Chapter 30
30
OLIVIA
B y Friday, I’m feeling fully recovered.
Tuck stayed with me until Summer came home Tuesday evening.
Throughout all of Tuesday, he kept teasing me about how, in my delirium, I imagined him feeding me gourmet, homemade soup from a recipe his grandmother handed down to him.
“Here’s your artisanal water,” he’d tell me, handing me a glass. “I’ve infused it with a secret blend of minerals and vitamins that my great-half-uncle Maurice taught me.”
“Here’s your toast,” he’d say. “The bread was grown from a secret strain of wheat that my grandfather smuggled out of a top-secret agricultural research facility.”
“If you thought my Grandma’s chicken soup was good,” he’d say, handing me a bowl of Campbell’s straight from the microwave, “wait until you taste my great-grandmother’s ex-husband’s cousin’s vegetable soup recipe. You don’t wanna know how much I had to spend on the rare spices the recipe calls for.”
I acted like I hadn’t heard anything he said when he thought I was asleep Monday night. But those words haven’t stopped bouncing around in my head for a second since then.
My mind’s been marinating in them, every word gliding around the grooves of my brain like rivulets of water crawling down the ridges of Tuck’s muscles as he stands under a shower …
I also increasingly find myself thinking of horny similes involving Tuck …
On Friday, something clicks. A realization dawns that sends a mixture of fear and excitement roaring through me.
Friday night, Tuck and the rest of the Black Bears have an away game that they stay overnight for. On Saturday, when they get back, Summer tells me she’s going to visit Hudson and spend the night.
So, I go on a walk around town. Ostensibly to clear my head, but my head does anything but clear. I’m wondering if I’m about to make the right decision. Or if I’m even actually going to go through with what I think I’ve made my mind up to do—am I going to chicken out at the last moment?
Then, I look into the window of Last Word as I’m passing by—and I see Tuck.
Sitting at a table by himself, working on something on his laptop.
With a deep breath and a pulsing sensation in my chest, I decide to take it as a sign.
My fingertips are tingling as I wrap my hand around the door and pull it open. I take the seat across from Tuck. He looks up from his computer, and our gazes lock.
A beat of silence stretches out between us. I’m the one to break it.
“Because I was afraid,” I say.
Tuck’s lips flatten. The square between his eyebrows wrinkles. “What?”
“That’s why. Why I wouldn’t give us a chance.”
Surprise flashes in Tuck’s eyes. ‘You …”
I nod. “I heard what you said.”
His jaw muscles go tight. He leans forward, into the charged space between us over the table. “Everything?”
My stomach does a somersault as I nod. “Everything.”
“I still mean it,” he says.
Even through the intensity of the moment, his words make the edges of my lips twitch upward.
“The only guy I really seriously dated was in high school. It … didn’t end well.” I don’t want to share the whole story with Tuck, so I leave it at that. “You … reminded me of him. At first. Superficially. I know that’s not who you are right now, but …”
Tuck’s nostrils flare. Protective anger flashes in his eyes. “I hate that some piece of shit hurt you.”
“But I don’t want to think about him anymore,” I say, pushing memories of Ryan out of my head, where I wish I could make them stay permanently. “I don’t want him to have any power over me anymore. I don’t want him to be the reason I do, or don’t do, anything.”
“Then …?” Tuck asks.
An electric chill ripples up my back. “I think I’m ready to give us a chance.”
Tuck’s brow hitches, and then a smile splits on his face. A smile that becomes more devious when I say …
“And I’ve got my place to myself tonight.”