Chapter Twenty-Five. Reid #2
Winding my hand around the nape of her neck, I draw her to me and finally do what I’ve been thinking about since I saw her on that deck at Kenji’s.
Clara used to ignite when I kissed her, but this kiss—it’s soft, gentle.
Almost painfully cautious. Did I misread this?
Did I just ruin everything all over again?
Embarrassed, I try to back up. “Sorry—”
But her fist grips my shirt at the center of my chest, holding me in place. Her eyes are pleading, not a trace of humor or distance in them. I feel the shaking words against my lips as she whispers, “Please don’t stop.”
It unlocks me.
As I catch her mouth with mine again, every moment we’ve spent apart fuses us back together.
But I don’t want to rush this. I kiss her slower. Deeper. She tastes better than I remember. My fingers tangle into the thick tresses of her hair, and she melts against me, bringing her mouth to mine again and again.
We fall back onto the bed, into each other.
We’ve resolved almost nothing, but part of me—most of me—doesn’t care right now.
All I know is the more open she is with me, the more desperate I am to get closer.
Especially when she breaks away and her words, “I missed you,” come out as a tremulous murmur against my skin.
I drag my thumb across her bottom lip in pure awe that this is actually happening.
“Me too,” I rasp. “So fucking much.”
I press a kiss to the bare skin of her shoulder and continue the path up her neck.
Her fingertips play with the hem of my ridiculous BOP TIL YOU DROP shirt I can’t believe I’m still wearing, and I finally wrench the thing off.
My pants are next, and hers, too. She slides her warm palms down my chest, my stomach. I tremble under her touch.
Our lips meet again, and this time, there’s no shred of caution. Every part of me remembers what she likes, how else we fit.
The need between us grows, and I firm my grasp against the small of her back. Her responsive arch has me bunching the fabric of her shirt in my fist. I think of the ink I saw on her skin at the hot springs, hungry to see it.
My breathing goes ragged when she wraps her legs around me, leaving no space between us. I get a strong grip on her waist, drawing her hips flush under mine. Her hands travel and—Jesus—all thoughts cease when she touches me like that. I suck in a breath as she nips at my mouth.
I’m about to tug her shirt clean off when we both freeze at the sound of footsteps followed by a hard knock at my bedroom door.
“Reid? You up?” It’s my dad. Of course it’s my dad.
I press my forehead to Clara’s and let out a slow exhale.
“Yeah,” I say evenly, so he doesn’t open the door to check. To find the girl he’s convinced is a bad influence half naked beneath me.
At least I resist the urge to say, I sure am.
Like she can read my mind, Clara stifles a laugh with her hand. I widen my eyes at her playfully, my face on full fire.
“Good. We have the Legacy Brunch this morning, and I figure we should go for a real trail run before that. Coach Carr can’t be happy about you taking so many days off.”
Fuck.
“Um, yeah—okay.” I slide off Clara. The humor drains in an instant, replaced by dread and a heaviness I can’t name.
“Great! Ten minutes?”
“Yep.”
I wait until his footsteps disappear down the hall, and my body has calmed down enough to stand.
The silence between me and Clara is awkward and unsure. Her bare legs are out of the covers, her dark hair is wild in a way that has me clenching my jaw, wishing we could’ve finished what we started.
But wanting each other was never the problem. It was this part. In the quiet spaces. It’s where she’s tenser. More guarded. And now I am, too.
I push my hands through my hair and start hunting for some running clothes.
“Are you seriously going to go run?” Clara asks. “On your knee like that? After everything you just told me?”
“I have to.”
“You don’t. Talk to him,” she says.
I shake my head. It’s not fair to put this kind of stress on him. The second I tell him about my injury, he’ll pounce on it like it’s a project.
Same with academic probation. He probably would hire a tutor with money we don’t have or talk to my professors or get me on some sort of plan or schedule to catch up. He’d treat me like I’m a broken thing to be fixed. His problem to solve. The way I’ve always been.
I want to be something different, even if I don’t know what that is yet.
Worst of all, it would be letting everyone down. I think of all the people staring at me at the show last night. The comments on the Legacy Lore posts.
My kids looked up to you!
I can’t let that happen. I pull on a T-shirt and black running shorts.
“Is this really what you want?” she asks.
How can she understand me so well but not understand this? I’m going to a college that people would kill to get into and am on one of the top teams in the nation. It’s not about what I want. It’s about what’s best. But she’s not deterred by my silence.
“Don’t you think your dad would do anything to help you if he knew how miserable you are?” she asks, zipping up her jeans.
I spin around to face her. “Like you know how miserable I am?”
But she doesn’t flinch or back away at my tone.
Her eyes narrow. “I do. Because I know you. And I have hours of footage of you doing exactly this. Pushing yourself too hard. Ignoring every warning sign from your body, your mind. This”—she says, gesturing to me—“is what you do when you’re afraid you’re not enough. ”
A headache is forming at my temples. In the ensuing silence, I pull on my watch and zip up a hoodie, avoiding her gaze the entire time.
Her voice is barely above a whisper when she says, “You’re disappearing.”
Good, I think.
She steps closer and hooks her hands in the front pockets of my hoodie to pull me closer. “I won’t let you.”
I stare deep into the dark green pools of her eyes that have always tugged too much truth out of me. They’re full of determination. Certain she can fix this. Maybe even fix us.
I want to believe it’s possible. But how can I when I don’t know that she’d be there—really be there—for the fallout? Who’s to say she wouldn’t dump me out of nowhere or block me again?
“Clara, I don’t know if I’ll ever run well again. My grades are shit, I’m so fucking tired, everything I planned has hit this total dead end—”
“A detour,” she interjects.
“What?”
“Maybe it’s a detour,” she repeats softly. “But it’s not a dead end.”
My breath shudders in response to the echo of the words I said to her once.
The hypocrisy is almost too much to bear.
She was so upset when her plans didn’t work out that she broke my heart on the side of the road.
But I’m supposed to feel great that everything I’ve worked for could be over if I don’t get my shit together?
“So—what? Are you saying I should quit?” I challenge.
She inhales, like she’s mustering some serious strength when she says, “I’m not saying that. But ‘quitting’ isn’t a dirty word, Reid. It’s always an option.”
Anger rises in me, unbidden but unstoppable. “You would know.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
My reply comes out more forcefully than I expect. “You quit us without flinching.”
The blow lands, and hurt flashes across her features. Hurt she doesn’t try to disguise. That throws me off more than anything else has this morning.
“Is that really what you think?” she asks.
It doesn’t sound defensive. It sounds … sad.
“What was I supposed to think?”
“It wasn’t without flinching.” She sits on the edge of the mattress, her voice thick with emotion. “It … destroyed me.”
It’s a dagger. No, a thousand daggers.
I squeeze my hands into fists, every thought and feeling from the past year clashing and crashing together until I feel like I might detonate. “Then why did you do it?”
The shadow of her lashes fans across her cheeks as she closes her eyes, thinking. “I was scared. You—this—wasn’t in my plan. Then when my plan fell apart … I didn’t want you to get stuck here. You were leaving. You had to go.”
“You didn’t even give us a chance when I was here,” I say, my eyes digging into hers. “I did everything I could possibly think of to give you what you wanted.”
“You did,” she agrees quietly, looking down at her hands. “And I know it wasn’t enough, but I gave you more than I ever thought I was capable of.”
We stand there a moment as that settles between us. A part of me wants to drop all of this here and now and pull her into my arms. But too much of our history stops me. Never knowing if how I felt or what I said would drive her away. Like the thing that’s lingered since her birthday last year.
“Did you ever read the card?” I ask. The birthday card with the poem I wrote her. That confessed everything I needed her to know. She never said a single thing about it and I never asked.
Her mouth opens, closes. “What card?”
I can’t tell if she’s playing it cool, lying, or just trying to let me down gently. Maybe she has no idea what I’m talking about. But a calm clarity settles over me as I realize it doesn’t really make a difference. I’ve known all along she only wants me when it doesn’t mean anything.
My voice is small, anguished. “We can’t keep doing this.”
Our eyes meet, and I know immediately it was a mistake to come back here. To be with her again. To remember how soft her skin is and how her breath skips when I touch her in a way she likes. To remember that our connection is still strong enough to scare the shit out of me.
It took me months to forget. But now, I know again. I know. And I’ll have to carry that knowing through every torturous, lonely minute at school all over again.
Because the problem is the same as it ever was: She doesn’t want anything real, and I don’t know how to stop myself from loving her.
“I have to go,” I say. “Can Mitchell drive you home?”
I lace up my shoes, avoiding her eyes the entire time. My knee feels fine. It’ll be fine.
“Reid—”
I walk out the door.
None of us get what we want, anyway.