Chapter 24
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FOUR
ALLY
T hree days after the retreat, the seniors were still buzzing about how much fun they’d had. And I was still buzzing from the night afterward that I’d spent with Clay. Given that it had been a Sunday, and we didn’t sleep much, it was making for a very exhausting week. A week of stolen glances and lingering kisses when Clay picked me up and dropped me off each day, which he’d insisted on doing.
This morning, it was early, even earlier than the teachers arrived for sunrise classes. No students were anywhere. The sun was barely up. But I’d already been awake for hours, thinking about Clay.
“You want to...go on a date with me? Tonight?” I sputtered, trying to wrap my brain around what he’d just asked.
Clay’s laugh sounded hollow. “No, Alexandra. I don’t want to go on a date with you. I want to go on a year of dates with you. And I want to listen to your weirdo thoughts and stare at your face when you tell me stories about the students you saved. All of them. But mostly, I want to fast-forward to the end of the dates to where I get you alone and I can peel the meddlesome layers of clothing away and see all of you. Devour all of you. And I don’t just mean with my eyes.”
“Oh.”
“Oh?”
“I just mean...you’re known to date women only once or twice. Is this how you let me down easy, by taking me on a date?”
He looked more amused than disappointed, hand ruffling his hair, mouth quirking up into the unintentional smile I loved.
“Is that what you want, to be let down easy?”
“No.” Did I answer too quickly?
“Okay, holding you to that.”
“I just...” Unsure how to finish the sentence, I stopped with my mouth hanging open and stared at the way Clay’s hazel eyes warmed when he watched me squirm. He was definitely amused.
“What?” he asked, gently tucking a few wild tendrils of hair behind my ears. “What are you worried about?”
I couldn’t calm the butterflies in my stomach long enough to come to a conclusion on that. I just knew he made me nervous and excited and overwhelmed with feeling, and I didn’t know what to do with all of that.
“So you want to go on a date with me. A first date. The first of one hundred?” I couldn’t get the idea through my head. I’d prepared myself for an ending. And now...I was on new ground.
“You don’t get it. It was never about dating lots of women. It was only ever about distracting myself because I didn’t think I could be with you.”
Well, that did it. I grabbed his face in my hands and pressed my lips to his. It didn’t matter how many hours we’d spent doing this already. I was just getting started. He responded in kind, lifting me so I could wrap my legs around his waist.
Clay turned us and pressed me up against the door of his truck as I ground into him, finding the exact spot I needed to get the friction I craved. He kissed my cheek, running a row of tiny kisses along my jaw and nipping at it before pulling back to look at me.
“Do you get it now? The way I am with you is different than anything I’ve ever felt before. I don’t know what to do with it. And I tried to stop feeling it. I tried so hard to stop thinking about you. Wanting you. But I can’t fucking do it.
“Going on a date sounds far too polite for all the things I want to do with you. I want...” His eyes were wild and dark as he shoved a hand through his hair in an aggravated, frustrated gesture. “I want to fuck you until you can’t sit down and make you come until you don’t remember your name. Is that clear enough for you?”
I nodded. “It’s clear. Let’s go on a date.”
Clay wined and dined me at the Italian restaurant in Knoxville where they really did “know what to do with pasta,” before insisting we go dancing at Genie’s. “Are you sure?” I asked. More than once.
Going on a date at Genie’s was like announcing your relationship to the entire town, but apparently that was what Clay felt like doing.
“I’m damn proud to be with you and I don’t care who knows it,” he’d said when I suggested going someplace a little less popular.
Clay led me around the dance floor to an upbeat country song. “I haven’t been able to get the image out of my head of you leaving this place five minutes after I had you in my arms,” he said. “Tonight, when you leave, you’re leaving with me.”
My heart beat faster at his possessive tone. His large hand on my back made my insides warm and my heart flood. “So this is kind of a do-over date?”
He nodded. “If I’d have been able, I’d have danced every dance with you that night.”
“Pindich would have probably fired you. He was glaring at you the whole time we danced.”
“Yeah, he came up to me after you left and said some weird stuff about knowing why I was deeded the Bandit Lake house. Said he knew my grandmother back when he practiced law, made it like they were the best of friends. I asked what year he passed the bar, and that shut him up. I never understand what angle he’s working.”
“That’s why I try to avoid him.”
Clay brought me down for a dip and swept me back up and into his arms. His lips brushed over mine and I heard a few people around us hoot and holler. Something about being with Green Valley’s most eligible bachelor was giving people a lot to look at.
“People are gonna talk,” I teased. “Your reputation’s on the line.”
“Let ’em talk.”
“Oh, they’re gonna.” The stern voice next to me could only belong to my brother. “Is this your way of telling me you two are an item?”
We slowed our dancing and I took in my brother, who looked downright entertained by the sight of us. “Do you just lurk at Genie’s all the time?” I asked.
Jefferson shook his head and pointed at Clay. “This guy invited me to join him here. I thought we were having a drink. So I repeat: is this your way of telling me something?”
Clay’s rueful smile said that it was absolutely his way of showing my brother what he had no ability to put into words. “I’m crazy about your sister, and I wanted you to see it and understand it. If I just said something over the phone or whatever, you’d come over and belt me, so I wanted you to see up close and personal that it’s real.”
Clay smiled confidently, but his nerves showed in the way he swallowed hard.
Jefferson mock-glared for a second before breaking into a grin. “Joke’s on you, stress-nozzle. I saw the way you were looking at each other a week ago and could’ve told you your story myself. But now that you dragged me down here, you’d better buy me a drink.”
That was the end of the dancing for a while, as my brother crashed our date. But after he finished his beer, Clay sent him moving along and led me back to the dance floor. He wrapped me in his arms and we swayed to a slow song, and I couldn’t remember being happier.
Things were going well. Better than well. Maybe my mom had been wrong about romance, wrong about men. And wrong about me.
Secrets didn’t stay secret for long in Green Valley, to say nothing of secrets at the high school. Within two days of our date, everyone knew.
On Tuesday, every chair in the teachers’ lounge was taken when I arrived. Witty was eating something green that had the stench of day-old broccoli without looking nearly as healthy. As usual, I didn’t ask.
As usual, the same mugs festered in the sink and the same individuals had made coffee with the Keurig machines, without removing the used pods.
As usual, no one sat on the green couch against the wall, even though it meant two teachers were teetering on one chair together, half-cheeking it and nearly toppling over each time one of them reached for a bite of lunch.
And as usual, Principal Pindich made a beeline toward where I stood by the coffee machine. “Pour me a cup, would you?” he asked, reaching over my head to retrieve a mug and missing my face by mere millimeters in the process. He gave me the creeps, but I took a step back and tried not to choke on the musky smell of his body spray.
As I filled Pindich’s cup with coffee, I could hear Clay’s voice in my head telling me not to drink “that swill.”
I had no problem pouring it for our dear principal.
He leaned in again, uttering a whispered “Thanks,” but before he backed away, Clay “accidentally” tripped and splashed cold brew all over Pindich. Shaking off the cold coffee and muttering something about a dry-cleaning bill, Pindich moved away to search for paper towels.
Thank you , I mouthed to Clay. My heart squeezed at his protective gesture.
As he moved past me, his chest grazed my shoulder, and he placed his hand on the small of my back. A tiny gesture, but it set off a firestorm in my veins.
Guiding me away from the coffee maker, Clay tipped his head toward the hallway. I felt Pindich’s eyes on us as we left. The curiosity in them had turned into a glare.
Wordlessly, Clay moved us outside to the teachers’ parking lot and drove us off campus for lunch. “I swear to God, Ally, if Pin Dick does anything even the least bit skeevy to you, I want to know about it. So help me, he’ll barely live long enough to regret it.”
One hand on the steering wheel, Clay drove, his fury evident in the crease in his brow and the set of his jaw. We pulled up to Daisy’s.
Clay hopped out and came around to my side. He didn’t extend his hand to help me out of the car like he usually did. Instead, he leaned in, bracketing my head with his forearms on the frame of the truck, and kissed me like it was his final dying request. Lips. Teeth. The scrape of his stubble. I felt it straight down to my core.
When he backed up an inch, I let out a shaky breath before inhaling the pine-and-soap scent of him. My eyes fluttered open.
“Hi.” The sexy rasp of his voice was a balm to my senses.
“Hi.”
His lips were on mine again and dizziness took over. It was an authoritative, claiming kiss, and as much as Pindich irritated me, I had to credit him with bringing out this protective side of Clay. I loved it.
The sound of approaching voices immediately put space between us, and Clay wrapped his hand around mine and pulled me out of the truck. Before we went into Daisy’s, he grabbed my hand and brought it to his lips. “You free tonight?”
I nodded. Tonight and every night , I wanted to say. But I didn’t.
I wasn’t ready for Clay to know how smitten I was with him. I wasn’t even sure if I could admit it to myself. Except that, yeah, I had to admit I had it bad for him.
And also . . . so good.