Chapter Forty-Two Julia
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
“Falling in love in New York? In the fall? It’s absurd that someone could be so lucky.”
—Remington
Julia
I was nervous as I walked in the direction of Damion’s locker.
He’d texted me, but what did it mean?
Damion: Meet me at my locker as soon as you get to school.
Did he want to shut me down, to talk to me before the news of us went wide, or did he just want to see me?
The Damion I knew at school was not the Damion I’d hung out with in Nebraska, so I had no idea what to expect.
I was terrified I was going to reach his locker and find out he’d returned to his former self and had no interest in being close to me whatsoever.
That he’d be pissed about the whole almost-MIP thing. I kept thinking about that night, the kiss. His breath on my neck, the whispers in my ear. Him being all Romeo-like and climbing up my window.
But I also remembered the nervousness in his voice when he hit the ground in front of my house, the way he’d looked… conflicted when he asked about New York.
What the hell did that look mean??
I just couldn’t bear the thought of the guy who’d shed a tear for Lou, who’d embraced my town like it was his own, who’d kissed me like his life depended on it, disappearing.
I was kind of obsessed with that guy.
I could see the back of his head as I got closer. And I mean, how was it that even the back of his head was attractive?? He was talking to somebody—it looked like Beckett—but the second I got next to his locker and he saw me, Damion stopped talking mid-sentence.
“Hey you,” he said, those eyes all over me, making me a little breathless as they reminded me of the way he kissed. The way his hands had flexed on my face like he was losing control, the way his teeth had nipped my bottom lip like I made him a tiny bit feral.
“Hey, you,” I said back, my voice ridiculously breathy.
Be cool, Jules.
“Come here for a sec,” he said, and then he grabbed my hand, linking his fingers through mine. He turned and started walking, pulling me behind him.
“What the hell?” Beckett yelled. “We were in the middle of a conversation!”
“I don’t care,” Damion yelled back. “I need a minute with my girl.”
My girl? I thought.
He said “my,” right??
Then Damion opened the door to a classroom and pushed me inside.
“What are you doing?” I managed, but he was looking at me with an intensity I hadn’t seen before. Teasing and sexy, absolutely naughty.
“I didn’t get enough time with you Saturday, and I didn’t talk to you at all yesterday,” he said, letting go of my hand to close the door. “I need to make up for lost time.”
“You do?”
“I do,” he said, his fingers grazing my waist. “It’s been far too many hours since I had a taste.”
He stepped closer and didn’t stop coming until my back was pressed against the classroom door, the front of his body leaning into me.
I set my hands on his hard chest as his lips met mine, as he kissed me like he’d been planning it since the last second we were together. It was hot and big and wide and perfect, proving to me he had absolutely mastered the art of kissing. Actually—“mastered” was ridiculous.
“Mastered” didn’t begin to explain it.
I was fairly certain he had pioneered the art of kissing.
Probably no one had kissed before him, and no one would ever kiss like this after him.
Because the way he kissed felt like Damion the tutor, patient and thorough and brilliant, immersed in all the knowledge needed to pass any test that might be given.
The way his mouth was overconfident but all finesse, the way his teeth toyed with my bottom lip like we had all the time in the world, the way his—
“I’m sorry,” he said, barely lifting his lips off mine, the heat in his eyes enough to make my toes curl. “I’m an animal and I didn’t even ask.”
“Ask what?” I managed, drowsy and breathless.
His mouth curled up into a sleepy half smile, which matched his heady-lidded gaze. “For permission to kiss you.”
“You have it,” I said quickly, on a breath. “You’ve got it. Permission granted please and thank—”
He growled and kissed me again before I could finish speaking, so intent—dizzyingly intense—that all ten of my fingers could do nothing but clench against the front of his sweater, digging into pectorals that were… hell’s bells, so unbelievably solid.
The way his mouth was absolutely devouring mine, feverish and hot like he couldn’t get enough, was overwhelming and too much and yet not enough, all at the same time. He was wicked with his lips, filthy with his teeth, and downright dirty with his tongue, oh God.
I was very nearly panting, breathing like I’d run a mile, as the space between the door behind me and the body before me disappeared.
But my heart nearly exploded when I felt his hands on my waist. Those long fingers brushed over the tiny strip of bare skin that’d become exposed, the barely there distance between the bottom of my shirt and the top of my skirt, but I felt it.
The tremble.
While he kissed me like that, boldly audacious and cocky as hell, his fingers were shaking.
Damion Rutledge’s hands were shaking.
And I loved that more than everything else.
Someone pushed on the door, jiggling the handle behind my back, so I jumped out of the way. Students poured into the room, glancing at Damion and me, but Damion just grinned down at me and grabbed my hand.
“Not that I don’t mind an audience,” he said, leaning down and saying it into my ear, “but we’ll be late. Let’s go. We have transition to get to.”
We started walking down the hall, and I felt the eyes of everyone on us. I felt flustered and lightheaded, giggly and unsettled, kind of like everything was happening to me and I was just along for the ride.
How has this happened?
I was scared, to be honest, scared of the way I felt about him. It was too big, too much, too soon, especially when he gave me that blinding smile.
But he was holding my hand, so I didn’t care.
It was impossible not to smile as all eyes took notice that we were together.
Suck it, jerks.
“I hope you wanted to hard launch this,” he said quietly, his fingers squeezing mine as heads turned our way, “because I don’t think there’s any going back now.”
“If you’re good, I’m good,” I said, hoping it was what he wanted.
I was scared to trust him, to trust this, but it felt so good that I had to force myself to give it a try, right?
Just let go and fall.
“Oh, I’m so good,” he said, giving me yet another look that made butterflies go wild inside my body.
When we got to transition, he leaned down into my space, oh, so close, his mouth traversing my hair to find my ear and whisper—in the most intimate way possible, “See you at lunch.”
And then he straightened and walked to his desk in the back of the room.
Yeah, the entire class murmured in shock (while I suppressed a shiver, dear Lord).
Subtlety and Damion did not go together.
True to his word, Damion sat with me at lunch. There I was, across from Donovan and Jasmine, when he plopped down beside me as if that spot belonged to him and him alone.
“What are you doing here, Damion?” Donovan asked, but she was smiling as she looked between the two of us. Word was traveling fast, and I felt like the entire school knew that we were official.
Dear God, are we actually official?
“You know exactly what,” he said. “I have an affinity for your little friend here with the auburn curls and amber eyes.”
“You did not just call her eyes amber,” Jasmine said with an eye roll. “Please don’t make me nauseous.”
“What do you want from me here, Jaz?” Damion said, his forehead falling to the table in defeat, which made all of us laugh. “Should I do away with talking completely and just lock in on the PDA?”
“Please, God, no,” Donovan said with a laugh.
I had trouble swallowing as he raised his head and looked at me like that, my cheeks on fire because Damion’s romantic attention was an intensity level I wasn’t used to.
Holy God.
“Maybe we can do that later,” I joked, clearing my throat.
“Speaking of later,” he said, leaning a little closer.
Oh God, what now?
“What are you doing after school?” he asked, hazel eyes sucking me in and making me want to do whatever he was doing. I felt like I had whiplash from how quickly we’d gotten here.
Zero to one hundred in a hot minute.
It scared me, the way I already felt about him, but it also felt so… so right that it was hard to pump the brakes. Slowing down was the safe thing to do, but his speed was making me an adrenaline junkie.
“My mom told me to come right home after school because she has a thousand things to do before the season kicks off and she needs help.”
“How about you tell her you have more important things to do?” he said in that arrogant way of his. “Like hanging out with your new boyfriend.”
New boyfriend??
I looked at his insanely handsome face and couldn’t quite reconcile the fact that he was that.
My boyfriend.
“I definitely don’t think she’ll approve that,” I said, catching a whiff of his cologne. How did he always smell like a Ralph Lauren advertisement? I had to be careful not to hyperventilate on his scent.
“Oh, sorry, what I really meant was tutoring,” he said, oh so quietly so no one else could hear, inching his way closer to me, closing the space between us.
Damion was a very physical guy, where Will hadn’t been. He was always grabbing my hand, pulling my sleeve, nudging me with his big body, tugging on my hair; I loved it. It almost felt like he needed to touch me, and I was obsessed with the idea of Damion needing anything from me.
“Fine, I’ll tell my mom I have to stay home and study.”
“Wait,” he said, a tiny crease forming between his eyebrows. “How about you come to my house to study, instead?”
“Your house?” I repeated, hating that idea. I pictured his father’s face and NO—no way. “No offense, but I don’t think your parents are going to be happy to see me crossing their threshold.”
“They’re never home until well after eight, so it isn’t going to matter,” he said, his voice quiet and deep.
Sending a shower of sparks through every nerve in my body as those eyes, behind ridiculously hot glasses, watched me like they were looking for my reaction.
“Oh,” I said, torn between wanting desperately to go and being wildly intimidated at the thought.
And it must’ve shown on my face, because he leaned even closer and said, “I’ll take care of you, I promise.”
My heart was in my throat as I looked at him, at his up-close-and-personal jawline and smirking lips, and I wondered what exactly that reassurance meant.
“So give me your address, then,” I said quietly, my insides buzzing with nerves, worry, excitement, fear, anticipation…
“Attagirl.” Damion winked as he tugged on one of my curls and said, “I can’t wait to spend a few hours alone in my house… studying.”
Dear Lord. Help me.