Chapter 29
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
“Once upon a time,” Austin starts, settling into the chain-link fence.
“I heard you singing at Saga. I was almost to our table when your voice yanked my head over so fast I almost pulled a muscle in my neck. What were you singing? Shakira, maybe?” His lips tug up at the memory.
“You were motioning along, your hair bouncing all around. One glance, and I was sold. So into you. You’re more … alive than other girls.”
My eyebrows have shot up to Mars. I will miss them.
“I smiled at you,” he says. “Do you remember that?”
My jerky nod gives me away.
“I didn’t wanna be a creep and hit on the brand-new freshman—those first couple months of college life are a lot—so I left you alone that day. But my resolve didn’t last long.”
Wind flits through his hair as I study him. All those times I’d bump into him on campus or he’d end up sitting by me at Saga. Was that … on purpose?
“Lucky for me, you showed up on my floor for Jeeves’s strategic movie night.
He wasn’t concerned about hitting on a different brand-new freshman.
” He chuckles. “Kit freaked him out on their walk back, and I had to intervene with a game night the next day. But yeah, the more I got to know you, the more of a goner I was. You’re not just beautiful—” He stops when I grimace.
His gray-blue eyes shrink to slits. “Seriously?”
His fingers come up to push my eyebrows back to their usual place, then his thumb nudges my mouth into a smile that starts to set.
“Listen up, little lady. I get to decide if I think you’re beautiful. They’re my eyes taking you in, my hands touching you, my stomach dropping when you come into view.”
My lungs make a fool of me with a sudden breath.
“Your smile is beautiful.” His thumb brushes tingles across my bottom lip. “Your eyes are beautiful. Your freckles. Your hair.” It arcs to my cheek and then my hairline.
Sparks everywhere.
But then he pulls his arms in, as if to keep them to himself, and edges back against the fence. “Your body is beautiful.”
When his eyes drift shut, I gulp.
“You’re … a dream. Strong. Delicate. Wild. Capable. Inviting. Golden. Blinding … Legs for days.” His voice drops, and my face heats. “I couldn’t make you up.” He turns. “I wish you’d agree with me, but I can’t help that. And you can’t help how I feel about you. Got that straight?”
His stern voice is so attractive that I bob my head without thinking.
“Since that movie night, you were always the one to beat, the one I was begging God for a chance with. Bounced around so the other girls wouldn’t get the wrong impression. No one ever measured up to you.” He pulls a face. “I sound like a jerk. Maybe Jeeves had it right with the dating boycott.”
His words are a little curled-up hedgehog. Adorable. Precious. But too sharp. I can’t hold them no matter how hard I try.
“About Kit,” he says. “She was in my Calc III class. We barely talked until we were friends through you. She’s so good to Jeeves—now—and of course I love her for that.” A pause. “I kinda wanna be mad that you’re making a thing about her, but also I can relate to you.”
“You can?”
“When I showed up here, my roommate was Levi Whitaker, of all people, and I was too big for my britches after my success with football. It took him two seconds to do his homework. People respected him before they even met him. He got whatever he wanted.” He shakes his head, amused.
“He was even faster than me for a short time.”
I search his face. “But that stuff is … Who cares? You’re you. Why would you ever want to be him?”
He half-smiles. “But you’re you, Soph. Why would you ever wanna be Kit?”
My heart does a weird dip.
Could it be real? Everybody is Tad Hamilton to somebody?
I grab his hand and kiss his palm. “What changed? You don’t think that way now, do you?”
“Nah. It didn’t happen overnight. Or ’cause I tried. I guess God just made me see him different. Now that feels like a million years ago. The world needs one Jeeves—no more and certainly no less.”
I curl up close to him, hands on his chest. “You’re incredible. I want you exactly like this.”
He plants a kiss on my head. “I’m trying to help you, and you’re making it about me.” And then a string of kisses from my forehead to my neck. “Stop that.”
“I don’t think you understand how incentive works,” I murmur. “Maybe come with me to my Marketing class sometime.”
His arm wraps around my waist as he retraces the line of kisses. “Can I sit next to you? The professor wouldn’t mind if I do this, would she?”
“Mmm.”
He pulls away, and I grunt.
“I have literally no idea what I’m doing,” I say. “I learned my dating advice from Gilmore Girls and Gossip Girl. And New Girl. All the ‘Girl’ shows. Pretty sure those couples are neither realistic nor functional.”
With a chuckle, he runs a thumb down my jaw. “I don’t know what I’m doing either, Soph. We’ll figure it out together. We’re not doing this on our own, right?”
Frustration rises in my throat. He doesn’t get it. He can’t see what his happy parents gave him.
“What’s helped you before? On your Dark and Twisty days.”
When he stretches his legs out, he cringes in pain. I almost drown in a flood of self-consciousness. This isn’t fun or exciting for him. I’m draining him instead of filling him up. I’m too much and yet not near enough.
I reach for his knee, rub on it the way I’ve seen him do. “Is it hurting?”
He smooths hair from my face. “Kinda stiff today. What helped?” He presses.
“Um, running makes me feel halfway normal. Counseling. Hibiscus tea. My list of tasks. But this is the first day like this in a while.”
His attentive gaze—so kind, so patient. How am I here with him right now?
Even still, the weight is still here. The dimness.
The cliff I could fall off any moment. He’s so good, and I’m still just …
sad. I don’t know what it’s like for other people.
Maybe they’re always cool and chill, so these days bounce off a little better.
For me, it couldn’t be further from my usual self, from the real me.
People around me easily notice the change, and it’s hard to sit in my skin this way.
I just want to feel normal. To bounce and skip and sing and experience life.
Except today, I don’t even really want those things.
Like an alien inhabited my body. Like that book The Host.
I turn to Austin. I need his help. I need a reprieve. A hit.
“I was honest,” I try. “We worked through stuff. Did I earn a kiss?”
The chain-link fence jingles as he leans back against it, leaving me even colder. “Affection isn’t earned, Soph.” His voice is low, firm. The man-bear is protective, but there’s something unsteady underneath. “I kiss you because I like you, not because you were compliant.”
I grab a fistful of his shirt, tug tighter than I mean to. “Please, Austin.”
His breathing stutters. His eyes go desperate.
“Look, I’m trying to leave some space between us so I don’t get too close to trying everything else.
” His head droops to the side, just in front of mine.
“That’s a real risk, you know. I have to stick with my convictions on this. Anything past kissing is a no for me.”
Something twitches in my gut. Kissing isn’t a line at all. That’s what Kit said.
But my leg bounces. The craving grows.
He’s overthinking this. It’s just a kiss. More than just a kiss—more of Austin. More closeness. More of his goodness.
“I’m not gonna defy God’s orders on that,” he says. “And anyway, if you rub against the grain of the universe, you get brutal splinters. I don’t want that for you. Or for me.”
That voice while he tells me no—low, warm, threadbare. It has the opposite effect. I know that kiss is what I need. The only thing to lift the fog.
I trace his lips with a finger. “I respect that. And I’m on the same page. But you shouldn’t get to pick every time.”
His gaze drops to my lips, his voice dips with it. “I love it when you’re feisty.”
Finally I weave my fingers into his thick hair and press my lips to his. The world blurs. It’s as distracting as I’d hoped. Slow and deep and reassuring—enough to convince me I’m okay. I kiss him again. And again. My legs slide across his, half in his lap.
When a small, guttural moan escapes from his throat, I pull back to look at him. Every bit of focus and comfort drops in a breath.
He droops back to the fence, gently moving my legs to the ground. “You.” The painful edge to his voice stabs me with guilt. His eyes lock onto mine. “Soph? I can … trust you?”
“Yeah. Yes.”
“Okay. So. Ready for your run?”
I turn his hand over, running my thumb over his calluses. So rough. So much weight lifting. So much tingly goodness. He watches me like I’m something rare and valuable. When he squeezes my hand, the buzz of his touch just reminds me I need more of it.
“In a minute,” I finally respond.
“Oh.” He flits his gaze out to the pines. “Hi, God.”
I eye him. He’s praying out loud? With his eyes open?
“I thought you told me to pray that verse over Sophie today. It must have been for now, huh? Let’s see … ‘And this is my prayer: that her love may abound more and more in,’ um”—he pulls out his phone and skims the screen—“‘in knowledge and depth of insight.’”
Yes, Jesus, I pray involuntarily. Yes.
“I read that this morning,” he says to me. “Kinda random, I know.”
My squeeze on his hand says what I can’t. “Where is that?”
“Philippians. I started it this week.”
Love? Abound?
I have no words. Or reasonable thoughts. But somehow, right now, I have Austin. Arm around me, hand in my hair, he sits with me in the dirt. Like it’s enough for him.
Please let me keep him. Please.
Austin
Song of the day
“Banks” by Jordan Davis & NEEDTObrEATHE
Be prepared. I’m coming for your mirrors.