Chapter 32
CHAPTER
THIRTY-TWO
ALLY
G reen Valley High had put on great carnivals in the past, but this year’s was the best yet, even if my heart wasn’t fully in it. I wondered who would be working the kissing booth next to me, since I didn’t have faith it would be Clay.
Despite my brother’s insinuation that Clay would come around, the entire week had gone by, and now it was Sunday. I still hadn’t heard from Clay, which told me he hadn’t yet come to his senses.
He also hadn’t been at school, so I couldn’t see for myself whether he was miserable or flourishing. Meanwhile, I was there every day, sulking with my crappy school coffee.
And the longer he went without talking to me, the less I believed he ever would. I didn’t blame myself for it, not at all. I still believed in the fairy-tale stories of romance novels, even as I began to accept that Clay wouldn’t be my prince. Someone would.
My art students had gone all out, making vintage-looking wooden signs for every game booth, painting the booths in multicolor with vivid images on each one.
The dunk tank had a cartoon of someone who looked an awful lot like Principal Pindich in pineapple shorts riding on a surfboard over the cliff of a wave.
On the kissing booth, they’d painted swans with intertwined necks, beaks together forming a heart. Game booths with bottles and basketballs were similarly painted, and everything looked fresh and festive. Thanks to the big fundraising push the Parent-Teacher Association gave—some of us suspected they were making amends after the chicken salad incident—we had sold more tickets and raised more money for the school than ever before.
I’d spent the past two days working nearly around the clock with the art students, getting everything finished and hung, and I could barely stand up. Not to mention the past week when my thoughts kept returning to the look on Clay’s face when he told me he couldn’t be a better man.
He hadn’t reached out, and I’d given him the space he asked for. I’d hoped he’d hear my words, even if it took him a week. It was the hardest thing I’d ever had to do because I hated to leave someone who was hurting alone.
But the longer he went without a word, the sadder I got. I remembered what he’d said to me: The point isn’t to be so self-sufficient that you don’t need anyone else. The point is to be vulnerable around the right person. To need that person enough to feel something.
To need that person enough to feel something.
Like a heart breaking.
Crushed into pieces so tiny it can’t possibly be restored.
Vulnerable and utterly defenseless.
He’d gotten me here, and now all I could do was feel.
And somehow I had to put on clothes and come help the seniors fundraise for all their end-of-year festivities. I’d made them a promise and I couldn’t let them down.
I had to go work the goddamn kissing booth.
My shift started at noon and I got to the carnival at exactly noon. I didn’t want to chance running into anyone who might want to get into a long conversation about Clay and our failed relationship.
The gossip mill had already taken on a life of its own and there were so many versions of the story about Clay’s supposed bet and the new Green Valley Spinster moniker I’d probably never shake. I’d gone to the school board and filed a formal complaint against Pindich, but he always managed to charm someone into letting him skate through his troubles.
So I’d left my house with exactly twelve minutes to spare, knowing I could make the drive, park, and find my way to my booth without having time to chat with anyone. So far, so good.
It shouldn’t have made me so nervous to stand in a kissing booth. After all, I knew most of the folks in the Parent-Teacher Association. They were the main people who’d show up at a school fundraiser, right?
Nevertheless, I spent a little extra time getting dressed, curling my hair, and putting on makeup, notably a lip stain that wouldn’t be kissed off. Then I thought about Clay and wondered if he’d even show up at the carnival for the second shift in the kissing booth. Probably not, especially not if he was worried about a confrontation with me.
We all got a short lunch break during each shift, and I’d planned to take mine sometime close to two, after a couple hours of kissing. Seemed like I might need some hydration by then, or at least some sustenance.
But when I saw Principal Pin Dick’s soggy form making a beeline toward my corner of the carnival, I quickly put the Closed for Lunch placard out in an obvious place where he could see it from thirty feet away.
Exhaling a grateful breath, I wondered if I could make my break last long enough to avoid the principal completely, or if he’d somehow manage to find me.
“Closed for lunch, eh?” The deep baritone set my heart on a collision course with my chest. My face heated and I broke out in a nervous sweat, and that was all before I looked up into Clay’s beautiful face, which then sent goose bumps racing across my skin and a plunge of heat from my chest to my core.
“Yes. We get an hour.” Why did I tell him that? He didn’t care about the rules and regulations of the carnival. Besides, his kissing booth shift started after mine.
So why was he here early? Why was he here now, when I could do nothing to escape? Whatever this was, whatever he wanted to say to me, I had to listen to it here in public. And then get kissed by a hundred strangers.
People were starting to watch us, and the good school teacher in me knew I needed to put a pin in our conversation until after the carnival. But those lips, that hard jaw dusted with a few days’ worth of scruff, and those lazy hazel eyes begged me to stay right where I was.
He held up a fistful of tickets, all hot pink. All for my booth.
“You want to kiss me here?” I couldn’t help asking.
I was all for spending the rest of the weekend in Clay’s bedroom, but the current situation with its array of noisy game booths, petting zoo smells, and most of Green Valley High’s student body didn’t spark the romance I wanted.
He nodded, all of his normal swagger back in action. He wore dark jeans that hugged his hips, and I knew without him turning around what kind of treatment they’d give his perfectly formed ass. I felt a little torn. I did want him to turn around for my own gawking pleasure, but I also wanted him to stay.
If he’d come here to talk to me—or to kiss me—I wanted to hear what he had to say.
He tore off one ticket and held it up. “So what’s the deal? What does one ticket entitle me to?”
Was this how we were going to function now? Him mocking my participation in a school carnival by trying to make me uncomfortable?
Fine. If he wanted to play this game, I’d play.
“Yes, it entitles you to one kiss. One very quick kiss.”
“What if I want more?”
I rolled my eyes. “Then you can get back in line behind everyone else and take another turn.”
He shook his head. “There won’t be anyone else. I bought all the tickets.”
Now I was confused.
“Wait, what? ”
He pulled a wad of pink tickets from his back pocket. There were easily a hundred hot-pink tickets, all marked for the kissing booth. He moved closer and cupped my jaw with one hand. He didn’t lean in right away, instead letting himself gaze at me with a look of such adoration that my stomach dropped and my heart squeezed inside my chest. To say nothing about the deep pink invading my cheeks.
Nothing had changed one bit in the way I reacted to him. But something was different in the way he was staring at me now. Possessive. Feral. Hungry.
Shoving the wad of hot-pink paper toward the ticket box, Clay took a step back and nodded at me to deposit them.
“Clay, what are you doing?”
He looked at his watch. “Four-hour shift. Ten seconds a kiss plus twenty seconds or so in between them, though I’d be happy to keep right on going without a break.” He winked and his smile turned to a full-on smirk. “Equals four hundred eighty kisses. And I bought five hundred tickets. Every last one of ’em.”
“But why?”
“Because I’m not going to let another fucking man kiss you. Not today, not ever.”
My breath caught in my throat. My vision went fuzzy. My heart kicked up to a frantic pace. And none of that mattered because Clay’s lips were on mine and the world disappeared.
Except for the cheering. Loud, raucous cheering. And when we came up for air, I saw that half the student body and their parents were watching us and cheering us on.
“Let’s go.” He grabbed my hand and guided me away from the booth. I didn’t have time to ask where he wanted to go or why. Maybe it didn’t matter. As he intertwined our fingers, I felt the stress and tension of the past few weeks fall away. All the wondering about what Clay would decide for himself finally had an endpoint.
The fact that he’d come here to talk was progress. I knew it cost him a piece of the security he clung to. We were alike in that way. It gave me faith.
“Oh, hi, you two. I see you’re exhibiting some PDA in front of our impressionable youth?” Pindich appeared in a fresh, dry tank top that showed a bit too much of his spray tan for my liking. As usual, his smile when his eyes roamed over my cutoff denim shorts was a bit too close to a leer.
I expected Clay to drop my hand. A rule-follower, he would heed the reminder that we shouldn’t be holding hands at a school-wide event. But his grip tightened possessively. Looking down, I saw a vein in his forearm bulge. His skin was tanned from afternoons on the track, unlike Pindich’s orangey hue.
“Don’t fucking look at her like that,” Clay said, pinning Pindich with a glare.
Our principal, unaccustomed to being spoken to like that—by Clay of all people—did a double take. His eyes got a little buggy and he tilted his head as though deciding whether he’d heard correctly.
“Did you just...threaten the head of school?” Pindich asked, his lips curling.
“I did not,” Clay replied calmly. “A threat would imply some form of retribution levied against you if you don’t do what I want. I’m just telling you straight. Quit looking at Alexandra like she’s some sort of snack. In fact, don’t look at her at all.”
Pindich turned to me as if to ascertain whether I was on board with Clay’s request. “Works for me,” I replied.
I barely registered the conversation, still so focused on the feel of Clay’s hand wrapped around mine. I hadn’t fully allowed myself to accept how much I’d missed him until now. And now, I just wanted to be alone with him.
“I hope you won’t mind the lost income when we’re forced to downsize the English department next year. I’ve been thinking that these senior seminars are pulling too much from the budget.” Pindich feigned sadness, pulling his lips into an upside-down smile.
Clay took a step closer to Pindich, which highlighted how much taller and more fit he was. He pointed a finger at the principal. “See, now that sounds like a threat.”
Pindich remained calm. “Not at all. Just a fact.”
“A fact. Yeah, okay, I can handle facts.” Clay angled himself so that Pindich was in the shade produced by his towering form. “I’ve collected a few myself from the Hart Law Firm in Knoxville, where the court just unsealed some documents. Seems there were some inappropriate documents with forged signatures passed off as real. In fact, I believe you knew my grandmother, and her estate plan was rewritten several times—I didn’t know you were so tight with her that she almost left you money...”
Pindich paled slightly, but it was barely visible beneath the spray tan. When he swallowed like he was choking down a rock, however, that was abundantly visible. “I don’t know anything about that.”
“You may not, but other people may find it suspicious if they’re pointed to the documents.”
Pindich pressed his lips together and swayed on his feet. “Again, I have no?—”
“Give up the fight. Or I will find every woman you made feel the least bit uncomfortable in the entire county and file a class action lawsuit against you so large it will make your head spin. Starting with the teachers at this school.”
I’d never heard Clay talk to anyone that way, and hearing him level Pindich with those words brought me halfway to orgasm.
“You think you could maybe talk to some folks, find some money in the budget so I can keep my classes going?”
When Pindich found his voice, it was small and raspy. “I know it’s a student favorite.” He turned and made his way back to the dunk tank where I saw the baseball team lining up and ready to bean him.
When I looked back at Clay, he didn’t look smug. He didn’t look broken. He looked calm. “I heard everything you said to me that day on the track. Loud and clear. And now I have something to say to you. You’re mine. You have been from the day we met. I just waited a long fucking time to do something about it. Tell me I didn’t wait too long, Alexandra.”
And that melted my heart.
“You didn’t.”
His eyes went soft, that deeper color that was full of passion and heat, but he said nothing.
“Talk to me, greyhound. What are you thinking?”
His lips quirked to the side in that way I loved. Like they couldn’t help themselves because something brought on some unexpected joy.
“This. You. It’s you.”
“What? What’s me?”
“Everything. The reason I do...everything. The reason it’s worth getting up every day and living.”
My heart flooded with warmth. I hoped he meant that he was starting to believe all the things I’d tried to convince him of and failed.
“It’s not about meds or no meds. It’s about finding something that makes me feel like my true self, and you’re it, Alexandra. You’re my reason.”
And there it was. My fairy tale.
I felt tears prick the corners of my eyes for reasons that had nothing to do with my mom or my dad or my own self-sufficiency. I’d held out for what I wanted and he was standing here in front of me telling me what I wanted to hear—that he believed. Not in me, but in himself. And that made me whole.
“You were right. This version of me—if he’s good enough to love you—he’s good enough.”
I shook my head. “No, that’s not true. You are more than good enough, Clay. You’re the best. Every day. Toward your students, toward me. The only one who hasn’t been getting the benefit of the tremendous gifts you put out into the world is you. You’ve been denying yourself that, and you need to stop.”
He nodded slowly, his eyes drifting shut. “I know.” When he opened them, they were soft. Determined but with grace. “I know. I’m working on that.”
“I think you’re already there,” I whispered.