Holy moly!! I got like 11 reviews on the first night, that's awesome, and completely exciting for me! lol And I checked the traffic and had like 116 hits, that's incredible!!! Thanks for all the reviews guys, they're absolutely incredible. Some of y'all might be wondering how I'm able to update so much recently, and I swear it's because you all give me tons of inspiration, so keep those reviews coming, cuz the more I get, the more psyched I am, and the more I write. lol So please please pleaseeeeee review, I beg of you!! lol jk, but seriously, I love seeing reviews, it makes me so excited to see that y'all really like my story.
Anyways, on to the new chapter!! Hope ya like it.
The morning sunlight shone brightly through Shane's uncovered window, and hit Mitchie directly in the face, causing her to stir. At first she had no idea where she was, but then she felt the tangible feeling of Shane's arms wrapped around her bare waste, and she could feel almost every inch of his front pressed against her back, and for some reason she absolutely loved the feel of him pressed up against her, with his steady breath blowing softly against the back of her neck, telling her he was still asleep.
But he was there.
Just like he promised he would be.
As she thought back to the previous night between them, she surprisingly didn't have any regrets, like she originally thought she might. She had sworn to herself to never have sex with Shane Gray, but she didn't care. She wanted last night to happen, she had just been lying to herself when she told herself that she could never want something like that with a guy like Shane.
It had oddly enough been one of the most amazing experiences of her short life, and it was more than likely something she would never take back. He had been so caring and gentle with her, and it was something she definitely did not expect from him, but she enjoyed it thoroughly. It had left her craving for more of him, but just that one time had completely exhausted her. Her emotions had been on overdrive for nearly that entire day. With her waking up the previous morning hungover, the drama with Shane, and then what happened with Nate...
She immediately sighed at the thought of him.
Nate.
She had no choice but to break his heart now, and that nearly killed her, because the last thing she wanted to do was break one of her best friends hearts. After her night with Shane, she couldn't pretend to string him along, now that she would in the first place, that was just too cruel.
But she wasn't even sure what was going to happen with her and Shane when he woke up. Sure he was sweet and caring last night, but a person can't change overnight. It's just not possible, especially because Shane had been so mean and bitter for the better part of two years. But part of her wanted to believe that he could change. She had never actually seen the real him until last night. At least she hoped it was the real him, because it certainly wasn't bad.
How could she have gotten herself in this position? One member of Connect 3 liked her, while she slowly found herself falling for another guy who she honestly shouldn't be falling for. It was such a twisted situation, but at the moment, wrapped up in Shane's arms, her life felt absolutely perfect.
And that scared her. Especially because it was Shane Gray of all people, and he had possibly the worst track record with girls.
But she was finding it exceedingly hard to focus on the negative when she felt him stir next to her, and she heard him taking a deep breath, which told her that he was beginning to wake as well, and suddenly she was nervous.
Nervous that the arrogant, cocky Shane would creep back in and she'd get an earful of that. But instead, she felt his lips greet her bare shoulder gently, slowly making their way up towards her neck. What really pleased her was that she could feel his lips turned up into a smile, and suddenly all of her worries melted away when she heard his voice, thick with sleep.
"Morning." He murmured, nuzzling his nose against her hair, which made her melt. She shifted in his arms slightly so she could see his face, with difficulty because he was refusing to let up his grip on her, but she wasn't exactly complaining about that.
"Morning." She whispered back with a soft smile, which was returned by Shane, and after a few moments of comfortable silence, Shane leaned down and pressed a tender kiss to her lips, which made Mitchie melt all over again. It was a slow, lazy kiss, their tongues simply exploring each others mouths instead of fighting for dominance. Mitchie's hand had made its way up to Shane's thick, messy hair and was merely playing happily with a few locks.
Mitchie let out a content sigh when they pulled away because of lack of oxygen, but it didn't bother her. Shane's kisses were so addictive, she could kiss him all day, and probably would if she was actually able to.
"You're still here." She pointed out, pleased with the fact. It was his house, but it had crossed her mind that he'd want nothing to do with her after he got what he wanted, or they'd at least go back to how they were in the first place, which she truly didn't want. It was exhausting hating someone as much as she thought she had hated Shane.
"I told you I would be." And he had kept his word, another sign that told her the real Shane was still in there somewhere, and she was happy to see that it was actually coming to the surface.
They were quiet for awhile, just enjoying each others company, and reveling in the feel of the atmosphere that surrounded them. But unfortunately, Mitchie knew they were going to have to discuss what was going on between them, because she sure as hell didn't know. And as much as she didn't want to break the atmosphere that they were in, this discussion was unavoidable.
"So where does this leave us, Shane?" She wondered to him, feeling the worry kick in on what his answer might be.
"I-I'm not sure." He told her uncertainly. This was completely new to him. He had never really talked to a girl after having sex with him, but he couldn't imagine leaving Mitchie after what they had done the previous night, it seemed nearly impossible, because just the thought of it hurt him. The thought of her hurting, killed him, and he didn't understand why. Or maybe he did, and he just didn't want to admit it.
"After the way things started out between us, I should be saying that last night was a mistake, and that it should never happen again."
He felt his heart clench at the thought. "Are you saying that?"
She thought for a moment. "As much as I should be saying that, I can't. Because I'd be lying. Last night had to have meant something, Shane. And I don't know what the hell it is, but it did mean something. And I'm terrified at the thought of what will come out of this, that you'll still be the arrogant jackass that you were when I first met you."
"Maybe I'm not the same guy I was a month ago." He told her, but she just responded by giving him a look.
"Shane, someone can't change overnight. After being someone else for so long, it's impossible. I've disliked you since the moment I met you, and I'm not sure I can get over that overnight either."
"I wanna be with you, Mitchie." He blurted out before he had any idea what he was going to say, and he watched with a sinking heart as her eyes widened in shock, but he made sure to keep his expression the same, because as much as it scared the hell out of him, it was true.
"Shane..." She began after a moment of shocked silence. "I can't be with someone like the guy I met a month ago."
"I told you. I'm not the guy you met a month ago." Was she going to reject him? After she had been the one so worked up about him ditching her after they slept together, was she the one that was going to reject him? Just the thought made his heart hurt.
"How do I know that you're not?" She asked him, worriedly.
"Let me prove it to you. Just be with me, and I can prove it to you." He pleaded, his voice getting stronger. He had never practically begged for a girl. He had never been able to see him doing such a thing, but this was far past just wanting to be with Mitchie. He needed her.
"Shane, I can't...commit to this. Not yet. We can give it time, okay? We'll see what happens."
It would have to do. For now.
"Okay." He agreed.
"But...in the meantime..." A smirk grew on her lips. "We can do this..." She leaned in closer to him and placed her lips against his, to which a smile formed on his lips and he happily pulled her closer to him.
The meantime might not be so bad.
Eventually they did have to get out of bed, no matter how reluctant they both were to do so. Shane had gone to take a shower while Mitchie had gotten dressed and made her way to where she would be able to find the other members of Connect 3. Even if she was scared to death at the thought of facing Nate. She still had to talk about the kiss that they had shared, but she was terrified of hurting the man that had slowly began to be like her brother. She would have too though, especially now that she was sort of, kind of dating Shane, which that thought still gave her pleasurable chills. But she wouldn't be able to avoid Nate forever, and she didn't get the chance to even try when she caught him fixing a bowl of cereal in the kitchen.
When he heard her enter the room, he looked up at her and beamed, genuinely happy to see her.
"Hey," He greeted, getting a spoon for himself to dig into his cereal with. "What are you doing here so early?"
She felt a twinge of panic when she realized that Shane was the only one who knew she had stayed the night, and she didn't know what to say, but she knew if she lied she'd get caught up in it, but she didn't have to tell him the whole truth just yet.
"Oh, um, I totally crashed her last night, I was real tired."
He scrunched his eyebrows, but accepted her answer, much to Mitchie's relief. "Oh. So, you want something to eat, we got plenty. Or I can make you something if you want." He offered eagerly, and it felt awkward trying to be normal with him, due to the pending conversation.
"N-No, thanks, I'm fine." Her nerves were so intense that she couldn't even think about food at the moment.
Nate eyed her carefully, sensing something was up with her. "Are you okay?" He finally questioned, and she inwardly winced, knowing now had to be the time, or she'd never be able to do it.
"Look, Nate...we need to talk about...what happened with us yesterday."
After a moment, Nate nodded his head, anticipating that she would say that.
Mitchie thought that she would be the one that would have to start, but to her surprise, Nate began speaking up.
"Mitch, look, I know it might not have been the best thing to do at the time, given the circumstances with your publicity stunt with Shane..." She inwardly cringed. "But I thought about this a lot last night, and I wish I would have known you were here, but I do think that maybe we should give this a shot." Mitchie felt the guilt eating away at her. "I really like you, Mitchie."
And he looked at her with the most sincere eyes, and it completely broke her heart just knowing that she'd have to break his.
"Nate--" But before she could get anywhere, Nate cut her off again.
"Wait, Mitch, just hear me out." She closed her mouth and nodded his head. "I know you thinnk of me as a...brother," He had trouble getting the word out. "But I think that if you just gave me a chance, maybe you'd see that it wouldn't be the case." Nate looked at her pleadingly.
Great. Two guys who were practically begging for her to be with them. She never thought she'd see the day. Especially when those two guys were Nate Johnson and Shane Gray. This was ridiculous.
"Mitchie, please. Just give me two weeks, and if you still don't feel the same, then we won't do it anymore, but please just give me a chance." He pleaded once more, standing up and getting close to her, hoping she'd be able to tell how much he really wanted this.
Where had she just heard the whole giving him a chance thing?
Oh, goodness.
That's how Shane saw them when he managed to get in seeing distance. He could see the pleading look in Nate's eyes, and Shane immediately knew what was happening even though he couldn't hear what they were saying.
Nate did like her, and now he wanted to be with Mitchie.
He scowled at the mere thought, and stalked up to them, and he could see the irritation flicker in Nate's eyes when he interrupted whatever the hell Mitchie was about to say to him next.
"What's going on?" Shane asked, as if he hadn't known what was going down between them.
Nate managed a small glare at him, thinking that he might actually have had a chance with Mitchie, and Shane just ruined it.
Shane smirked at that. In all reality, Shane was just saving him from the rejection that he was sure Mitchie would have thrown at him. After what had happened between him and Mitchie just over an hour ago, she better have been getting ready to reject Nate.
"Mitchie and I were just talking." Nate said, still glaring at Shane, who honestly didn't seem to care.
"About what?" Shane pressed, getting amusement out of Nate thinking that he actually stood a chance with Mitchie.
"It's none of your business, Shane." Nate snapped, obviously getting more irritated by the second, all he wanted was to hear what Mitchie had to say, and Shane was making that damn near impossible.
"Oh, really?" Shane questioned. "Because it looks like you were just asking her out." Shane glared back when Nate's got more infuriated.
"It's none of your business!" Nate told him, more forcefully, having never been as irritated with Shane as he was at that very moment.
"So you were asking her out." Shane smirked.
"Shane--" Mitchie tried to interrupt, panicking at where Shane was taking this.
"What's it to you?" Nate glared more fiercely, whereas now Shane's smirk broadened.
"Well, I'm afraid you're too late, my friend." Shane raised his eyebrows in a mocking way as Nate became confused.
"What are you talking about?"
"Shane!" Mitchie tried to stop him, but to no avail, Shane was obviously having too much fun with this. He had already wrapped his arm around Mitchie and pulled her body up against his, where, much to Nate's dismay, didn't pull away from him, and his glance turned to one of shock and hurt.
"You stayed the night...with Shane, didn't you?" Nate quietly accused Mitchie, who looked absolutely guilt stricken, but it was nothing compared to the hurt and betrayal that was lingering in Nate's eyes.
"Nate--"
Nate shook his head, stopping her. "I should have known." He whispered, before making his way past them and towards his own room.
Shane scoffed, amused, whereas Mitchie...was not.
She turned on Shane and wasted no time in smacking him on the arm. "Shane!" She cried out, shocked that Shane would be so mean to they guy that was supposed to be his best friend.
"What?!" He demanded, clutching at his now sore shoulder.
"How could you do that to him?!" She demanded. "He's supposed to be your best friend! How could you hurt him like that?"
"Come on, Mitch, he was gonna get hurt anyways!" He defended.
"Not like that, Shane! I was gonna tell him, and you only made it worse on him! He's your best friend, Shane, how could you do that?"
Shane sighed, and shrugged. "I'm sorry okay, it just pissed me off that he actually thought he had a chance with you."
Mitchie scoffed and shook her head. "That's not an excuse Shane, there's a mature way of dealing with things, and that was not it."
Shane huffed in exasperation. "Well, what do you want me to do?"
"Apologize to him!" Shane's eyes widened at the thought, and he immediately shook his head. "Shane, you need to do it! Or else things between you and him are just going to get worse!"
"Me making an idiot out of myself is not going to help anything."
"Shane, you're being ridiculous, and it's really pissing me off. You told me you'd try and change, and this is where you can start."
Shane scowled, but couldn't come up with a response to that. So he reluctantly agreed to...apologize, and he made his way towards Nate's room where he entered without even knocking, and wasn't surprised to find Nate with his guitar.
Nate glared up at him when he noticed Shane. "What do you want?"
Shane sighed, irritation creeping up his spine, but for Mitchie's sake he tried to push it back and just get the damn moment over with.
"I wanted to say that I'm..." He cringed. "...sorry."
Nate glared at him. "Not accepted. Leave."
Shane looked at him shocked. He had just freaking apologized! For the first time in like, three years, and that's what he got?
"Dude, I just apologized to you, and you're going to give me that?!"
Nate, utterly pissed off, shoved his guitar to the ground and got to his feet, his intense glare set solely on Shane.
"Of course I'm not gonna accept your stupid apology, that I'm sure you don't even mean in the first place! Damn it, Shane, you don't deserve Mitchie! I don't even know how you managed to get her to actually date you in the first place!"
"Maybe she wants to be with me!" He defended himself, his voice rising along with his ever popular temper.
Nate scoffed. "Give me a break, Shane. She couldn't stand you when she first met you, and you couldn't stand her, I'd give your stupid relationship with her a day, maybe two, giving you the benefit of the doubt. Because that's how everything is with you and girls Shane, you sleep with them, and then you dump them, if not the other way around!"
Shane wasn't sure if Nate was actually meaning what he was saying, or if he was just severely hurt and pissed off, but it was sure getting to Shane, and he felt himself clench his fists.
"Those other girls weren't Mitchie." He spat through gritted teeth. Nate scoffed again and shook his head.
"You know you're gonna hurt her, Shane. You're gonna break her heart, and I need to save her from that. I won't let you hurt her."
"What are you saying?" Shane glared.
"I'm saying, that I'm better for her than you are. I won't hurt her, I won't break her heart, and I won't sleep with other girls while I'm with her."
Shane felt utterly insulted. He wouldn't do any of that to Mitchie either, not intentionally anyways.
"I won't hurt her." He glared harder when Nate shook his head. "I won't."
"We'll see. You don't deserve this chance she's giving you, Shane. But I know you'll screw it up, just like you've screwed up everything else!"
Shane was seriously on the verge of losing his temper. "Then you obviously don't me as well as you thought you did, because I won't screw this up. Do you think, that if she wanted to actually be with, she would have told you. She was going to reject you, Nate. And you know it. And you're just jealous, because I get to be with her, and you'll never get the chance!"
That's when Nate had it.
And before Shane could comprehend it, he felt something hard colliding with his jaw, and he staggered backwards, mainly from shock when he realized that Nate had actually punched him. Not being able to control his temper anymore, Shane hit back. Hard. It actually sent Nate to the ground, which was Shane's intention.
But before he knew it, he and Nate were rolling on the floor, throwing punches as hard as they possibly could, and just doing anything they could to hurt the other.
It didn't take long for Mitchie to hear the commotion, and she was shocked when she saw that Nate and Shane were actually fighting each other, and she immediately went to pull them off, but they were both too strong, and she was afraid of being caught in the middle of one of the punches.
"Shane, stop!" She screamed at him, trying pathetically to pull at his arm, trying to get him to stop throwing the punches, but Nate was throwing them just as much, and they were both getting beaten, and Mitchie couldn't stand watching either of them getting hurt. Tears were now leaking from her eyes, and when Shane realized that, he immediately stopped swinging the punches to glance up at Mitchie, getting him another punch to the face. But he pulled himself away from Nate, who had slowed down once he realized that Mitchie was crying, and Nate immediately felt guilty.
Mitchie couldn't get a hold of herself. She didn't want to see two guys that she cared about hurting each other because of her. It was all her fault, and now they were both going to have bruises and cuts.
She didn't fight him when she felt Shane pull her into him, instead she buried her face in his chest and cried, not being able to stand everything that was going on. Nate getting hurt emotionally, then him and Nate beating each other physically. It was absolutely ridiculous. She really cared about them both, but they were really making her choose, and it was breaking her heart, because she knew she'd end up choosing Shane, and she hated that she would have to hurt Nate in the process.
Nate stared at the embracing couple with a heavy heart, before shaking his head and leaving the room to go clean himself up.
After a few more minutes, Mitchie sniffled and pulled away from Shane before getting a good look at him. He had bruises and cuts all over his face, and he was bleeding in some spots.
She sighed and tugged at his hand. "Come on, let's get you cleaned up." She muttered softly, pulling him out of Nate's bedroom and back into the kitchen where she made him lean against the counter while she got a cloth and moistened it as to clean the cuts on his face. She sighed as she dabbed at the blood that was slipping from the deeper cuts, and Shane didn't even wince.
She was silent while she did it, even as Shane looked at her with an intense, apologetic expression.
"What happened, Shane?" She asked him quietly.
"I apologized, and he didn't accept it. Then it went all downhill from there."
She bit her lower lip before asking the one thing she was worried about. "Did you hit him first?"
She could see the honesty in his eyes when he shook his head, telling her no.
"Tell me what happened."
He went through everything that was said, and all the hurtful things they said to each other, and Mitchie felt even worse, because she felt like she had started this in the first place.
"He was wrong." He told her softly, and she looked at him confused. "When he said that I would end up hurting you. He was wrong." He gave her that intense look again, and she couldn't help but to stare back. "I won't ever hurt you, Mitchie. I promise." And it was the same look he gave her last night when he had promised he would be there when she woke up.
She had no choice but to believe him.
When she was done, she threw the wash cloth away, but before she could make a move to back away from Shane, he was gripping her waist and pulling her up against him, their lips only centimeters away from each others.
He didn't say anything, though it looked like he was going to, and instead he just dipped his head and caught Mitchie's lips with his. Mitchie responded immediately, her mind completely forgetting about everything that had happened that morning, and lost herself in Shane's lips, and the way his tongue felt moving against hers, and all around her mouth. His hands gripped her hips, and hers clutched desperately at his hair. She couldn't hold back the meek moan that escaped her lips when she felt his hands moving slowly under her shirt, and that's when she had to stop him.
She reluctantly pulled back from him, but leaned her forehead against his, their breathing heavy.
"Shane...I need to talk to Nate."
Shane's eyes tightened, but he nodded his head anyways. Who was he to stop her?
"Fine..." He let his lips linger against hers for a moment. "Just come back to me."
Okay, so that turned out WAY longer than I had anticipated it too. lol I actually think it's pretty bad, which sucks, lol but it's just because I'm tired, and I wanted to get this posted.
So, whether ya hate it or not, please review telling me what you think, because I appreciate everything !
