Chapter Eight #4
“It’s…new.” She was certain her face was on fire. Kayleigh opened her mouth to ask what was undoubtedly another question, but Audrey pointed at the leaves surrounding the club president’s head. “So are you…Mother Nature?”
Kayleigh’s face lit up, and she tossed her arms above her head and twirled dramatically.
“I’m the Spirit of Autumn,” she said, landing in fourth position and following it with a deep bow.
“But you were close. The vibes were right.” She grabbed Audrey and shoved her toward the food table in the corner with a wicked glint in her eye.
“How about you and your boyfriend Theo help clean up? We have to be out of here in twenty before custodial comes in.”
They glanced at each other when Kayleigh left them to go talk to some of the other officers, and Theo removed his sunglasses.
“I’m…really sorry about that,” he muttered.
What little of his face she could see beneath the bandages was beet red, and he rubbed the back of his neck anxiously.
“About the boyfriend thing. I know we haven’t discussed it, but you looked so flustered, and I didn’t want you to feel—”
“I want you to be my boyfriend.” She could hardly stop the words from tumbling breathlessly out of her lips, and the second they did, he froze. “I’d love to be your girlfriend.”
“You would?” he breathed, his eyes widening in disbelief when Audrey nodded.
She glanced down at her elbow. He’d pocketed his gloves a while ago, and his bare fingertips were busy gently stroking her there, as if he couldn’t bear to not be touching her somewhere while they talked.
No matter how calm he’d been earlier, he was nervous now.
She could see it in his eyes, that flash of fear and doubt he so often wore around her.
“You don’t think it’s too early for me to ask? I can wait if you need me to, I pro—”
He quieted when she reached up to put both hands on the sides of his face.
She slipped her fingers beneath some of the folds of the gauze, flipping them up and pushing them gently aside to reveal his mouth.
Theo’s breath shuddered when her fingertips grazed against his lips, and his chest rose and fell heavily beneath her palms when she dropped her hands there.
Audrey shook her head, a weak, trembling smile breaking through the self-doubt she was desperately trying to hold in check.
The last time she’d hoped someone might want the title, he’d thrown her away like trash. And not for the first time either. In many ways, she was trash. She was nothing, and no one terribly important.
But…
Theo didn’t seem to think so.
He never made her feel like anything less than a treasure.
“Do you have any idea how much I like you?” It was his turn to shake his head, eyes still wide.
She patted his chest knowingly and nodded again.
He was still so incapable of seeing himself the way she saw him.
“It’s…it’s a lot, Theo. Far more than I’ve ever liked anyone before. I like you so much, it aches.”
Theo screwed his eyes shut and surged forward to take her lips in his, lifting a hand and cradling her neck while he kissed her well and thoroughly in the dark corner of the ballroom.
The music from the party thudded in the background, drowning out every sound save for their beating hearts.
Theo’s thundered in his chest beneath her palms, as frantic and needful as her own pulse throbbing beneath his thumb caressing her skin.
The deeper he kissed her, the more she burned, the more she needed.
She’d never known anyone like him before.
She never wanted to know anyone else.
He pulled away, gasping quietly as he looked at her before burying his face in her shoulder. He smiled against her neck.
“Okay,” he finally whispered. He slid his fingers up and buried them in her hair. “No more doubts. I promise.”
“Good.” Audrey wished she could do the same, but he was still covered in that goddamn gauze.
She was thoroughly tired of the costumes now.
It was time to take off their masks.
After the party, they left campus and headed back toward Brooklyn, stopping for pizza on the way and eating it while they walked, dripping grease onto the sidewalks and gleefully licking sauce from their fingertips.
They hadn’t really gotten to eat any of the food they’d been in charge of setting up, and Audrey was starving.
The clouds overhead continued to roll and thicken, and gusts of wind picked up tendrils of her hair and plucked at them wildly.
But all it did was add to her exhilaration.
Something about being out with Theo now made her feel so terribly, vibrantly alive.
The way he looked at her—stealing glances here and there when he thought she wasn’t paying attention, the light of the street lamps and signs and millions of cascading windows across the buildings of the sweeping cityscape glinting in his eyes—sent shivers down her spine, and she never wanted to look away.
The idea of drowning herself in his amber gaze was intoxicating, and every time his fingers sought out hers, sparks skipped across her skin, searing gooseflesh in their wake.
By the time they caught the train and mounted the stairs back up to their neighborhood, the weather had shifted. The clouds were thicker and darker, and thunder rumbled. Theo paused at the top of the stairs and looked up at the sky.
It smelled like rain in the air.
“There weren’t any storms in the forecast,” he muttered.
But as soon as the words left his mouth, he blinked and startled, reaching up slowly to wipe at his eyes.
Audrey felt it next: a big, fat raindrop landed on her forehead, icy and bracing.
Another came on its heels, and another, and another, until the skies opened up above them.
And poured.
The other people on the sidewalks all scattered and ran, holding up umbrellas or bags or jackets to shelter them from the downpour. Before Audrey could even blink, something dropped firmly onto her head. It was Theo’s hat, the brim of it keeping some of the rain out of her face.
She glanced up at him. The gauze he wore was already sopping wet, stuck to and around his features like papier-maché. Drops of water fell from his long lashes and disappeared into the sodden cotton.
“Come on!” he cried. “My place is closer!”
He grabbed her hand.
And they ran.