Chapter 20
TWENTY
jade
Only when we’ve reached the edge of the parking lot do I glance back toward the breezeway where Lenni and I found Reeve and the boys after the football game.
I knew I was in trouble the second we rounded the corner and there he was leaning against the red bricks in that sexy way men have, his gaze troubled and his eyes impossibly bright as he stared out across campus.
That flutter of excitement and anticipation and sickness told me it wasn’t a fluke that I found myself wanting his attention the other night after the library. I want it more than ever—and that’s a problem. But the breezeway stands empty now, Reeve and his friends gone. I just wanted one more look.
Lenni is watching me as I swivel my head back where it belongs. “What?” she asks like she already knows exactly what.
I let out a massive sigh. I’ve needed to tell her and hoped I wouldn’t have to, hoped those two kisses—and these feelings—were freak events with no meaning and no chance of happening again, but I’ve been sadly disillusioned.
If our night at the library didn’t prove that, looking around at the crowd at today’s game did.
Pretty girls out in support of their favorite player are standard fare at any Shafer game, but a closer look today told me just how many of them were targeting the one and only number 27 with their body paint and “Marry Me!” signs.
Normally I’d have rolled my eyes. Today all I could do was avert them as jealousy, possessiveness, and—worst of all—understanding washed over me.
“Okay, can you make this easy on me and tell me what you already know? Has Cam said something?”
“Do you mean what I already know about the way you giggle like a schoolgirl around Reeve Dalton?”
“I do nothing of the sort! You’ve completely misread my laughing at his jackassery.”
“Uh-huh. Well, I’ve just told you all I know, but clearly there’s more. What exactly are you afraid Cam might have told me?”
Huh. So Reeve didn’t tell Cam that we’ve kissed. Or he swore him to secrecy. “So we kissed,” I spit out. “Twice.”
Lenni stops to turn to me and grabs me by the shoulders.
“Are you seriously telling me you made out with your sworn enemy not once but twice and you never told me?” Her jaw drops.
“God, I’ve been an idiot. When am I going to realize it’s always the guys you say you have no interest in that you fall for? ”
I slide her hands off my shoulders and take her by the arm to walk on.
“Fall for? Please don’t get delusional. It was a couple of kisses and yes, they were fucking fabulous and they’ve turned me into a giggling schoolgirl, okay?
But that’s all I can say for sure. The rest of it is just a mess of confusing feelings. ”
“So . . . there are feelings.”
“Don’t forget, hate, disgust, and regret are feelings too.”
“Clearly not the ones you feel for Reeve, though.”
“No, I still do. He’s just as cocky and infuriating as I always thought. It’s that there are other parts of him I didn’t expect.”
“Parts that make you like him?”
“I guess. Parts that make me want to know him.” I think about the quick, intoxicating hit of adrenaline that came over me when I spotted my earring on him.
Reeve Dalton took my earring, pinned it to his sweatshirt, and walked out onto the football field wearing it.
Shit, I can’t think about what that implies.
She gives me a playful smile. “Know him in the biblical sense, you mean?”
I laugh. “Here I am trying, for once, to be a grown-up and talk about emotions instead of sex and you just have to—”
“Okay, you’re right. I don’t want to ruin the moment. Tell me how you feel about him.”
I pause, trying to sort it through myself and waiting until a loud and clearly wasted pack of Shafer fans are safely behind us in the parking lot.
“I want to get to know him because I can’t help thinking that if I did, I’d understand him completely.
There’s this little undercurrent of connection between us.
” I think about the night at the library, that longing to know him.
“I’ve missed having that with someone.” Silence stretches between us, and when I look at Lenni, I spot hurt in her eyes before she blinks it away.
“I know I have you, but things are different.”
She swallows. “Are they that different?”
I hesitate. I haven’t explicitly told Lenni how much I miss the way things were between us before she and Cam got together, because I don’t want to make her feel like she has to apologize for falling in love.
But holding back doesn’t come naturally to me.
“They’re different. And that’s okay—nothing can stay the same forever—I just miss you.
I miss when you were my person and I was yours. ”
Her forehead creases. “Even when you were with Sam, I was your person?”
“Of course. You couldn’t feel that?”
“No, you’re right. I felt it.” She smiles. “I’m sorry if I haven’t had time the way I used to.”
“Nah, don’t be. I’m a great fuck, but let’s face it, I’d never be able to make you come the way Cam can.”
Lenni laughs. “No. But you’re still my person. That’s never going to change.” She looks at me and narrows her eyes. “Unless, of course, you continue keeping secrets from me.”
“I thought it was a fluke.”
“And now?”
“Maybe it wasn’t but . . . Reeve and I could never be.” Sadness surges inside me without warning. I blink and look away from Lenni.
“Why not?”
“So many reasons. Half the time we can’t stand each other, plus he’s a total player. And his life is football and mine is getting the hell out of here as soon as possible. The last thing either of us is looking for is a relationship.”
“Those are good reasons,” she admits, making me realize I wanted her to tell me why I was wrong.
“So you’re not going to argue with me?”
“Nope. Jade Kelly does what she wants anyway.”
“What about when Jade Kelly doesn’t know what she wants?”
“You tell me.”
I sigh. “I avoid him as long as possible. And in the meantime I hope that it all starts to make sense.”