Chaste (14 page)

I’m not sure I like where this is going. Did I embarrass myself by saying something stupid or what? I sigh. Kat’s fingers on my hand feel unbelievably good. There’s nothing sexual about the way she’s touching me, instead it feels like she’s trying to smooth away my stress, like on some level she actually cares. Gently, I tug my hand away from hers. If I’m going to lose my head over a girl, it’d better not be Pastor Jackson’s daughter.

She flashes me a mischievous smile. “I’d no idea you wanted a tattoo, but John didn’t seem nearly as surprised. He helped me take you to
Patriot’s Tattoo and Piercing
. Your back isn’t sore, is it?”

She touches the spot between my shoulder blades. I can’t tell if she’s kidding or serious. Don’t tattoo shops at least need a signature before doing something so … permanent? The spot between my shoulder blades starts tingling, and I’m not so sure. Flustered, I march to the mirror, pull off my shirt and stare at the two ridges of muscle that meet in the center of my back.

22

Katarina

Okay, so maybe I shouldn’t have lied about the tattoo, but I wanted to see him without his shirt. And knowing Quinn I couldn’t just ask. Not without him giving me one of his wounded I-can’t-believe-you-just-asked-that looks. God forbid I should offend his delicate sensibilities. The boy leaves me no choice.

Fortunately, he’s too worried about what is or isn’t on his back to notice me ogling his nicely sculpted arms, defined chest and solid stomach. Looking that good has got to be a sin. I should be grateful no one’s told that to Quinn Walker.

What I want is to kick aside the mound of clothes on his floor, walk around his bed and touch those muscles of his. I take a deep breath and remind myself that if I want to win the bet and keep my camera, getting him to let down his guard is essential. He needs to trust me as much as he does Molly, which means I need to do this slowly. Make him depend on me, convince him we have similar goals.

I take a breath at the same time he does. The lines around his mouth relax.

My heart pumps hard, but I play it cool to keep from doing something stupid that will ruin my chances. He let me come into his room, I remind myself. That’s progress. He let me hold his hand. More progress. Hell, he even stood half naked in front of me. So what if I cheated on that one. He still did it, didn’t he?

I pick up his shirt and toss it back to him. “I’m hurt that you thought I was serious. You have to know I respect you more than that.”

Respect
, it’s the same word Mike used to get me into bed. The feeling he said he’d always have for me whether or not I slept with him. The trump card that convinced me to give up my virginity. I wince inside.

John’s words pop into my head, “Mike sweet-talked you into sleeping with him. Then he treated you like shit. Now you plan to do the same thing to Quinn
.
”

But Mike was never slow
, I tell John’s voice. I’m going to be nice to Quinn. Patient.
I glance at the mess of papers on his desk.

“So your sister’s the one who keeps the house clean?” I ask, trying to keep the conversation light.

“Amy’s a bit of a neat freak,” he says before grabbing a clean shirt and jeans from his dresser. “I … um, need to take a shower.”

His back is to me, so I can’t see his face. But I bet he’s totally red. What’s he afraid of anyway? That I’ll offer to take the shower with him? Come to think of it, that might not be so bad.

As Mr. Nice walks past me, I imagine him singing to his soap dish, warm water running down his back and pooling around his naked toes. I’d bet every scrap of my mother’s over-valued junk that he’s the shower-singing type.

23

Quinn

I‘m not sure what to think of Kat as I step into my kitchen with a clean shirt, bare feet and hair still wet from the shower. Her back is to me as she opens the oven with a mitted hand and grabs a plate of bacon.

I hear a beep as she turns off the timer and puts the plate on the counter with a clink. Steam curls up from the warm meat, fogging up the window next to the stove. If anyone’d asked me if Kat were domestic before, I would’ve said no with resounding force. Now, um, I see how wrong I was.

“So,” I say, my voice dripping with sarcasm. “You fixed me breakfast out of the goodness of your heart?”

Maybe it’s bad, but I just can’t believe there isn’t more to this. Last night she accused me of sleeping around, and now she’s being all nice. It doesn’t make sense.

She turns and throws a pot holder at me.

I smile.
There’s the girl I know.

“I thought that baby was yours,” she mumbles as she edges around me, a bowl of scrambled eggs in one hand, a gallon of milk in the other. “So please disregard what I said last night. It was stupid the way I jumped to conclusions.”

The bowl makes a scraping sound as she puts it down on the table. She’s looking at the floor, like apologizing is new to her.

Maybe it is.

I pull out the chair beside her. “Sit,” I say. “I’ll help you finish up breakfast.”

Any reasonable girl would thank me, take a load off and relax. But Kat isn’t reasonable.

“No.
You
sit,” she says, crossing her arms over her stomach. “You take care of too many people already.”

My jaw drops. Hold on a second! Helping me I can deal with, pitying me, not so much.

“Poor, Quinn Walker,” I quip. “Blessed beyond what one man can handle. He has a clever sister, a hard-working mother, a trusting father and a precious nephew. However can he stand it?”

“I didn’t say you were poor,” she says, angling up her chin.

“Then why are you here?” I snap.

Honestly, I don’t know what’s come over me. Kat’s being nice. She brought me home, let me sleep and fixed me breakfast. That bacon smells amazing and my mouth is watering just thinking about it. So if anything, I should be grateful. Instead I get the feeling she has some ulterior motive.

I remember how my mother forgave our neighbors after they stole our cable, then invited them over for dinner after paying hundreds of dollars in fees to the cable company. She’d tell me to give Kat a second chance.

“Forgive me,” I say. “For being so cross. What I meant to say was … thank you.”

The words prickle in my throat as I sit down at the kitchen table. Good people are thankful for what they receive. They squash their doubts and are courteous.

I know better.

“It’s fine,” she says in a quivering voice.

Her reaction is so un-Kat-like, I don’t know what to make of it. Isn’t this the precise moment she’s supposed to hurl back some biting insult? I look at her, and she looks right back, not bothering to shield her wounded eyes. Something heavy settles on my chest. Guilt.

I glance at the gallon of milk on the table. “No. I was a jerk.”

This is the part where I prepare for her to point out my hypocrisy, tell me how flawed I am and what a pretentious know-it-all my religion has made me. It’s a predictable speech I’ve heard half a dozen times. More if you count Kat’s lecture on the bleachers. Instead I hear the scrape of a plate on the counter and the clatter of dishes on the table.

When I look up, she’s removing the apron and placing it over the back of her chair. She wipes her forehead with a paper napkin, tosses it into the trash and pulls her T-shirt off over her head.

I freeze, dumbstruck.
What’s she doing?
Then I see the tank top under her shirt and let out a sigh of relief. It’s hard enough to keep my eyes on Kat’s face when she goes around wearing low cut tops. She folds up her T-shirt, puts it on the counter, walks over to where I’m sitting and points to the bacon.

“One strip or two?” she asks, standing so her chest is in front of my face.

I feel it now, the drool in the corner of my mouth. There’s a niggling voice in the corner of my consciousness telling me to look at her eyes, but all I see in that moment is the word
LOVE
stretched across her breasts in big gold letters. Would someone explain to me why—if girls want guys to look at their eyes—they wear tight shirts with giant letters blazoned across their chests?

“Quinn?”

I’m staring. And if I try to talk, chances are I’ll stutter. So I blink, “Huh?”

“Do you like it?” she asks, pulling at the chain around her neck until a gold cross rises from the space between her breasts. She wants me to look at the jewelry, the flat pounded edges of the metal when all I want to do is see her round perky naked boobs.
Bad Quinn!

I force my eyes up to her face. Kat is grinning as if oblivious to my ogling. And then, as if uttered by a stranger, I hear the stupidest words known to man exit my mouth.

“They … uh … um … it’s
perfect.”

“But I thought Mormons didn’t like crosses. There isn’t a cross on the church on Sydenstricker Road, just a rocket-shaped spire.”

She twirls the cross between her fingers before running the tip along the neckline of her tank top.

Speaking of rockets, I haul myself closer to the table to keep her from seeing mine. Then I grab a strip of bacon as I try to remember what she just said—something about spires, crosses, steeples. Does she want to know how we can call ourselves Christians when we don’t display the cross?

“Rather than focusing on Jesus’ death, we focus on his resurrection.”

“Hmm,” she says, sitting in the chair opposite mine. “Do you celebrate Easter?”

“Of course.”

She runs a finger along the curve of her silverware, forward and back, down the length of her spoon. When she flashes me a smile, dimples crinkle in the corners of her mouth. They make her look childlike, innocent even. Despite evidence to the contrary, I want to believe she’s flirting because she likes me. So what if I don’t run in the same crowd. That doesn’t mean it’d never work. We could agree to accept our differences, couldn’t we? Kat is smart, beautiful and interesting. My parents would be crazy not to like her. Okay, so maybe my mother would be wary. But she’s not here and besides, my mom always tells me not to judge, to be kind to everyone, not to hide from the world in order to stick by my standards.

I stuff another piece of bacon into my mouth. You never know how amazing food tastes until you’ve gone without it for a good long time.

“You like it?” Kat asks.

“It’s delicious.” I spoon some scrambled eggs on my plate, cooked as if by an expert without burned spots or crusty brown bits.

It seems unreal that she’s done this for me, that anyone has done this for me. For the first time in years, I smile from the inside.
Kat cooking? Kat taking care of me?
Kat? Who knew?

I put a forkful of eggs in my mouth and feel my whole face pucker like a prune.

24

Katarina

Damn!
I can’t believe I screwed up scrambled eggs.

Quinn’s eyes start watering as he grabs his glass of milk. And do you know what’s sad? He can’t even tell me they’re bad; instead he smiles and assures me the eggs are fine as if I won’t notice how quickly he stops eating them, or even how fast he stuffs the next piece of bacon into his mouth. I could almost believe the lie if it weren’t written all over his face, etched into the lines around his mouth, the ruddy spots on his cheeks.

Things were going so well too.

He’d looked at me, finally looked at me like a warm-blooded, flesh and bone woman. And then there was that genuine grin that lit up his face three seconds before my cooking ruined it.

I pick up a piece of egg, pop it into my mouth, and then spit the salt bomb into a napkin.

“I followed Betty Crocker’s recipe to a tee,” I say, reaching for a glass of milk. “One teaspoon for six eggs.”

“The teaspoon on the counter?” Quinn asks, pointing to the plastic spoon I left beside the bowl. His eyes glint like he knows something.

I nod.

“That’s a tablespoon.”

I glance at Quinn and expect to see the same gloating grin Mike flashes me whenever I make a mistake, but if anything Quinn’s smile is empathetic.

“You must think I’m an idiot,” I say, feeling self-conscious.

“Don’t be silly. We can always make more.”

Without waiting for my reply, he gets up from his chair and opens the refrigerator. I hear him moving things around in there, humming some classical piece under his breath. After a few seconds, he takes out a carton of eggs, a box of butter and a container of maple syrup.

“Syrup for eggs?” I ask, pushing my chair back from the table.

It makes no sense that I’m feeling squeamish. Am I having second thoughts? This is what I want, isn’t it? For Quinn to trust me like he trusts Molly? There’s no denying I’ve made headway this morning. You’d think I’d be happy. Instead I stand on shaking legs while twirling the braided gold ring on my pinky finger.

My father gave me this ring a month after Roland died at the suggestion of my then-psychologist, who believed if I attached my parent’s love to a physical object, I wouldn’t miss their presence.

Stupid head doctors. Like an object can ever replace a person. If he’d thought the ring would remind me of my brother that would’ve made more sense. Everyone knows you can’t hug a ghost, let alone feel close to one. But parents are different. They’re supposed to be supportive, always there … except when they’re not. Unconditional love is a myth.

“I want to make waffles. You’ll let me cook, won’t you?” Quinn asks. He pulls open a cupboard and takes down a red box of pancake mix.

He must think I’m the most incompetent cook on the planet if he’s volunteering to do the work for me. “Yeah, go ahead. Cooking isn’t my thing,” I say in a brittle voice that’s inadequate to cover my wounded pride.

He puts the box down and turns to look at me. Not just at me, through me. Our eyes meet for a full five seconds and I swear he can see the real me. The one I’ve hidden and guarded with my life, the one with the weaknesses I refuse to show.

“So you had a little measuring mix-up. I’ve done worse. Tell you what,” he says, squeezing my arm to reassure me. “I’ll heat up the waffle iron if you mix up the batter.”