Chapter 26 Clover
Clover
On Monday night at the library, I am exiled to the top floor where the only lights are motion activated and where books go to die.
I step off the elevator with an empty cart and a massive list of call numbers for books that need to be pulled from the shelves because they are too old, no longer relevant, or a combination of both. The bold font at the top of the page reads: BOOKS TO WEED.
Things with Bennett aren’t just magically better.
I feel less anxious around him, but we are not suddenly fixed.
It’s not our past that I feel myself holding on to.
In fact, forgiving him out loud was easier than I thought.
But I can’t stop thinking about every girl before me and how they compare. Were they thinner? Wealthier? Taller?
I know it’s unreasonable. He doesn’t owe me the details of his past. The fact that both of us have agreed not to get involved with other people right now is a courtesy more than anything. But I feel caught off guard and gullible.
The lights above flicker on as I push the cart down an aisle, looking for some local history texts. My finger passes over each label as I scan for call numbers starting with nine four one.
I make it through three rows of shelves before my brain is circling the drain again.
I don’t want to feel this way. My eyes burn with the threat of tears.
Without fully meaning to, I spent the last three years keeping careful boundaries around myself and only ever feeling anything in small, rationed measures.
Now, I don’t know what to do with all this unfiltered, raw emotion.
The elevator on the other side of the floor chimes as the door opens. The lights in the ceiling tiles come to life as someone walks up the neighboring row.
My heart hiccups in my chest. Please don’t be a murderer.
“Clover?”
He’s here.
I have to remind myself that I am still upset.
“What are you doing here?” I hiss, searching for a window in the stacks so that I can see him.
Bennett’s head darts into view and since I’m on my step stool, we stand eye to eye. It reminds me so much of Midnight Yell. “I came to walk you back to the dorm. Like I said I would.”
I check the time on my phone before putting it back in the pocket of my skirt. “I still have forty-five minutes left in my shift.”
His lip twitches as he tries to disguise a smile. “I guess it’s a good thing I like books.”
“Whatever. I have work to do. Go entertain yourself.” I step down and slide the stool over before mounting it again with my list at the ready. “Or maybe you can find a warm body to do that for you.” Okay, that was unnecessary, but I never claimed to be mature.
“Oh, we’re going to play this.” The lights start up again as Bennett walks down his aisle and turns the corner onto mine.
The numbers on my paper blur together like a lost language as he approaches, but my finger never stops running over spines. I cannot let him make me feel this way. He takes up so much space in my brain and heart.
“You’re still mad.” His voice is suddenly behind me, and I’m pretty sure that if I turned around, he would be right about at boob height.
I pull a random book down called Deadly Outlaws of Oregon and open it to a random page as I pretend to be on some official library mission.
Strong, elegant fingers reach around my shoulder to pluck the book away from me before placing the title on the cart.
“Hey! I’m going to have to reshelve that,” I tell him.
“I’ll help you,” he promises. “I’ll even reach up there so that you don’t have to get back on your little booster stool.”
I turn around, huffing a bit as I do. “There is nothing little about my stool.”
“Uh-huh.” He’s very close, and even though I don’t fall, he holds his arms out just in case. “It’s a very big stool,” he tells me. “Do you think the smaller stools go around saying it’s not the size of the boat; it’s the motion in the ocean because of how big your stool is?”
“Are you comparing my stool to a dick?”
He lights up with a delighted grin. “Clover Rowan Walsh, how vulgar of you to assume such a thing.”
I roll my eyes and bite down on my lips so I don’t smile. “I need to get back to work.” Holding on to this anger feels so much easier than the alternative.
He glances at my sheet and then back to me. “I don’t think those books are going anywhere. And we need to talk, Clover.”
I suck in a deep breath and he steps closer so that there’s no space between us. His hands move to my waist. Every other light has turned off and it’s only us in this small puddle of light.
“You’re mad at me,” he says, his chest pressed against my thighs and abdomen and his face tilted up to me, the sharp edge of the knot in his throat bobbing.
The silly furrow in my brow gives me away. He reaches up and uses his thumb to smooth the wrinkle like he can erase every worry. I wish it were that simple. I want it to be that simple.
He narrows his eyes and doesn’t speak again until he’s certain he has my attention. “Let me be abundantly clear. I am not sleeping with anyone, and I haven’t since we got married. Even then, there hadn’t been anyone since I left campus in May.”
A small bit of relief loosens the tense ache in my chest. “Fine,” I say. “But you can do whatever or whomever you want.”
“But that’s not actually true, is it?” He doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t utter another word. Not until I respond.
I swallow hard and then shake my head once.
He traces my collarbone and then his touch tickles along the side of my neck until his fingers are pushing through my hair, cradling the base of my head. “We’re shit at communicating. But I need you to hear me when I tell you that I can’t stand the thought of you with anyone else.”
I want to ask him if he will still mean that after this semester, when this unholy union ends in divorce, but I’m not nearly brave enough.
He rocks forward and rests his head against my abdomen so that I am acutely aware of how heavily I’m breathing.
How can I expect myself not to touch him? When he’s right here, clinging to me.
My fingers card through his thick brown hair, and he practically inhales me, his arms squeezing tight around my middle as I drag my nails over the nape of his neck. His grip loosens and then one hand is ghosting over my hips until he reaches the hem of my skirt.
The blue of his irises is different from mine.
His are deep and bottomless, reminding me so much of a lake we visited as children with our moms, tucked away in the mountains of Washington surrounded by a formidable wall of ancient trees.
His lashes kiss as he blinks up at me, his hand sliding up the back of my thigh.
A not-so-subtle gasp pulls into my lungs. My blood is pumping a chaotic symphony as I wonder if I was mistaken in skipping tights in favor of the slouchy wool of the knee socks I chose today. Maybe it would have been easier to stop this before it turns into something that can’t be undone.
“You are mouthwatering,” he whispers. “Do you know how incredibly difficult it was to behave when I had you in my lap a week ago?”
His confession is contagious, and the feel of him is dizzying and calming and leaves me wanting to say every true thing I’ve ever thought. “I’m jealous,” I whisper. “I was and I think I always will be, and I’m so fucking angry at you for making me feel that way.”
His hand continues to stroke my thigh, moving higher with every pass until his palm is on my ass and one side of my skirt is bunched up around his wrist.
I don’t want to talk anymore. I want us to be lips and hands and teeth, but if I don’t just say this, I might let it fester until the jealousy is bigger than anything I can control.
“And it’s silly,” I continue, “because how bizarre is it to be jealous of people you hooked up with at a time when you weren’t even in my life? ”
“It’s not silly.” He is genuine and seems to come from a place of absolute understanding.
“I have no claim over you,” I tell him. “And our marriage isn’t even real.”
“It feels pretty real to me right now.”
That sends my heart galloping, because what if? What if this really was it?
“Has there been anyone else for you?” His voice is throaty and demanding. “Before me?”
I nod slowly. “Two other guys. One from high school and one from the weekend I toured campus. Just them, though.”
“I. Hate. Them.” He makes a strangled noise. “I hate them for touching my wife.”
Those two words sink into me like sharp canines, turning what had been a gentle, swirling sense of desire into something more urgent and—
His fingers knead into me and the smallest of moans slips past my lips.
I felt so brazen that night at the party. It was all liquid courage, of course. But it had felt so simple. I wanted him. His body seemed to want me back.
But now, the jumble of emotions is messy and unsure. I spent so many hours today imagining all the things he found desirable about every person he’d been with.
The self-doubt running through my brain comes to a halt as he brings his other hand to my ass and uses the leverage to lift me, forcing my legs around him as my body slithers down until I’m seated against his waist.
“Ben—”
The rest of his name is lost to the collision of our lips, his tongue rolling against mine in a bruising kiss.
I wrap my hands around his neck and relish the pleasure of his hard abdomen between my legs.
He spins us around and my back is pressed into the other side of the stacks.
My ass rests partially on the edge of a shelf.
It gives me enough leverage to shamelessly rock against him, the contact sending a shudder through my body.
“Fuck,” he gasps into my mouth.
My two prior sexual encounters were very … to the point, and neither included anything that was remotely satisfying for me. Now I am drunk on the possibility of there being more to sex.