Again (14 page)

Carter

I stuck a thumbtack into the sign-up
sheet for the annual SPCA volunteer day, making room for it among the other
flyers and notes, and turned to glance at Kate walking into the lobby. She
seemed tired, but still had the determination in her stride that made me notice
her in the first place. An uber-confident body language screaming
if you
don’t like it, get the hell out of my way.

I understood being tired. The kind she
must be feeling. When you’re trying so hard to do right, to be the kind of
person you wish you could be, but everyone around you is pulling you down. Or
at least, no one is holding you up.

It was one thing to tell myself I needed
to stay away from her. It was another to do it. Kissing her opened a door I
didn’t want to close. I’d closed so many doors over the past three years it was
good to finally let someone in, to have someone who’d wanted to come in.

She noticed me and her stride quickened.
Her high heeled boots clicked against the tile as fast as a deer scrambling
away—
tap, tap, tap
.

I didn’t blame her. I knew all about
trying to avoid the sickly cold sting of silence from someone you thought
actually cared. The exhaustion of trying to pretend you didn’t give a shit what
they thought, of trying to act like you didn’t need them, the heaviness of
giving them the out.

I had the power not to let her walk by.
I didn’t have to be like the people I’d always needed to avoid.

“Big plans tonight, Kate?” I asked, loud
enough she’d have to notice. I leaned against the bulletin board, the backside
of the tacks sticking into my shoulder blades.

Something flicked on, changed behind her
eyes. Surprise. Gratitude. Relief. She’d thought I was going to ignore her. Be
the kind of person I’d had to deal with for years.

“Bigger than studying, you mean?” Her
face split into a wide grin.

“You’re not studying on a Friday night,
are you?” I asked, even though if she hadn’t walked in, that is exactly what I
would have done.

“Are you trying to ask me out or
something?” She cocked her bag on one shoulder, took off her silly cat ear hat
and shook the snow out of her blond hair.

There were feet between us, an expanse
much larger than the night we’d kissed. Her words brought me right back to the
closeness. Her touch had awakened something in me I’d thought, before I met her,
might never return.

My body was uneven with her question
hanging there, transforming me from cold immovable stone into someone
scrambling for anything to hold on to. She was so direct. It was unnerving and
sexy and, having lived surrounded by lies for so long, a lot like air.

I stepped toward her and breathed it in,
vowing to be as real as she was. I steadied myself, prepared to meet her beat
for beat. “No, I was wondering if I would need to come and rescue you again.” I
smiled my best flirty smile.

Okay fine, maybe it wasn’t exactly what
I should have said,
Yes, I am asking you out.
I want to kiss you
again
,
I don’t want to ever forget what happened between us,
but I would
get there. Reminding her about that night was enough for now.

“Oh, so do I have you on retainer now?”
she asked, her fingers tightening around her bag. Her nails were painted with
silver glitter, glistening like the snow still melting off her purple jacket.

She could have told me to fuck off. A
lot of people would have, but not Kate. She kept right on swinging, right on
reminding me why I needed to be near her.

“Retainer,” I said, my smile saturating
my face as I walked even closer, “look at you with the law terms.”

It was clear she knew a lot more than
she should about the law, she’d said as much when she left me in the library
the other night. I could have asked her why. But that was far less interesting
than what I hoped was about to happen. What I hoped I’d finally be able to make
happen.

She tapped her forehead with her pointer
finger. “Cramming them in there as fast as I can.” She pushed out her bottom
lip. A lip I’d bitten, sucked on, and wanted to do a hell of a lot more to. Her
brown eyes filled with so much they seemed black, like universes. She blinked;
dark lashes hit white skin as soft as a whisper.

I tried not to show any signs of my nervousness.
My heart ticked up like a helicopter in my chest preparing for takeoff. A cold
sweat covered my skin. If I said the wrong thing I would lose her. Not forever,
but in this instance I had to be exactly who she needed me to be.

Kate wasn’t the kind of person who would
deal with only half of what she needed from someone.

“Then maybe you don’t need to study,
maybe you could do something a lot more fun,” I said. Just looking at her brought
the truth out of me. The real person I longed to be.

“I could go to a party with Alex and
Steph,” she started, focusing on her boots, “but…”

I knew what she was fighting. How
everything here could push you into being someone you hated just because it
felt good for the moment.

“But,” I replied, pausing like I was
considering how she might end her sentence, “they’re kind of bitches.”

She smiled. “Not what I was going to
say.”

“So tell me what you were going to say.”

“Tell me what
you
were going to
say,” she pressed.

The helicopter was in my throat,
whopping blades making it hard for me to breathe. “You could go to the party,
or you could have dinner with me instead.”

“So you
are
asking me out?”

“Would you want to go to dinner with me
if I asked you?”

“No offense, Carter, but you kind of
suck at this,” she said, laughing, a genuine grin overtaking her features.

My cheeks filled with heat, I forced myself
to stay calm. She wasn’t saying no. She was saying yes. She was telling me to
ask her in a way so that she could finally say
yes
.

“Kate, would you like to go out to dinner
with me?”

She watched me for a moment, words
seemingly collecting on her lips like dew before she finally said, “I would
love to.”

Kate

I walked
down the long dorm hallway toward Carter’s room. It would have been easy to take
Alex and Steph’s invitation, to lose myself in the night. I’d done it plenty of
times before. Getting lost was easy; being with Carter was hard in a good way.

He
demanded more from me, and it was nice for a change to have someone believe I
was capable of offering it. I liked when Carter rescued me, but I didn’t need
him to.

I
would be the person he knew I could be.

Though
honestly, if I hadn’t taken his invitation, I probably would have gone to the
party. I could lock myself in my room, but even being strung up like Houdini
wouldn’t be strong enough to fight the temptation of alcohol.

Being
with him, however, was. Sure, I had my rules, but when I’d made them I hadn’t counted
on meeting someone like Carter—someone who was actually good for me.

I
knocked on his door and smoothed down my red cowl-neck sweater. When it came to
him, it was time to be a matador.

He
swung the door open, his gaze sliding from my boots to the top of my braided
hair.

“What?”
I asked. Maybe the red was a little too much.

“I’m
trying to figure out if you’re coming with me or blowing me off,” he said,
putting his hands in his back pockets. His chest bulged under his ivory cable-knit
sweater, his delicious hips slanted on one side.

“If
I was blowing you off, I wouldn’t be here, would I?”

“So
that means you wouldn’t give me the courtesy of a heads up I would be eating
dinner alone?” He put his hand against his heart in feigned indignity.

I
could tell he liked the balance of power having shifted. I was here, knocking
on his door waiting for him.

 “Can
we go before I do change my mind?” I asked, attempting to get some control
back.

“Maybe
I already changed mine,” he smirked.

Guess
that wasn’t going to happen. “Okay,” I said, trying to keep up the joke as I
moved to pull his door closed.

“Nah,”
he said stopping me, grabbing his coat, “I’m still hungry.”

We
took the stairs down. Our feet pounded on the cement, making an echo like a
chant as we walked down to the ground level. Carter was a half a flight ahead
of me.

“I
get the feeling you don’t want people to know we’re leaving together,” I said,
trying to catch my breath.

“It’s
none of their business, and you know the whole ‘I’m your RA’ thing.” He turned
to smile at me, but there was something else, the need to keep what we were
doing as something just ours—a protectiveness.

“At
least I’m getting my exercise before dinner,” I said, my heart beating so fast
I tasted metal.  

If
this was how a date would have started back in New York, I would not have been
so agreeable. Of course, we were actually going out, something rare for me when
I had been with David.

“There
will be dinner, but we need to make one stop first,” he said.

“Are
you going to tell me where?”

“I
don’t think you’ll come if I do,” he said, bounding down ahead of me.

“You
are quite the charmer,” I laughed. Carter knew he didn’t need to charm me. He
already had.

It
was snowing even heavier when we got outside—big, fat flakes coming down without
a break like lace tablecloths hung from the sky.

“You
sure you still want to go out in this?” I asked, the snow pricking my face.

“I
don’t do rain checks,” he said, opening the passenger side door of his black
Jeep. It was already cleaned off. He must have come out earlier and done it. He
was either insanely confident I wouldn’t blow him off or had some nervous
energy to burn. Probably a little of both. Even arrow-hot confidence had a
tinge of fear underneath.

“I’ll
remember that,” I said, buckling up.

We
drove out of the lot. The road was covered in so much snow the truck bumped
along like we were driving over rocks. We headed down the hill and away from the
dorm, through the quiet, empty quad. Everything was suffocated by white.

It
might have been too crappy a night for even Alex and Steph to venture out. I
wasn’t sure. I
hadn’t
given them the courtesy of telling them I wasn’t
going with them, mostly because I didn’t want to give them the chance to try
and convince me otherwise.

“You’re
seriously not going to tell me where we’re going before dinner?” I asked.

“We’ll
be there soon,” he said, his Jeep sliding slowly down the street.

It
was the first time I’d been off campus since I arrived at Hudson. Snow-covered
trees lined the highway like vanilla ice cream cones. Kingston, well anywhere,
was so much more wooded than the city. So much more open, but not more alive. No
place else had the energy of New York, but trying to sustain that energy,
trying to stay one step ahead of it, could destroy you.

I
shook my head. I could blame anything on my past, but the choice was always
mine. Just like the choice to come with Carter tonight had been.

For
once, I didn’t think I would regret it.

 He
sat back in the seat, his hands soft on the wheel. He knew exactly where we
were going, had been there so many times it was automatic.

Where the hell was he taking me?

If
it were anyone else I’d be freaked out, but Carter had proven himself to be the
antithesis of creepy, regardless of the nickname Steph and Alex had given him.
He could have slept with me and he didn’t. That said something about him.

Of
course, sitting alone in a car with him, I realized I knew very little. Every
conversation so far had been about me or about Professor Parker’s class. I knew
he didn’t drink because of his freshman year, but that was it.

Well,
and that his father was an asshole and a lawyer. This appeared to be a pattern.