Chapter 18 #2
“You’re on the right track.”
I curved my fingers around him as much as I could outside his jeans and gave him a tight stroke. Both our heads tipped forward with a relieved sigh. His hit the shelf with a soft thunk. Mine hit the back of his head, and I soaked in the smell of his shampoo.
“You’re so fucking crazy,” Cal whispered with a smile in his tone.
That smile warmed me up and pissed me off.
The utter bliss of making him happy was suddenly all that mattered to me, but with that came the very sobering fact that that wasn’t my purpose in doing this.
I wanted him fighting me. I wanted him fighting himself.
Cal needed to admit he hated my guts so I could get on with my life.
“Whatever I am, you like it,” I hissed in his ear, then let him go and stormed off.
My cock painfully raged at me. Penance. I ignored the ache, gathered my shit, and walked out of the library. Not checking behind me to see what Cal was doing was the hardest thing, but I did it, then breathed a sigh of relief when I was out in the hall.
Tough love, I snorted to myself. For me too. The plan was to frustrate Cal enough to make him own up, force him into making a move. Either shock the shit out of me or reaffirm my belief that people weren’t worth my trust. No one outside of my family deserved any part of me.
But how could I hold on to that protective wall I’d built now that Cal had found a crack, an opening?
What am I doing? What am I doing? What the fuck am I doing?
I’d ignored this crush for too long. I hadn’t been taming it in the slightest, only bottling it up, and now I was paying for it, going out of my mind over it. This wasn’t me, was it? I wasn’t a bully.
Cal liked it, right? I couldn’t be wrong in that.
“You still got that thing after school, right?” Ty asked as we settled in our seats for the next class.
“Have I mentioned it changed again?” My atoms still hummed, and my balls still ached. The snap in my tone was a chemical reaction from all of it.
“Chill, dude.”
I exhaled, working on just that. This spiral I found myself in wasn’t his fault.
It wasn’t anyone’s fault. Falling for someone just happened sometimes, no matter our best efforts not to.
And that was what I had done. Somewhere in the hate, somewhere in learning my enemy, I had fallen for him.
And doing so pissed me off even more. This wasn’t some stupid crush.
I liked Cal, everything I knew about him.
He held all the power now. The power to blow my mind and the power to blow up my heart.
Being out of control was the worst, but I didn’t know how to change it.
“Big Brother knows we have a tournament this weekend, right?”
I rolled my eyes but smiled at Ty. He’d love nothing more than to call Trent Wright my sex therapist as he did at home. Big Brother was just as apt.
“Don’t think he cares, Ty. It’s the wrong sport.”
The football team failed to do anything worthwhile, again, this year. No playoffs, just the regular season. Our FC was having an awesome fall season. To close out on a win this weekend, we’d planned double the practices this week.
So, as I sat my grumbling ass in the chair next to Cal in Trent’s office after school, I was already spitting mad.
Why did we have to change the sessions this week, of all weeks, and make me miss an important practice?
Soccer wasn’t life for me. However, it was important right now.
As was figuring out Cal and me, but on our own terms, not this forced shit.
“Jack, everything all right?” Trent asked, hitting my nerves in all the wrong ways.
“What do you think? How many weeks have we been at this, and all you’ve managed to do is have us act like sweatshop workers in some third-world country, force us to say good morning to each other, talk about your own life at school, and waste two hours of our lives every week.”
“Tell us how you really feel.”
Fuck, if this wasn’t school, I’d punch this fucker in the balls.
“Pretty sure I just did. Aren’t you supposed to be listening as we talk?” I expected a snicker from Cal for that, but he sat stoically beside me.
There was nothing subtle about it when I glared at him. Like a flipped switch, his shoulders tensed around his ears, one knee wouldn’t stop bouncing, and his knuckles were white because of how hard he clenched.
I slid my foot toward him until it hit his and kept it there. Cal glanced at me, finally, and the tension in the room eased with his deep exhale.
“Uh, sorry, Trent,” I forced in a surprisingly convincing tone. “Last game this weekend,” I added. “I’m on edge.”
Trent leaned back and laced his hands over his stomach. “I get it. Reminds me of my senior year. Football team went to state …”
Jesus, fuck. Threw Trent an olive branch, and he used it to tickle his own ass.
As Big Brother droned on, my focus shifted to Cal. Or rather, it lost all interest in anything else since a part of me was always focused on him. He never said a word the whole hour beyond different grunts for a “yes” and “no” when appropriate.
I kept my foot touching his. I didn’t know what it meant, and Cal never moved his away, so I rubbed it back and forth a few times. Who the fuck knew why. Was I trying to comfort him after storming off and leaving us both with blue balls? Maybe. A silent my bad, in a way.
Cal relaxed in slow degrees. He loosened the clamp he had on his jaw. He flexed his hands and flattened them on the top of his tight quads. He inhaled and expanded his ripped chest with slower and slower, even breaths.
The alpha inside me wanted to preen and gloat, thinking I was the cause. Whether heating or mellowing, he reacted because of me. I did that. I took his silent frustration and—fixed it.
However, the realist in me figured that couldn’t be it. Cal was his own alpha. By the laws of the jungle, this thing between us would never work.
Would I stop pushing because of that little detail?
The answer to that was a resounding never.