Chapter 13 #5
“I don’t need it to be a good idea. It’s already happening.
It already is. There’s no discussion to be had.
Here we are. If we could’ve stayed away from each other, we would have.
You are all tortured about our age gap, and I’m just trying to keep myself from…
I don’t know what I’m trying to keep myself from doing.
That was amazing, and I don’t regret it, and now I’m sitting here with a grilled cheese, and we’re having a conversation, and it’s actually pretty nice.
” She shoved the rest of the sandwich into her mouth.
“I’m completely good. You know what? I got the sex that I wanted. No training wheels required.”
He grunted. “Happy for you.”
“Well, what about you? Are you going to be weird about it?”
“Nobody can know,” he said. “And I’m serious. Because Cody will kick my ass. I told him that he could trust me with you.”
“Well, that’s stupid. Because it’s not up to him who I sleep with, is it? It’s not up to him who you sleep with. We are consenting adults, and we consented to that enthusiastically.”
“Cody is my family. He’s all I have. He was concerned about us, and I told him that he could trust me.”
“Again. You haven’t broken his trust. You didn’t hurt me in any way. You didn’t do anything that I didn’t want. There’s nothing wrong with what happened.”
“Promise me,” he said, moving closer to her. He put his knee on the edge of the bed and crawled over the top of her, bracing his hands on the headboard, staring her down. “Cara, promise me.”
“Fine. I won’t tell anyone that it happened.”
Then he leaned in and kissed her, deep and slow. “Don’t tell anyone that it’s happening.”
Present tense. Not past tense. That’s interesting.
“Is it happening?”
“We couldn’t keep our hands off each other the first time, no matter how bad an idea it was. What makes you think we’re going to be able to successfully do it going forward?”
He had a point. Because in theory, it should’ve been very easy for them to avoid each other. But they hadn’t done it. Instead, they had thrown themselves into each other’s paths at every opportunity, even though he had been playing at being reluctant.
“Good point.”
She wanted to ask him for reassurance. For how long it would go on, for how she would know when it was over.
For how she could protect herself. But she didn’t want to talk about that.
She didn’t want to talk about it ending.
Maybe it was just sufficient enough that she knew it couldn’t go on.
Maybe it was good enough that they both knew it wasn’t forever.
They could continue to be whatever they were, this sort of strange friendship where they had shared some pretty deep intimacies emotionally, and sleep together. Nobody had to know. He was her secret.
Her dirty, wonderful, adventurous secret.
It sucked because normally she would tell Marlowe, but Marlowe would tell Cody.
And that was the one person that Zane didn’t want told, and there was absolutely no way that Cara could put Marlowe in that position, and she wouldn’t put Zane in a position he had explicitly asked to not be in.
So that meant it really was a secret. But maybe that would be better. Because whenever it ran its course, she wouldn’t have to deal with people wondering how she was, she wouldn’t have to look at other people and know that they were pitying her because her Situationship had come to an end.
No. It was a good idea. Keeping it a secret.
“I have to go home,” she said. “I have to get up early and open the bakery, and I need to get out of these hiking clothes. I mean, obviously I’m out of them right now, but you know what I mean.”
“That’s good. A good idea, I mean.”
“Yeah. It is.”
She slipped out of the bed, or at least, did her best to, considering she was still half swaddled, and grabbed her boots and her jeans.
While she was beginning to get dressed, he went and retrieved her bra from the light fixture and brought her T-shirt.
“So, do we make a schedule or…”
“No. We don’t make a sex schedule.”
She tried to relax. It didn’t need to be that… Planned, she supposed. They had opened the door to this. Which meant that sometimes it was going to happen.
“I really would like to do the stargazing? I mean wayfinding. I mean…”
“We can do that.”
“Great. And then after that, maybe you can help me figure out how to ride a horse.”
Wow. She really was desperate if she was pushing it to horse riding. That was kind of insane.
Considering she had been avoiding that with intent since she had moved here. Apparently, Zane had taken her best intentions and twisted them up.
“If you’d like.”
“I would.”
She got dressed and was surprised when he walked her out to the car.
But before she got in, he grabbed a hold of her and gave her a kiss.
She melted into him. It felt so good to be able to do this.
To no longer be resisting it. To just… Be able to touch him.
To be able to kiss him. She really didn’t want to go home.
But she needed to be in the bakery by four in the morning, and she not only needed sleep, she needed her own bed, and all of her toiletries.
“Good night,” she said.
He nodded, but didn’t say it back, and that was okay. She slipped into the car, and buckled up, and it wasn’t until she was halfway between his house and hers that she let out a screech.
She had slept with Zane Barton.
And she was going to do it again.
This was the real adventure.
She felt giddy.
It was about damn time.