Backdoor action #3
“I can’t answer texts. Like I can, but I don’t want to.
I lie in bed for eleven hours and do absolutely nothing.
And since I was fifteen, I just tell myself that it’s my personality.
” My thumb has found a seam on my own sleeve and I'm working it without meaning to. Will reaches over and takes that hand off my sleeve and holds it. “And I’ve been wondering if it’s something else.
And then I sat through eight weeks of PSY 101 and started recognising myself in the slides, which is not a thing you want to do at nine in the morning with two hundred people in the room. ”
Will is looking at me. His thumb moves once across my knuckles. “Okay. Then go. It might help.”
“That’s it?” I yelp in surprise.
He shakes his head, chuckling. "What did you think I was going to do?”
Honestly? I have no idea. That's the problem. I have run this conversation about nine hundred times in my head and every single version of it ends with somebody looking at me differently afterwards.
“I'm reading about it myself, too,” I tell him. “Properly. I'd rather understand my own head than have somebody hand me a label for it and tell me what I am.”
“Then do both.” His grip on my hand doesn't change at all. “You're annoyingly capable and annoyingly allergic to being told what you are.”
“I'm not—“
“Maddy. It took me three weeks to get one word out of you.” His mouth curves. “I'm aware of the policy. I think I've still got the terms and conditions screenshotted somewhere.”
I bark out a laugh. “My mind is very strange and I’ve known it’s different for a long time. I owe it to myself to know exactly what it is.”
Will does the jaw thing again, then he tilts his head at me. “Baby,” he says it like a fact. “Your mind is fucking strange. Have you met yourself? It's one of my favourite things about you.”
I press my lips together and I can feel the heat creep up on my ears. “You're biased.”
“Obviously I'm biased.” He gets a hand under my jaw, thumb along the bone, and turns my face towards him so I have to actually receive it.
“To me you're unstoppable. And then you crash, and I get an excuse to cuddle you without you wriggling, which if you haven't worked out yet is my favourite thing to do in the world.”
He said favourite twice. What else is on the list?
I need to find out. Maybe tomorrow.
“I know.” A laugh gets out of me and my free hand comes back to life against his forearm. “Thanks, Will.”
And then he keeps going, because apparently he isn't finished, because apparently this man came to a loading bay to ruin me properly.
“You go dark for days,” he adds, “and then you get back up and keep going.”
I stare at him.
“You're in your first year, Maddy. Eleven people said no to you and you showed up on the twelfth morning talking at one-point-seven-five speed like the other eleven had never happened.”
His thumb moves across mine.
“You've got twenty-one athletes doing what you tell them to do.”
“I am not that scary.”
He ignores me. “Every time I watch you work, I want to work harder.”
Everything in my chest stops.
“I go to training and run harder because my girlfriend has more fire than anybody I know, and I’d like to keep up.”
Then the shrug. “You're a fucking inspiration, Maddy.”
Oh. FUCK.
My eyes burn before I understand why.
No. I blink hard and look towards the pharmacy window like there is something deeply important happening between the Panadol and vitamin supplements.
He knows exactly what I am.
And he’s still looking at me like that.
NOT: Too loud. Too fast. Calm down, Maddy. Lower your voice, Maddy. Sit still. That's a lot of energy for one girl. You'll settle.
I have gotten used to hear people saying that about me since I was approximately six years old.
And I decided at some point around eleven that I did not care, and I have been extremely convincing about that for seven years.
I care.
Of course I care. I'm eighteen. I have been building a whole personality out of not caring since primary school. And I somehow care so much, that a boy in a parked car outside a pharmacy has just detonated my entire persona by saying the word inspiration in a completely ordinary voice.
Something warm slips down my cheek. Damn it. Traitor. Will’s thumb is already there, catching it before it reaches my jaw.
He looks at all of it and somehow comes out of the calculation wanting more of me, not less.
I would sail the seven seas for this man.
NO. I would fight Davy Jones personally.
“Are you for real?” is what I actually manage.
“I mean it.”
“You don’t think I’m too much?”
“You’re absolutely too much.” Will says it without a second of hesitation. “And it makes me feel so fucking alive.”
I have to look out the window for a moment.
“I like cuddling you too,” I tell the windscreen.
“I know you do.” Will turns my face back to him again. “Baby, you’re not the helpless Elizabeth Swann who needs saving. You’re Jack fucking Sparrow.”
You're not Elizabeth. That’s all I heard. Actually no, Will also just called me legendary.
Weird, but legendary.
“Elizabeth Swann is not helpless, she becomes a pirate king—”
“Maddy.” Will raises an eyebrow at me.
“I'm just saying you've misread the entire franchise.”
“Mm.” He starts the car without looking at me. “So are we actually grabbing that lunch?”