Chapter 13 Jack
Cal’s voice was too soothing on my sizzling nerves. I didn’t want to fight him. I didn’t want to hit him. His tan lips curled into a frown I never wanted to see again.
Fuck this school. Fuck this town. Fuck everything.
Shock blasted me in the face when I slammed my lips into his.
The tension around us rose higher until I was suffocating, drowning.
Not from the loss of control, the slip of the leash I kept strung so tightly, but because he was kissing me, stealing my air.
He clapped a hand to the nape of my neck, sealing me to him, forcing me to stay.
I unlocked my jaw to gasp for breath, but all I caught was his tongue as he plundered my mouth.
Oh, my fucking God, yes.
It wasn’t pretty, or sweet, or anything I’d experienced before. We’d been on this road too long. This hostility had been brewing and had finally ignited. The heat of it stole my breath, and his chest heaved for every rise of my own, brushing our bodies together.
Mouths and tongues and teeth scraped and fought as if we were eating each other, not kissing.
He bit into my lower lip hard enough to make me scream, but I moaned.
The pain didn’t matter. Nothing mattered because it was all too much.
Too much emotion. Too crazy. Too impossible.
When he released me, I fed him the tickle of blood I’d gathered on my tongue, to prove how feral we’d become.
“Fuck, sorry,” he whispered.
“Shut up.”
I thrust my tongue back in his mouth where it belonged, framed his head in my hands, then slid them to his shoulders. His grip on my neck and back kept tensing, shaking, as if he wanted to move but couldn’t. Like he fought it, fought me.
Maybe it had only been a minute, or ten, but I lost myself in that kiss. And Cal kissed like a dream. He met my every lick with his own, tasting me. His lips caressed as often as his teeth nibbled. When my body relaxed against him, his erection brushed mine, eager to burn through my jeans.
But it was probably that one indisputable reaction that ended it all.
Cal tensed all over, as if he’d only then realized he had me in his arms. His enemy.
A guy. I tried to ignore the change, but when his movements lost the heat, lost the rhythm that matched my own, I couldn’t.
I pulled away slightly until we could stare at each other.
Cal’s expression screamed fear and confusion without a single sound.
Why had I given in? This wasn’t proof of anything besides both of us being too worked up.
“Jack …” he whispered with eyes wide and uncertain.
Jack, not Princess.
The anger resurged at my lack of control and Cal’s plummeting passion. So I reacted the way I should’ve in the first place.
I struck out and punched him in the stomach, just under his ribs.
Cal doubled over and gasped. Then I pushed him down until he hit the ground on all fours, sputtering and sucking in air as best he could.
“Shit,” he groaned.
“Stay the fuck down!” I barked, then climbed the shelf and pulled off the box of decorations.
Cal had the keys, so I left him to lock up and raced back to the field. I hated myself for running. Hated him even more for making me regret what I’d done. Mostly, I hated it had ended the way it had, that it had ended at all, and I was still alive to feel this churning doubt in my gut.
Trent leaned around me when I dropped the box at his feet. “Where’s Cal?”
“He stayed to lock up. Said he had to shit.”
He pursed his lips but didn’t say anything else.
“I have a game,” I said.
Trent waved me on, and I hightailed it to the school, skidding into the hall where Ty’s last class was located right as the bell rang. I was sweaty and shaking as the students filed out. Most of them gave me odd looks because, yeah, it was strange to see me there and so unraveled.
Ty’s smile lit for one second, and then he snarled before wrapping a hand around my upper arm and hauling me down the hallway.
“What the fuck happened?” he asked low enough only I could hear.
“N-not here,” I stuttered. Air rasped in and out of my lungs, and my hands began to cramp. Shit. Not now. My vision grew blurry at the edges, and my skin chilled. Not now. Not now.
Ty didn’t stop at his locker, just led me out of the school and down to the soccer field. Our exhibition match wasn’t until later. No one was near us when we stopped at the empty bleachers.
It took less than a second for Ty to understand what was happening.
Anxiety attack.
He spun me around, clamping hard onto my biceps and getting right in my face. “Where are the exits?”
I swallowed, blinking, unable to speak for the shiver in my jaw. I glanced left and right. There was a path that led to the school and another that led around the outbuildings that held large equipment for the teams.
“Yep. You’re not trapped. Plenty of room. Now, breathe with me, slowly.” Ty inhaled deeply.
The first time I tried to follow, I nearly collapsed. The need to get low to curl into my body and disappear was too strong.
“Jack.” He shook me, then lowered his hands until he could spread my constricting fingers with his own. “Do it. You got this.” He inhaled, and though it wasn’t as smooth as his, I forced the air into my lungs in a long, deliberate drag.
“Good. Again.”
I did.
“You’re fine. You’re good.”
We breathed slowly together once more, and the mania subsided. I could focus on my techniques.
“There we go,” Ty breathed with a smile pulling at one corner of his mouth. He brushed his thumb under my nose, wiping sweat—and no doubt snot—clear.
I sniffled and nodded. “Th-thank you.”
“Keep breathing,” he said. When I pulled a breath in and exhaled the last of the shakes, Ty patted my neck. “Now, tell me what happened.”
I licked my lips and flung a worried glance at the school. Would he come find me to retaliate? Had I made this fight between us even worse than it already was? Jesus, I hated how weak these attacks made me.
“Jack?”
“I kissed him.”
Ty took a deep breath, then dropped his hands. “Start at the beginning.”
Without his physical support, I swayed but recounted the day.
The slow-burning fight Cal and I had while working together, then Mom showing up and Cal actually complimenting us.
My simmering anger hit boiling at that point.
I didn’t need Cal being nice. I needed him furious.
At least, I thought I did. I told Ty about the basement and how we got into a shoving match.
“He was p-pushing me. He kept yelling at me to hit him.”
“Then why the fuck didn’t you?”
“I did.”
“And kissed him?”
“No. I mean, yes, but I kissed him first.”
Ty chuckled, then pulled me into a hug. “Oh, my baby brother.” The grip he had on the back of my head forced my forehead onto his shoulder. After all of it, my energy flagged, and I crumpled into him.
“What have I done?” I whispered. “That was so stupid.”
“No, it wasn’t.” Ty patted my hair. “It’s really okay, Jack.”
I shook my head, still using him to hold me up. “He freaked at the end. He kissed me back, but I think it hit him what he was doing, and he freaked.”
“That when you hit him?”
I nodded. “Before he could hit me.”
“Hopefully, it knocked some sense into him.”
I chuckled, then sniffled away angry tears. “I hate myself right now.”
“Why?”
“I forced him to kiss me. It was so wrong.”
“Hey, stop. Cal’s a big guy. Not saying you aren’t strong, but I doubt he’d let anyone force him into anything.
” Ty stepped back, then smiled at me when I lifted my head to read his face.
“Don’t do this to yourself. Things got out of hand, maybe, but you didn’t do anything wrong, okay?
He kissed you too, and he had been begging for that hit. ”
I snorted a laugh and nodded. “Yeah.” I rubbed over my eyes with my arm, then shook my head to clear the last of my tears. “Think he’ll hate me even more now?”
“Do you want him to?”
“No, but he should.”
“I dunno, Jack. He might. You need to be ready either way. Maybe he’s hated you this whole time for the same reason you’ve hated him.”
“Life is not that good to me.”
“All the more reason for it to throw you a fucking bone. You’ve dealt with shit before, but not everyone is like that.
Cal’s an all right guy. I don’t think he’d do anything like those assholes before.
” After a pause, he added, “Nothing you can do about it now. We got a match tonight. You gonna be ready?”
I wasn’t the same person I was the time before either. Ty was right, of course. Cal was a big guy, but so was I. I wasn’t afraid. Not of him hurting me. No, I was afraid I’d made this thing between us completely irreparable.
“Yeah.” Maybe. “I’ll be ready. Thanks, Ty.”
Ty laughed, then slung an arm around my shoulders and turned us toward the school. “You surprise the hell out of me sometimes. Though I’m not sure I’d ever want to watch you make out with anyone, I would’ve killed to have seen the look on his face when you sucker punched him.”
“I knocked the breath out of him. It wasn’t pretty.”
Ty threw his head back and howled his laughter at the sky.
The guys from school who were also on the FC team with us were in the locker room when we got there.
Ty acted even more boisterous, taking any would be attention off me.
We got dressed in our Stewart United kits, then headed to the pitch for a warm-up before the match.
Mom and Dad waved at us from the stands, but I kept my eyes trained on the game.
It wasn’t until afterward, when I was walking off the field with a win, that Cal, his big frame standing out from the crowd, stepped off the bleachers. He didn’t hold my stare as he had last week, but he held his left side as if it still hurt.
The next day, the bottom right edge of my lip had a little spot of blue.
I grazed it with my tongue every time I thought about our kiss, which was nonstop.
When I was really in the mood—again, all day—I raked my teeth over the soreness to refresh the pain of it and chuckled to myself.
He’d fucking apologized. That was kind of cute.
When the normal lunch period rolled around on Thursday, school was dismissed, and the masses left for the day. Food trucks provided pretty much anything and everything on a stick. Corn on the cob, corn dogs, chicken, meatballs, potato cakes, fruits dipped in chocolate, and candied apples.
Most of the games were geared toward kids, but a few, like the dunk tank and pie toss, were for older kids. The festival was impressive for the size of the town.
Among the crowds weaving this way and that was a scattering of football players. And like ants, where there was one …
Nick and Michael stood near a bean bag toss. Cal leaned one muscular shoulder into a post, arms over his chest and head down, frowning.
I didn’t even realize I’d stepped toward him until Ty gripped my forearm.
“Not here. Not now,” he said.
I glanced at his hold, then back to Cal. Ty was right. There was much to say. This thing between Cal and me was left open and jagged, but this was not the place to try and even it out.