You and Everything After (5 page)

Paige passed out a few minutes ago, and I catch Nate over Cass’s shoulder, pulling the extra blanket from the box Mom sent, and tucking it under his arm.

“Dude, what are you doing?” I ask, but I already know. Nate looks at the pile of blonde hair and wrinkled silk on his bed, then at the neatly folded quilt in his arms before answering.

“Some shit just ain’t worth it, bro,” he says, grabbing my watch off the side table, which makes my stomach tense. “Gonna need the Tag tonight; have to set the alarm so I don’t miss workouts. I’ll drop it off before I leave.”

“Whatever,” I say, pretending it isn’t a big deal. I’m full of shit, though, and Nate knows it. Kelly gave me that watch, and I never go a day without it on my body.

“Yeah, I’ll still bring it back though,” he smirks, then fastens it to his wrist and quietly tiptoes out the door.

I let my eyes settle back on Cass, and she’s looking at me with what I can only describe as wonder, and it’s making me really fucking uncomfortable. Lying on my back, I flop one arm over my eyes. “Dude, you can’t look at me like that. It’s like…an invasion of privacy or something,” I say, sliding my arm down enough to see that she’s still there. Still staring.

“Stop it!” I tease, pulling the pillow from the corner of my bed and shoving it at her. When I open my eyes the second time, she’s hugging the pillow close to her body, and her stare has only grown more intense, and full of…fuck…I don’t know…
fondness
? “What already?”

“You love your brother,” she says. Not a question; just a statement of fact. All I do is nod
yes
in return, and I’m no longer embarrassed by her attention. She’s right, and I’m glad it shows. When she scoots a little closer to me, I feel my muscles tighten on instinct, and everything in me freezes. It feels like minutes pass, but I know it’s only seconds ticking by before I feel the tickle of her hair along my arm and the warm touch of her hand sliding flat over my chest until she’s completely cradled against me. I need to know what I did to deserve this moment. I need to know so that way as soon as the sun comes up, I can go do it again.

“I know it doesn’t seem like it on the outside, but Paige loves me like that too,” Cass says, her voice a whisper. I’m sure she doesn’t want to wake her sister up, but I saw the amount of shots she put down. I’m fairly confident we could invite a mariachi in to perform, and Paige would sleep straight through.

“You and Paige…are you close?” I ask, my arms still flat against the bed, though I slowly start to let my fingers relax into a curl. At this rate, I may finally get to put my arm around her by sunrise.

“We are. Sort of,” she says, stifling a chuckle. “We’re different. I know, I know—that’s pretty obvious. But we still always have each other’s backs. When Paige wanted to win homecoming queen, I campaigned for her. And when I wanted to come to McConnell, Paige stood up to my parents for me and told them they needed to loosen their grip. That’s really the only reason she’s here, you know. She came to McConnell so they’d have to let me come with her.”

“That’s kind of crappy,” I say, defensive against Cass’s parents, whom I’ve never met, and realize mid-sentence could honestly be lovely people. “I mean…why would they let Paige go away, but not you?”

Cass pauses at my question. She doesn’t even open her mouth to answer for a long time, instead reaching over to touch a loose string on my blanket—her eyes intensely staring at the string while she thinks. When she finally does speak, I can tell part of what she says is a lie. “Paige was always planning on staying in California, and my parents wanted us to both be near home. Empty-nest syndrome or something like that, I guess. But she’s better at standing up to them. She fought them so
I
could go,” she says, keeping her gaze locked on my chest and that damn thread. I play a lot of poker, and I know that if what she just said were really no big deal, I’d be looking into her eyes.

Lying is usually a deal-breaker for me. That’s one thing I don’t do. Do I omit the truth? Yeah, I do that all the time. But I don’t lie. But for some reason, I’m compelled to give her this one. I’m breaking the rules, my rules…
for her.

“So honestly, when do I get to kiss you again?” She laughs at my harsh left turn in our conversation. I love the way she laughs. There’s this rasping sound that comes from deep inside her, showing it’s genuine, and her smile creases deeply into her cheeks.

She flops to her back, and I instantly kick myself for causing her to move away. “You’re really trying to wear me down, aren’t you?” she asks, her hand running along the side of her face until she covers her eyes, peering at me through her barely-spread fingers.

“Wow, well…I’ve never really had to wear anyone down before…” I say, shielding my slightly dented ego.

“And that’s precisely why we need to be friends, and why I can’t kiss you…” she starts, and I interrupt.

“Again,” I say.

“Right, again,” she whispers, and moves her hand back to cover her eyes. I take this opportunity to roll onto my side and really look at her, the way her lips barely part when she breathes, the small twitches they make when she fights against her body’s urge to smile, the tiny movement of her tongue as it wets her lips. I
have
to kiss her again.

“But…and hear me out,” I say, startling her with how close I am. She uncovers her eyes and turns to face me, scooting back a few more inches just to maintain this new self-imposed
safety
distance. “Maybe the fact that I am willing to work so hard just to get you to say
yes
makes you different.”

She stares into my eyes for several long seconds, her lips slightly parted as she considers this. “Am I? Different?” she asks.

“Now see, there’s the catch,” I say, running my thumb softly over the wrinkles in the sheet between us. “I can’t know for certain unless I kiss you again.”

“Oh
really
,” she says, smirking.

“Cross my heart,” I say, motioning my hand across my chest. “It’s in the handbook.”

“There’s a handbook,” she says.

“Uh, duh. There’s
always
a handbook,” I challenge back.

“And your handbook says you can’t tell if I’m worth your time without jamming your tongue down my throat?” she fires back.

“Wow. Again with the word slap,” I say, secretly loving this back-and-forth we’ve got going now.

“Word slap?” she questions.

“Yeah, like, you just bitch-slapped me in the face with your words. Word slap,” I say with a shrug. She holds my gaze after this and bites at the corner of her lip, her eyes squinting as she decides her next move.

“Okay, how’s this,” she says, leaning in a little closer, closing the gap in the invisible barrier she seems to have instituted when I started talking about kissing. “You can kiss me again…” I move toward her on instinct, but she’s quick to put her hand against my chest to stop me. I grip it, tightly, and meet the dare in her eyes. “But not until you mean it.”

There’s a fire in her eyes when she says this—one that I don’t disrespect, and don’t dare cross. It’s not threatening, but it’s serious, and I have this feeling churning in my stomach that Cass Owens is what Nate and I like to call a
game changer
. Her words have my heart racing, my mind worried that I can’t mean it enough, at least not yet. All of our playfulness from seconds before has ceased with this line she’s drawn, and I will obey it.

Holding her gaze, I lift to my mouth her hand I’ve trapped against my body, pressing my lips to her open palm. I don’t speak, and I don’t break our line of sight. But I don’t kiss her, either.

Chapter 5

Ty

My mom’s voice is consuming my ear as Cass slips out of my room with the shyest smile.
Damn.
I wanted to give her a proper goodbye. But that’s the Preeter parents for you. It’s like they have a special alarm that goes off and alerts them when to interrupt the best parts.

When I was a seventh grader, Mom had this way of driving up to pick me up at school right when I was about to get handed the porno mag from the cool kid whose dad kept a boxful under his bed. And in high school, there was no sneaking the Cinemax late-night shows on the big TV. Somehow, Mom would suddenly need to sit in the living room for reading, her back “bothering her in bed.” And Dad’s no better. Though his timing always seems more aloof, he was the king of flipping on the porch light right when your hand was about to find the right place underneath a girl’s shirt.

That’s what happened when my phone chirped at ten this morning. It kept chirping. And I knew it would keep chirping until I picked up. Persistent—that’s Cathy Preeter.

“No, Ma. It’s not too early. I was awake,” I lie. I lie through my teeth. I hate lying, and I’m a total hypocrite now, but Mom doesn’t count. Not when it’s for Cass. Not that my mom would lecture me over having a girl in my bed. ‘Cause hell, this ain’t the first time she’s interrupted
that
! She’d lecture me for wasting my day away, not getting an early start on such a “wonderful morning.” I’d trade in a thousand sunrises to spend another night like that.

“Good, that’s my boy,” she says. I grin at her verbal pat on my head, because I love it when my mother’s proud of me—even if I made up the reason for it today. “Your dad and I are coming in for the game in two weeks. We’ve got the box. Thought it’d be nice to take you boys to dinner. You know, do that parent-spoiling thing a little.”

“Spoiling’s good,” I say, lifting a T-shirt from the floor and sniffing it to make sure it’s
clean enough.
It isn’t. I toss it back into the closet and try the next one, which smells a little less ripe, so I pull it over my head.

“All right. Well, we have extra tickets, so if you—or your brother—you know…have anyone
special
you’d like to invite? We’d love to host them. And have them join us for dinner, of course,” she says, her voice in that super syrupy tone that she started to have the first time I went to a junior high dance. My mom loves the idea of her boys meeting the right girls. She’s a romantic. And it’s always driven me nuts, which is why I never take the bait and
always
show up alone. Every time…except this time. Maybe.
I think
?

“All right, we’ll see,” I shrug her suggestive questioning off because I haven’t asked Cass yet. And I still might not. I feel like I need to
mean it—
like Cass would say—if I were going to toss her into the equation with my parents. And I’m going to need to think that through a little more before I plant the seed in Cathy Preeter’s fairytale imagination.

“Nate, too,” she says, adding that last part because she knows how burned Nate was after his breakup with his high school girlfriend, Sadie. She was a bitch, and she proved me right about her when she cheated on my brother with his best friend.

“Yeah, yeah,” I say. Sometimes, I think my mom forgets that her offspring are men, and we have a low tolerance for the gushy, mushy shit. “Hey, I gotta go, okay? Send cookies. And by cookies, I mean money. Love you!”

“Love you too, Tyson,” she says, and I hold out hope. “Oh, and bake your own cookies…
sweetheart
.”

Damn. Worth a try.

Cass

I have that hopeful grin on my face. I wore it all the way back to our room, and as much as I want to straighten out my lips and come across indifferent when I open our dorm-room door, I can’t. I’m just too…happy.

“Looks like
someone
had a good night,” Paige teases, still primping herself at the mirror. I saw her slip out of Nate and Ty’s room a little before me. I almost left then with her, but it felt too good to be
there
, warmly tucked under his heavy blanket with my back pressed against his chest. He did that thing where a guy strokes a girl’s hair; at least, I think that’s a thing? I read about it, and I’ve seen it on TV and movies. But I’ve never had a guy do that to me. All of my intimate scenarios have been…
less
personal.

I don’t answer Paige, but I don’t lose the grin either. Tossing my shoes to the corner, I pull my backpack from the seat of my desk chair, setting it down on my bed with me so I can start sorting through things and getting ready for class this week. I’m keeping my hands busy, and my mind occupied, because I don’t want Paige to ruin this.

“What are you doing, Cass?”

She’s going to ruin this.

I huff. I literally huff, because the pressure boils in me so fast that it has to come out just as quickly.
Whooosh
, the air blasts through my nose as I shake my head. My sister, the protector—she will never understand. “I like him, Paige,” I say, challenging her with my stare, and waiting for her to tell me about all of his flaws.

“Seriously?” That’s all she can say in return, and the way she’s looking at me makes my stomach sick.

“Paige, unlike you, I don’t rule people out of my life based on superficial physical shit,” I say sternly. I’ve ramped up to pissed off now.

“Oh, fuck you,” she says, surprising me a little that she’s really going to spar with me over this. Raising my eyebrows, I ready myself for one hell of a one-sided debate, but she moves to sit next to me and grabs my ankle, which is folded over my leg in my lap, disarming me.

“I’m
not
talking about the fact that he’s in a wheelchair, Cass. My god, give me a little credit,” she says. I purse my lips tightly, trying to force myself from launching into all of the reasons I shouldn’t give her credit when it comes to how she sees other people. “I’m talking about his rep—everything I’ve heard about Tyson Preeter…the stories
you
have heard. What other girls said at that party. What the sororities said when we took the tour our first day.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I lie.

“Don’t bullshit me, Cass. You like him, but that doesn’t give you a good enough excuse to go blind to everything about him that screams
douchebag
. He’s charming, and then he’s a dick. That’s Tyson Preeter in a nutshell—and I’m sorry, but I’m not going to let him use you like that. You’ve been used enough!”

Her last comment bites. She winces a little when she realizes what she said, and I feel the apology coming.

“I didn’t mean it that way, Cass,” she starts, but I unwrap my headphones and put them in my ears to drown her out. I get it. I was the slut in high school. I’ve got notches on a bedpost, and was voted
most likely to sleep her way to the top
in the unofficial yearbook. But I’ve taken my lumps. Believe me, I’ve felt the wrath of what I did, and Paige has
no idea
how bad things got. My guard is up, and I’m willing to wait for Ty to wear it down—to
earn
it. And I believe he will.

“Cass,” Paige says, tugging one of the ear buds from my head, forcing me to look at her. “I just don’t think he deserves you. That’s all. And I mean it.”

I push my earpiece back in place and quickly return my focus to the class list in my lap, pretending to read. Paige walks back to the mirror and returns her focus to making everything on her perfect. And in my head, I twist the words she said to how I really feel.

“And I don’t think
you
deserve
him.”

An hour ago, I walked out of Ty’s room feeling like the princess in a Disney movie—cartoon birds and butterflies whistling around my head as I tiptoed barefooted along rose petals. Now, I feel dark and sick and ugly. I feel just like the girl I was my senior year of high school—like the girl who let any guy make her feel better, feel special for the
then and now.
It’s the same way with drugs. The high lasts in the moment, and then the lows crash over you after, and the shame becomes so unbearable, you lower your standards to find the high again even faster. I lowered my standards to almost non-existent.

I was popular, and I had such a great story—the star soccer girl who was overcoming the limitations of MS. I was on the shots my senior year, and while they were supposedly helping me to keep the number of MS flare-ups down, they often left me feeling wiped out and tired. But worse than that were the red welts left behind on my stomach, thighs, and arms from the needles. I didn’t mind at first, and was only happy to be rid of the constant worry of a flare-up, when actual cell damage was occurring in my spine and brain. But the summer before our senior year, I joined Paige on a lake trip to Palm Springs. She wore her typical bikini—her body smooth and perfect, and the only thing every guy we came in contact with could look at. I wore board shorts and a long T-shirt, because despite being thin and toned, I knew when guys looked at me, the welts would be the first things they saw.

After that, upon my urging, my parents switched me to the oral meds. And when the popular and hot Jeff Collins started to flirt with me at the end-of-the-summer bonfire down at the beach, I let him take my virginity the same night. I did it because it felt good to be wanted and looked at the way Paige was. When he didn’t call the week after, and started dating someone else as soon as school started, I turned my attention to his best friend Noah, thinking I would make Jeff jealous. I waited a week before I slept with him. And then I waited—waited for word to get back to Jeff, for Jeff to get jealous, for the both of them to fight over me and want me to be
theirs.
That fight never happened—they both moved on, leaving me behind. The pattern of making myself feel loved and wanted by being easy became an addiction, until it almost ruined my life.

Maybe Paige is right. Maybe I’m falling into old habits. Being in Ty’s arms, being the object of his desire—it feels good. But maybe that’s not enough.

I’m absorbed in my own doubt and thoughts when I hand my student ID over to the woman at the front desk at the rec center. The beeping sound, when she passes it under the scanner, finally wakes me from my trance.

“Back so soon?” Ty’s voice comes from behind me, like the finger of the devil scratching at my soul and beckoning me to come to him.

“What can I say? I’m dedicated to my workouts,” I say, not turning fully to look at him, not wanting to get locked under his spell.

“Well, I don’t have any clients for the rest of the day. How about we workout together? Maybe get started on your conditioning?” he asks. He’s actually serious about training me, and the hungry competitor deep inside is even more attracted to him because of this.

“You were serious?” I ask, allowing myself to turn to face him. He’s wearing a black ball cap turned backward and a gray T-shirt that’s tight enough to curve with every peck and ab muscle on his torso. He’s also wearing black sweats with a white stripe down the side of each leg, and I realize I’ve never actually seen his bare legs. He even wore his sweatpants to sleep last night.

“I know my body’s hot, baby, but if you wanna touch it all you have to do is ask,” he smirks, and I flush red now that I realize exactly how long I’ve been staring at him
.

“Didn’t we have a conversation about this whole you calling me
baby
thing?” I change the subject.

“That’s right. You hate babies,” he says, and I laugh on instinct. I hate that he makes me laugh so easily. And I love it.

“I’m just going to get in a quick workout. Really, I won’t be here long,” I say, caught somewhere between wanting him to take my hint and let me go—and wanting him to challenge it, to challenge me.

“Chicken,” he says, and my tummy fires up with giddiness that he’s chosen door number two.

“I’m so
not
chicken. And oh my god, could you be more of a third-grader?” I ask. He’s followed me to the cubbies by the weight room. I push my small gym bag into one of the shelves, not even bothering to get out my iPod, because I’m totally transparent; I want Ty to stay and talk to me.

“I’m an awesome third-grader. That was my favorite grade. First kiss, class clown, record number of detentions. Yeah, I was
king
in third grade. So, are we conditioning or what?” he says, getting right back to his point without pause. He stares into me, his eyes taking a brief second or two to roam down to my waist before coming back to my face. I can feel my lips tug at the corner wanting to mimic the smirk he’s giving me. We’re flirting, and it feels good. But Ty’s
also messing
with my biggest weakness by dangling the soccer carrot out there in front of me like that. And I may not be strong enough to refuse his challenge—no matter the shit storm it will cause with my parents.

“What did you have in mind?” I relent, and his smirk grows into a full-blown smile.

Ty pulls a folded paper from his pocket and flattens it against his chest before handing it to me. I can’t help but gawk at his chest muscles for a split second before bringing my attention back to the paper. It’s a workout plan, a good one, completely customized to me. My heart melts that he’s serious about turning me back into a competitor—so serious he spent time and energy devising a plan. My muscles actually jolt with a tiny charge, the familiar desire of wanting to push myself settling deep inside me. But there’s also a faint stabbing sensation in my side, the one that comes from responsibility.

“I want to do this,” I say, sucking in my bottom lip, and holding my breath, trying to stave off the sting of tears in my eyes because I miss soccer so goddamned badly. “But I just can’t.”

I fold the paper along the same creases and toss it back to him, but he only stares at it in his lap, snickering once.

“Seriously, Ty. That time…
my time.
That part of my life is over. I can’t work at that level any more,” I say. I don’t even realize I’ve started to chew on my thumbnail until Ty reaches up and pulls my hand away from my face, tucking the workout plan back inside my fist.