brandon, “and to us poor losers of whom