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  I was ready.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Carter

  It was light out when I woke up. Kate was breathing next to me. We were both fully clothed. Making out was as far as we had gone. I could tell she longed for more, hell, I did too—my body ached for it. But we’d both stopped this time. The invitation was there if and when we were ready to attend the party.

  I’d said no more hiding, but there was still the omission I hadn’t shared. Until I told Kate my secret I didn’t have a right to go any further with her. When and if I finally admitted everything, Kate would have to decide if she still even wanted to know me, let alone you know me.

  Besides, even with opportunity pushing us together, I wanted to wait for her. She was worth waiting for.

  I sat up and glanced out the window; the snow had stopped. Triple A would be here soon. I’d be able to drive Kate back to the dorm, back into the life we’d been in before last night—before we could lock everything away.

  Her eyes opened slowly. “Good morning,” she said, leaning on her arm.

  “I have breakfast in bed,” I replied, indicating the box of graham crackers on the floor.

  “Leftovers already,” she said with an over-exaggerated frown.

  “I could make them into sandwiches, or crumbs, if you’re looking for something a little different.”

  “How gourmet,” she said, checking the window. “Did it stop?”

  I nodded.

  “Does that mean we have to wake up?” She stretched out lazily like a cat. It was so early, even they were still asleep, the dogs too. The only noise I could hear was our breathing, in and out, in and out in the same rhythm, a song our bodies made together in the half-light.

  “No,” I replied.

  Luckily, it was a weekend and no one would be in till eleven. I kissed her forehead. She smelled like cinnamon from the graham crackers and a little like me from having slept in the crook of my arm all night.

  Axe body spray and cinnamon were a lot sexier on a girl than you might think.

  “Good,” she said lying back and closing her eyes. Her mouth twitched. “You can keep kissing me though.”

  “I can, can I?” I laughed.

  “I mean if you’re bored or something.”

  “I thought you wanted to go back to sleep.”

  “Unless something better wakes me,” she explained.

  “Okay, Sleeping Beauty,” I said, kissing first her top lip, then the bottom, running my tongue against the inside of her mouth.

  She started fake-snoring, loud, her nose a buzz saw.

  I laughed. “Are you claiming my kisses don’t have the power to break a spell?”

  “So far,” she said, yawning heavily. “I’m not impressed.”

  “That wasn’t how it seemed last night,” I shifted, the bed squeaking below us.

  “Last night you plied me with water and graham crackers,” she explained. “I would have done anything you wanted.”

  “They do say graham crackers are the new oyster. I mean, I could barely control myself when they came out at snack time as a kid.”

  “It’s surprising starting so young didn’t help with your kissing any,” she smirked.

  I tickled her and she yelped, which was good because if her outburst didn’t make me stop touching her around her soft, curved abdomen, I wouldn’t be able to control myself from making her yelp about something else.

  “Close your eyes again,” I said.

  She obliged with a calculating smile.

  I tasted her temple, my lips landing quieter than a sigh. I explored along her hairline, my kisses a crown of daisies on her forehead. My mouth grazed her earlobe. I kissed the bridge of her nose, and her breathing quickened beneath me. I kissed each cheek, one side of her neck and the other, my kisses more hungry, insistent, like I was gasping air.

  My lips connected with her pulse as I slid down the length of her neck. I sucked on the base of her throat, the skin there as soft as a peach.

  I scanned her face, her lips.

  Her tongue darted out and she pouted like a flower waiting for my kiss to sting her, to send her reeling.

  I would make her wait.

  “Still nothing?” I asked.

  “Getting warmer.”

  “How warm?” I glided my lips back to the nape of her neck.

  “Little higher,” she said.

  I teased the area below her right jawline.

  “Little higher and to the left,” she instructed.

  “That’s pretty specific,” I said, my words echoing against her chin.

  “Warmer,” she said.

  My cheek smoothed against her left jawline.

  “Colder, freezing,” she laughed.

  I hovered above her lips, not touching them, not touching her, waiting, flooded in her pull, letting her bathe in mine.

  She tipped her head back. My lips grazed hers like a rain just starting and then thundered against her with the force of a downpour.

  “Hot enough?” I whispered, continuing to inhale her one kiss at a time.

  “Bull’s-eye,” she sighed.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Kate

  I woke up on Sunday in my own bed and without a hangover. Carter and I had spent all of Saturday together. After we got his car started, he took me to breakfast. We saw a movie after that. Went for lunch, dinner, then ice cream and yet another movie. His treat.

  He was a perfect gentleman even when we were in bed together, and without alcohol in my system I allowed myself to enjoy just kissing him, just being near him.

  I didn’t get back to the dorm until eleven. He gave me a kiss and dropped me off in front to go park his car. Maybe he didn’t want to walk in with me. Force what had been such a great night and day into a prolonged and awkward good-bye.

  And of course the whole he was my RA thing.

  I headed up in the elevator alone and when I got back to the room, Dawn was out. I went to the bathroom, took a quick shower, and crawled into bed, ready to sleep my way into my first full week of sobriety.

  Carter had probably kept me away from campus on purpose. Temptation is only tempting when it’s standing right in front of you.

  Or maybe he liked the space we’d created for ourselves away from school as much as I did. Being alone with him I didn’t crave a drink once. Not only because he was keeping me busy, but because he liked who I was sober. I liked who I was when I was with him sober.

  It had been effortless to pretend it would continue to be that easy until I woke up and had a whole new day facing me.

  When I had my acerbic roommate staring at me from her bed. “Where the hell have you been?”

  “Did you miss me?” I asked with an amused smile.

  She snorted.

  “I was out.”

  “Lucky for me,” she yawned.

  “Where were you last night when I got back?” I asked, staring at her. Her eyes were blue, her dark brown contacts not in yet, completely free of her usual severe makeup.

  “Out,” she volleyed back.

  I laughed. I guess Dawn had a life outside this room.

  “At least I know you weren’t with Steph and Alex,” she huffed, sitting up and putting her pillow in her lap.

  “Why? Because I’m not hung over and stinking of beer?” I asked, sarcasm dripping.

  “No.” She picked at the nail polish on her thumb, chipping it away like pieces of mica. “They came looking for you. Burst in asking me where you were, laughing at me.” She closed her mouth.

  “They laughed at you to your face?” I asked with disbelief. It was better than thinking that, if I had hesitated in going with Carter for just an extra moment, they could have caught me, and I might have been too weak to say no.

  “Is that any worse than them laughing at me behind my back?” She turned her face away and sighed. “Whatever—I should be laughing at them.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  She shrugged.

  “We
re they drunk?” I asked, trying to gauge their level of obnoxiousness.

  “Does it matter?” she asked. “They are always bitches.”

  She was right, they were. It was alcohol that had attracted me to them and alcohol that repelled me, but they weren’t nice people. Dawn wasn’t either necessarily, but she was my roommate.

  I wondered what they saw in me. Why didn’t they laugh in my face? Maybe I was just someone new they could boss around. Or, at least, I had been. What did it say about me that at twenty-nine I still had let them?

  “Hey, whatever, they’re your friends,” she said.

  “Not really,” I replied. In college-take-one they absolutely would have been. Even in the city they would have been, but not now. They were the thing, not Carter, between me and making it through college-take-two.

  Their carelessness, their lack of respect for anything besides what they craved, was how I’d lived before. I could be more now. I could move beyond selfish want.

  At least as long as I continued to stay the hell away from them.

  “How about some coffee,” I said, trying to cheer Dawn up.

  “With you?” she squinted.

  “Beats going alone,” I said.

  She nodded. I guess for once, as far as she was concerned, it did.

  We sat in the coffee shop next to the dorm drinking steaming vanilla lattes. It was progress for us to have come here together, to be sitting with each other by choice.

  “Oh great,” Dawn said, lowering her eyes. She slumped, dissolved into her chair.

  Steph and Alex walked in. Steph wore a lime green yoga pant and hoodie set and Alex wore a lavender one. For girls as hardcore as they seemed, they were always dressed like My Little Pony.

  “Crazy Kate,” Steph said, walking to our table.

  “Missed you the other night,” Alex added, typing into her phone.

  I braced myself and glanced at them. Their hair was up in buns, their eyes were bloodshot. There was no doubt they were hung over and pissed at me for not being the same way. They weren’t the type of girls who were used to being ignored, to being rejected.

  Fuck if I forgot that being nineteen also meant you had to deal with mean girls.

  “She didn’t miss you,” Dawn mumbled.

  “Speak up, Twilight,” Steph said.

  Dawn seemed to melt down under the table.

  “Your dark magic doesn’t work on us,” Alex said, wiggling her fingers.

  “Your face is even more evil without all the makeup,” Steph laughed.

  “You mean scary,” Alex continued.

  Shame swept through me. The only reason they had come to our room, the only reason they were bothering Dawn now was because of me—because I had let them tempt me once and been strong enough not to say yes a second time.

  Okay fine, maybe not strong, but lucky to have Carter to make me seem that way.

  “Stop it, you guys,” I said.

  Why had I let these girls get to me? I was a woman for Crissakes. It could only be because everything they represented reduced me to a girl again.

  “We weren’t talking to you, Crazy Kate,” Steph said.

  “We were talking to the Night Mistress of Nixon Hall.”

  I rose from my chair and faced them. “Just leave her alone.”

  “Maybe we should leave both of you alone,” Steph said.

  “We don’t like being blown off,” Alex added.

  “I never said I was going with you,” I replied. How could I tell them where I’d actually been? Who I’d been with?

  “You never said you weren’t, either,” Steph said, clicking her tongue. “I can’t imagine what would have been more fun than hanging out with us.” Her eyes were tight on me. Her way of saying this offense would not be shrugged off.

  Their words were like the ones I’d heard in my head a thousand times.

  Standing up and saying no to two bitchy brats was fine for now, but alcohol would still always be there waiting. Calling me, texting me, reminding me how much fun we had together.

  “We know you weren’t with Twilight,” Alex added.

  “Who would want to be?” Steph laughed.

  “This doesn’t concern Dawn,” I said. “If you’re pissed at me…” I exhaled. “Be pissed at me.”

  “We are,” Alex said.

  “We’re trying to decide if we need to keep wasting our time on you,” Steph added.

  I stood straighter. “You can do whatever you want, but I’m sure as hell not going to keep wasting my time on you,” I said finally. Dawn stifled a laugh behind me.

  Steph stared at me for a minute and her eyes contracted. Forget about looks killing, hers could have annihilated me like a nuclear bomb. “Fuck you, loser.”

  “We don’t want to join your coven anyway,” Alex added as they walked away.

  “Forget about them,” Dawn whispered, taking a long drink of her coffee.

  The problem was, it wasn’t them I needed to forget about.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Carter

  Kate was already there when I got to Civics class.

  At least I wouldn’t have to wait and see if she would sit next to me. I couldn’t believe I was worried like some teenage girl or something, but that was what Kate had done to me, especially after this weekend.

  I took a deep breath and walked to her row, hoping no one had already poisoned her toward me in the day we spent apart.

  I tried to give her space yesterday, but I needed my own too. I was falling for her and eventually my truth would have to come out.

  I guess that was why this weekend had been so wonderful. I’d been able to be with her without thinking about that. Without wondering if someone would walk up and say something about me, a constant skipped beat of my heart when I was on campus.

  When I was in the place we both lived.

  My pulse throbbed in my throat as I took the seat next to her, wondering whether she would greet me with a smile, or a get the fuck away from me.

  Now her finding out the truth meant I had something to lose.

  “I waited for you to walk over,” she said, her blond hair wild under her hat.

  I remembered the words I’d said to her, your hair is too beautiful to hide, heard them again. Heard what she’d replied, I feel the same way about you. The moment when I knew completely she was someone I needed to kiss again and again.

  I wished we were still alone on that small bed, with nothing but chance between us, with nothing but nothing between us. Instead of in class with everyone around, with that skipped beat of my heart right under the surface of every interaction.

  “Sorry, I didn’t know,” I said, trying to bring myself back into class with her. Trying to remember we weren’t alone. There were other people around. I could talk to her, but not touch her. Unfortunately, with her so close it was hard to focus on anything else.

  “Well, you’re not a mind reader, last time I checked,” she paused, “at least I hope you’re not.”

  I hoped she wasn’t either, because I could have been arrested for what I wanted to do to her right then.

  I settled into my seat. “Nope, I can, however, predict there will be a pop quiz today.”

  I figured it anyway. There had been the last time I took this class at the start of the third week. It was the way Professor Parker had said he separated the students from the truants. Only he would have put it that way. Only he could make you seem more of a failure when your paper had a big fat F on it.

  She glanced at her phone. “Thanks for the ten minute heads up,” she laughed, but there was nervousness behind it.

  “Hey, at least I gave you one,” I said.

  “You’re a bastard.” She hit me playfully. “Did you just want to do better than I did?”

  “It wouldn’t be a pop quiz without the surprise,” I said, cracking my knuckles. Honestly, I wanted to avoid talking about school when we were together this weekend, about anything here.

  She picked up her book,
slapped it on her desk, flipping through pages. “You’re a lot more calculating than I thought, Carter.”

  She was joking, but those words hit right in my gut.

  “I’m sure you’ll do fine. You already did the reading, right?”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t study it.” Her eyes were worried, dancing around as she read.

  Professor Parker was all business as he walked in and made his way down to the lectern. He told us to put our books and laptops away and repeated his infamous line.

  People were so predictable, especially professors. I didn’t know if I would become a lawyer, but I would never be a professor. Knowing exactly what to expect from each day was not what I hoped for my future.

  Especially considering it was so much of how I’d spent my present. It was part of what I liked about Kate. She’d made my compartmentalized life, unpredictable. She was like a daily pop quiz.

  “Crap,” Kate said, biting her lip.

  I forced myself to stare straight ahead instead of getting lost in her gorgeous mouth. Professor Parker handed out the tests and I settled in, writing my name at the top.

  The first question was different than it had been my freshman year. I read on down the page, they were all different. Chosen from topics we wouldn’t be discussing in class until week eight or nine, if he kept to his usual schedule.

  He was testing us on a chapter we weren’t supposed to have even read yet.

  I mean, it was a chapter I had read, but that was three years ago. The same time I was trying to keep my head above water when everything happening with Jeanie had been pulling me down.

  I glanced at Kate. She was already writing. My knowledge of Parker’s penchant for being an uptight prick who never veered from what was on the syllabus might just come back and bite me in the ass.

  I tried my best to pull the answers from my brain of three years ago, but that brain had long since been buried.

  Fifteen minutes later, Professor Parker instructed us to trade papers with the person sitting next to us. Kate took mine, and I took hers. Parker smirked. He had never had us grade each other’s papers before, either. It was almost like he was taunting me.

  “Now, this is awkward,” she said.