Chapter 49 – Clover
Chapter Forty-Nine
Clover
I hear him walking over to his Jeep to have a smoke.
He does this every night around midnight.
I’ve had to keep tabs on Thomas for practical reasons, not because I’m stalking him.
It’s been a week since Kola went missing and Sylvia told me he went to London tonight.
I don’t know why he went to London, because we haven’t spoken since Halloween.
He notices me immediately and stops a few feet off, lighting a cigarette before stomping through the leaves in his Doc Martens right where I’m sitting on the hood of his Jeep.
“I wasn’t going to come tonight,” he says, puffing gently on the cigarette and then leaning against the hood next to me. The sleeves of his shirt ride up even more as he leans back and I try not to stare at his tattoos.
“I’m not trying to be a creep.”
“You shouldn’t be out here at night alone,” Thomas says. “I’ve noticed you out here.”
“I wasn’t alone,” I tell him. “You were here.”
“You know what I mean.”
I sigh and lean forward, pressing my forehead into my hands. He doesn’t seem bothered at all that I’ve been keeping a close eye on him.
“I don’t know what to believe about Kola,” I admit. I feel guilty as hell for admitting it, but the timing of her disappearance forces me to consider what I don’t want to believe.
She’s been gone since the party without a trace.
We had to get the police involved when she didn’t come back to the dorms by the next morning, but they’ve had no luck finding her.
Her folks back in America heard that she was missing, but they can’t afford to fly all the way to England.
Kola’s here on an academic scholarship. I wonder if someone did this to her, or if shit got too real and she ran away.
There are more sinister considerations too. She could be the other half of Spicy Freak. It doesn’t feel right to believe that.
“She’s not part of this,” Thomas says with conviction.
I lift my head and glare at him. Now he’s team Kola?
“You were the one who didn’t trust her.”
Thomas shrugs. “She was a great fake girlfriend.”
He grins, like he’s just said something entertaining, but I just roll my eyes.
“Whatever.”
If I want to come off as someone who isn’t totally bitter and jealous, I’m probably failing miserably.
Thomas leans his arm on my thighs, puffing away. The contact freezes me in place, but it doesn’t feel bad. It feels like I fucking missed him.
“I’d rather have a real girlfriend.”
“You’d better go find one then,” I grumble.
Thomas chuckles. “Yeah. I’d better, hadn’t I?”
He’s coming dangerously close to flirting with me, to getting me to let my guard down.
“What were you doing in London?” I change the subject quickly, so I don’t have to think about relationships or final exams at the end of the month, or how close we are to the Christmas holiday.
My parents still can’t tell me where exactly I’m supposed to go for the holiday.
They keep arguing via email about who gets to use me in their video content even if I’ve explicitly told both of them that I won’t be spending my holiday working on their channels.
“Seeing family,” Thomas replies ominously about London. He never says much about his family except what he said about his dad.
“I didn’t know that was your thing.”
He puffs on the cigarette a little, using the tobacco until it’s down to the butt.
“It isn’t,” Thomas replies.
He always replies in as few words as humanly possible.
“Okay,” I grumble. He could definitely add a few details.
“I don’t want to talk about that,” Thomas murmurs.
He tosses his cigarette butt into the leaves and kisses the top of my thighs through my leggings.
I sense that he doesn’t want to talk at all.
He kisses my thighs again and I let my fingers part the strands of his thick brown hair as he kisses me, just on my thighs and through my clothes for a few more minutes.
When he raises his head, he smiles, but it’s a sad one.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d say something was wrong,” I whisper to him, touching his cheek, hoping I can get the annoying Bainbridge boy to open up to me for once.
“Nothing’s wrong,” he says. “Except… everything.”
“Kola?”
“Yes. Kola. Sylvia. Molly. I don’t know why she would hurt people because of what I’ve done. If anyone deserves punishment, it’s me.”
“What exactly did you do? Sylvia’s a good friend. She won’t tell me.”
Thomas climbs up onto the hood of the Jeep with me and we clutch our legs to our chests as we sit next to each other. I’m glad he doesn’t touch me, but I’m also glad that he’s this close to me. He feels warm.
I can smell his shirt, soaked with his cologne and the natural scent of his body. He smells delicious. I hate that he smells a little of cigarettes, but I’m getting used to the smell of tobacco in his clothes and just because it’s him… I like it.
“I can’t tell you.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’d hate me.”
“I already hate you, it can’t get any worse.”
He turns to me sharply. “I’m serious, Clover.”
“Don’t say my name all serious.”
“I just told you I was serious.”
If I don’t stop myself now, we’ll spend all night bickering.
We can’t afford to do that. Kola’s still missing.
Molly’s locked up in jail for the time being, but the rumor around campus is that she’ll go to a mental health facility instead.
The police keep asking her about Kola, but she lawyered up and they can’t get a word out of her.
She’s rich, Kola isn’t. That might be enough to determine what happens to our friend.
And it’s not like we’re allowed to skip classes or anything – oh no.
We get back to our lives and we’re just supposed to keep going like one of our fellow students isn’t missing.
Our deans have grief counseling and trauma trained dogs for us to pet.
That’s seriously it. My best friend’s gone.
Thomas sneaks his hand into mine and I squeeze his.
“You’re already afraid of being with me,” he whispers. “I tell you the truth, I lose you forever.”
“Don’t be so dramatic.”
He leans over and kisses my cheek. He’s so earnest and soft that I want to believe him.
“I care about you, Clover. That’s dramatic.”
“Whatever.”
He turns my cheek this time, so I’m facing him.
Before I can protest his gruff manhandling, Thomas kisses me again properly on the lips this time.
I press my palms against his chest, wanting to push him away, but my fingers curl around the fabric of his shirt and I draw him against me.
I don’t want to stop kissing him. Thomas leans back further and stretches his legs out to touch the ground.
I scramble on top of him and he holds me up as I kiss him against his Jeep.
My thighs wrap around his waist and he grunts as I grind my hips against him and push him back harder into the hood of the car.
“Fuck’s sake,” he whispers. “You’re getting me so hard.”
Yes. Maybe that’s what we need. Maybe I can push all these confusing damned feelings for Thomas out of my head if we have sex.
Cheap, meaningless sex would make sure I don’t have to look into those gray eyes anymore and feel anything.
I could know with absolute certainty that he was just another dick like Jude, or Kit or any of the dozens of guys I “dated” during high school.
I can’t stop kissing him and move on to the “next phase”. Kissing him gets addictive. I grab his cheeks and then his hair, and then I let him touch every inch of me. I’m so wet. I want him so badly, but Thomas stops abruptly and sets me on the ground.
Well, he drops me. Because he’s Thomas.
“OUCH!”
“Sorry! I thought I gave a warning!”
My butt throbs. I can’t tell if I’m just clumsy or if Thomas is a pure idiot.
“Asshole!”
He reaches down a giant asshole hand to help me up.
“Didn’t mean it. I swear.”
Once he helps me up, I give him a hard shove, which Thomas definitely deserves.
“I deserve that.”
“Yes.”
“Sorry.”
“Did you just kiss me so you could toss me like a damn frisbee?”
“I dropped you like a stone, rather…”
Thomas rubs his forehead as I clench my fists and search for the best part of his torso to inflict maximum damage.
He throws up his hands in defeat and explains himself. “Sorry. It’s just… we shouldn’t.”
This is why I hate him. I drop my fists, hot humiliation rushing to my cheeks. Every time I pounce on him, he pushes me away but the second I ice him out, he’s all over me. It’s like he thinks I’m a fucking toy and not a human being.
“Right.”
I turn back towards campus. This was stupid.
Coming here and waiting for him and simpering over him like some lost fucking puppy was the absolute wrong thing to do.
My mama always told me to never chase a man and here I am, chasing one.
It’s even worse that it’s a white guy. Before I can swerve away from Thomas, he grabs my forearm and pulls me against him.
“Where the bloody hell do you think you’re going?”
“Away from my mistake.”
“Fuck’s sake, Clover. That’s not what I meant. I just really really want you and I think it’s better if we wait. I want to do this right.”
His words send a flare of rage through me.
“We aren’t together, Thomas.”
“Right.”
He scratches his head and then decides not to make things easy on me. He clears his throat and says, “Do you bloody hate me, Clover? Like, seriously? Because you’re a fucking mind fuck and I dunno. I don’t hate it at all.”
“Of course I don’t hate you,” I hiss. “That’s the problem, Thomas. Not hating you is the problem.”
“Right.”
He rakes his fingers through his hair and looks unimaginably sexy. I have to pull it together. He grins and I want to punch him.
“I like you,” he says. “Swear.”
“You don’t show a girl that by dropping her.”
“Sorry,” he mutters. “But you’re worth taking it slow.”
He can see me forming an insulting comment in my head and Thomas quickly interrupts with a half-decent idea to stop us from killing each other in the woods.
“Is Sylvia alone tonight? We can hang out with her and talk about Kola. Might make you feel better.”
He’s right. Doing something proactive like planning our own search will make me feel much better than kissing him and making things even more complicated between us.
“I don’t know. I’ll text her.”
Thomas puts his arm over my shoulder and kisses the top of my forehead. “I’ll wait as long as it takes for you to put those claws away. As long as it takes.”
Clover: Where are you?
* * *