“You guys,” I said, reaching out to catch Lacey’s elbow. “We need to be out of here by ten at the absolute latest.”
They all nodded and said they swore they’d meet back at the car in an hour so we wouldn’t get caught when it came time for bed check.
I breathed a sigh of relief as I watched them leave. The curfew was actually a good thing tonight because it meant we couldn’t get into too much trouble. One hour was hardly enough time for my friends to go crazy, and all I had to do was watch from the sidelines and make sure they were all right.
Of course, that was easier said than done inside the eardrum-rattling house. I only lasted a few minutes before I headed out back where a keg sat on the patio, surrounded by a group who looked like they’d already been partaking. I saw steps leading down toward a backyard and headed in that direction when I heard his voice behind me.
“There you are,” Noah said. His tone was sharp but when I spun around and saw him veering toward me, his expression said he was relieved. And angry.
God, it looked like he’d stormed out here just to scold me…again.
“Of course I’m here,” I snapped. My earlier reminder to be kind and understanding was fading fast as he glowered down at me. “I told you I was coming.”
He scowled. “You shouldn’t be here, Callie.”
“Why?” I shot back. “Because I’m too young? Because I’m just a kid?” Without thinking I reached out and gave his chest a little shove.
Big mistake. I didn’t hurt him, I knew that much—we roughhoused all the time up until he left for college and a little shove wasn’t going to injure this guy. But his eyes narrowed dangerously at my touch, and his blue eyes looked dark. Though maybe that was just because he was backlit by the porch light.
Still, I found myself rubbing my arms as a shiver ran through me. There was a shift in the atmosphere between us.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said again, his voice slower and deeper. “Because you’re still in high school, and—”
I gave a little snort of derision. “Oh please, you partied more than anyone I know when you were in high school.”
His nostrils flared. “And you have practice in the morning, and—”
“I won’t miss practice,” I said. “You know better than anyone that I’d never put my game at risk.”
He glowered down at me.
“I’ll be home and in bed by my usual time.” I was annoyed with myself for justifying my actions, as if I owed him any explanations.
“You snuck off campus tonight?” It was a damning condemnation masked as a question.
I crinkled my nose up in confusion. “Yeah, so? It’s basically tradition. All the counselors look the other way as long as you’re back in time and don’t get in trouble.”
He shook his head and his patronizing air made me clench my fists, battling the rage I’d thought I’d overcome.
“It’s team bonding,” I snapped, hating the fact that I was still justifying myself. I opened my mouth to justify my actions some more but stopped myself with a little shake of my head. Instead, I planted my hands on my hips and tilted my chin up so I could meet his glare. “What is this really about?” I demanded.
But I knew.
He resented me. He was jealous of what I had, and the thought that he could be so resentful of me that he could treat me like this hurt like hell.
If he would just admit it, if we could just talk about it like friends…
But rather than admit anything—rather than talk to me like a freakin’ grownup and hash it out—he shook his head and looked away. “My problem is that your brother would kill me if he knew I’d let you come to a college party.”
I squinted up at him, my stunned silence speaking volumes on my behalf. Finally I managed to find words for my shock. “Who are you and what have you done with Noah?” I didn’t wait for a response. “That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Eric wouldn’t care that I went out. He trusts me and knows that I can handle myself.”
Noah leaned over so his nose nearly touched mine. His eyes were fierce and filled with determination. “I’m taking you home.”
I pulled away when he reached out for my arm. “Like hell you are.”
“Noah, you made it!” A high-pitched voice interrupted our argument. A pretty brunette bounded over to us, beer sloshing over the sides of the red plastic cup she held in her hands. She came to a stop at Noah’s side and smiled up at him.
Oh brother, here we go.
Her arm slid through his, linking them together as her gaze turned warm and gushy. I knew that look well. I should, I’d seen it on more girls’ faces than I could count when they looked at Noah.
He had a certain charm, I supposed, when he wasn’t being a self-righteous prig. And yeah, okay, so maybe he was a hottie. But he knew it. Also, there was the fact that Noah was a player. An unabashed, self-proclaimed lover of women. All women. He had the attention span of a gnat when it came to relationships, so I’d learned long ago not to get too invested in his current love interests. A lot of them were really nice to me, but I knew better than to get close because as soon as I could say, “we should be friends!” they were out the revolving door and he’d moved on to the next.
It wasn’t like he was a male slut—or maybe he was, I didn’t know the details—but he was a flirt, and sometimes girls didn’t seem to know that it was all just for fun for him. He was serious about one thing and one thing only.
Just like me.
That’s why I tuned out the conversation going on in front of me. The girl was asking him if he needed a drink, asking if he’d come back in and dance with her…blah blah blah. I glanced around looking for an escape but they were blocking the path back into the house and if I headed down the dark stairs leading to the backyard for some peace and quiet, I just knew he’d notice and follow me.
Besides, Noah and I? We needed to talk. It was well past time we discussed the elephant in the room. Maybe if we cleared the air, he would get over his issues and we could be friends again.
So I stood there and waited until he ended the conversation by gesturing toward me with a look of grudging tolerance, like I truly was Eric’s pesky little sister.
To be clear, Eric used to see me that way sometimes, but this was the first time Noah had ever given me that look.
I hated it. I hated it so freakin’ much.
“I can’t,” he said with a weary tone. “I’ve got to take my friend’s little sister back to camp.”
I blinked a few times at the jab to my pride. My friend’s little sister…when had he ever called me that? My friend’s little sister. Like that’s all I was to him. Like I wasn’t a friend in my own right.
I crossed my arms over my chest. Jerk. And ‘back to camp?’ Really? Did he really have to make it sound like I was a member of the Mickey Mouse Club?
I turned to this girl who I didn’t know and whose opinion didn’t matter at all. “It’s a softball clinic.”
She gave me a small smile and a nod. She didn’t care. Of course she didn’t. She just wanted Noah’s attention, and as far as I was concerned, she could have it.
“I have a ride,” I informed them both. “So you should stay and…dance.” It was a struggle not to laugh at the thought of Noah bopping around to whatever pop song was currently blaring from inside. He’d always been too serious, even when he was a kid.
Maybe that was why his smiles had always felt extra special. Because they were rare, and the ones he gave me were unique. They weren’t the smiles of a flirt or a player, they were the affectionate grins of a true friend.
Of course, ‘true friend’ was how I would have described Noah before he’d transformed into Mr. Hyde. Or was it Dr. Jekyll who was the evil one? Whatever. Noah was different these days. Clearly he had changed.
Maybe this version of Noah loved to boogie.
“Go ahead, Noah,” I said, with a motion urging him toward the house. “Go get your groove on.”
Noah�
��s lips thinned into a straight line, so very at odds with the easy smile I was used to from him. “I’m taking you home,” he said. “Now.”
Anger rose up so quickly I nearly choked on it. What right did he have to order me around? He might have been Eric’s best friend, but he wasn’t my big brother.
I opened my mouth to argue, but stopped with my mouth hanging open as a thought occurred to me. Leaving with Noah would mean time spent alone together.
If I could just get him alone, away from girls who wanted his attention and my teammates’ ogling stares, there was a chance I could get him to open up. If we could just reconnect and discuss what was really going on here…
“Okay, fine,” I said. It took everything in me not to call him a nasty name, so instead I clamped my mouth shut and stormed past him so he could say goodbye to his lady of the hour without his pesky neighbor hanging around.
He was still driving the same beat-up old truck he’d been driving since he’d turned sixteen and I spotted it out front immediately. Letting myself in to the passenger side, I was sitting there with my arms crossed when he climbed up into the driver’s seat, barely sparing me a glance.
I texted Maddie and the others that I was leaving early and that I’d see them back at the dorm. I had things to say—too many things to say—and I needed to get my thoughts in order before I even trusted myself to open my mouth. We sat in silence as he turned on the truck and pulled away from the house.
When the sounds and the lights of the house party faded into the distance, I finally said what I’d been thinking for the past few minutes. “You owe me an apology.”
As far as conversation starters went, it wasn’t my most diplomatic, nor my most eloquent, but it was what had to be said. I shifted to face him. “I know you’re going through something right now, but that’s no reason for you to treat me like—”
“You’re right.” His low voice surprised me. He sounded far more gruff than usual, far more abrupt. “You’re right,” he said again.
I couldn’t quite bring myself to meet his gaze, so instead my eyes fixed on the sight of his hands gripping the steering wheel. He was clenching and unclenching the wheel in an uncharacteristic display of unease.
He cleared his throat—another weird tell that so did not fit him.
“I’m sorry.” He cleared his throat again and I had to wonder if it was because the words were so hard to get out. I mean, I was glad to get an apology but the best way to describe this particular apology was reluctant.
“Yeah, you seem really sorry.” To my credit, and a little to my surprise, the words came out in a joking tone and I saw the side of his mouth hitch up ever so slightly in response.
“I meant to find you on campus tomorrow to apologize,” he said. “But then Doug and James spotted you and then you—” He waved a hand back toward the house.
“Had the gall to take them up on a party invite?” I finished mildly. “Yes, how dare we.”
He ignored my attempt at sarcasm. “You don’t belong here, Callie.”
I clenched the material of my jacket in my hands. “Why, because I’m just a kid?”
He gave me a withering look. “Because you don’t belong here.”
I let out a huff of disbelief. If that wasn’t cryptic I didn’t know what was. Didn’t belong where? At Fairfield? At a party? Both?
“You’re here for softball,” he said as if I didn’t know that. “You need to be focused, Cal.”
“I am focused.” I shifted uncomfortably in the seat, not because I was lying but because…oh hell, I had a feeling we were finally going to touch on the real problem here and I wasn’t sure how to handle it. Up until now, the deepest conversation Noah and I had ever had revolved around my inability to throw a curveball.
Obviously that was years ago. I threw a killer curveball now.
“You know better than anyone that bonding as a team is critical to performance,” I said.
He shot me a sidelong look. “And sneaking out so you could go to a kegger is team bonding? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”
“Sneaking out for ice cream is team bonding,” I said. “It’s tradition. You know that.”
He opened his mouth to argue but I shut him down. “It was your friends who invited us to the party and neither my friends nor I are stupid enough to mess up our chance this week by getting wasted or hooking up with some drunken frat boy so we miss bed check.”
I’d said it all on one breath and had to inhale quickly to continue because I just knew he was going to try and argue again. “But this isn’t about that, Noah.”
There. I’d said it. I’d thrown a giant spotlight on the elephant in the room but now that elephant seemed larger than ever. If we didn’t address it soon, it could very well trample us.
You know, metaphorically speaking.
He stared straight ahead so I was looking at his profile. I knew it so well and yet it looked so different right now. Maybe it was because that stupidly perfect jaw was set with uncharacteristic stubbornness. Or maybe it was the grim straight line of his lips.
Or maybe I’d just never been alone with him in his truck like this…not after dark when the only light came from the glow of the dashboard. The only sound was my heart pounding in my chest and our mingled breathing in this suddenly too-small space.
The air felt thick between us and there was a tension here that had never been there before.
I had to swallow down a weird nervousness that made it hard to speak. “This isn’t about any of that, is it, Noah?”
His fingers flexed on the steering wheel but he said nothing.
I sighed and it sounded way too loud in our tiny confines. For a second I fought the urge to reach over and flick on the radio to ease this tense silence. But then we might be content to sit here in silence and this was a conversation we had to have if we were ever going to be friends again.
He turned off the main road and headed down an even darker, tree-lined road. “Where are you going?”
“Back road. This is a quicker way to campus.”
I nodded. I swallowed. I wiped my palms on my jeans as I thought of a tactful way to bring up his injury and the death of all his dreams.
He cleared his throat. “Have you talked to Eric?”
His low drawl pulled me out of my thoughts. “Have I…what?” Of course I had. Eric was my brother. I’d seen him two weekends before when he came home to visit and we talked on the phone regularly. “Yeah, why?”
He glanced over at me, his expression unreadable in this dark lighting. Did he mean about something in particular? Had he talked to Eric about this sensitive topic already? Was he trying to gauge what Eric had said to me?
I let out another sigh, this one filled with exasperation. I hated having to tiptoe around this subject, especially with Noah. He might’ve been Eric’s best friend, but we’d always been friends too, in our own way.
“Look,” I said. “Whatever you said to Eric you can say to me.” I shifted so I was facing him. “You know you can talk to me, right? Even if your feelings toward me are…complicated right now.”
I saw him stiffen and that alone was confirmation. He resented me. Being around me, watching me pursue my dream—our dream—it was killing him.
I reached out, empathy temporarily making me forget my former anger with him as I placed a hand on his arm.
Everything seemed to happen at once. He glanced over at me in surprise, something darted in front of us on the road, and truck jolted with a thud before it jerked to the side with a popping noise and bounced to a rough stop in the ditch on the side of the road.
It happened so quickly. One second we were driving on the road and the next we were stopped, the sound of our loud breathing and an ominous hissing sound coming from the hood the only noise to pierce the silence.
“Are you okay?” Noah was all over me in a heartbeat, sliding between the seats to get close to me, his hands moving over my arms, cupping my face, turning me toward him.
Oh wow. The look in his eyes took my breath away. There was panic there, and fear, but also…he cared. He was so worried about me but on top of that, I felt…oh, I didn’t know how to describe it. Cherished, maybe? Adored? Does that sound too intense?
Then maybe those were the right ways to describe it because there was nothing laid back about the way he was looking at me. Intense was Noah’s middle name, but I’d never seen it expressed like that. Like devotion. Like he was about to worship at the altar of Callie.
His eyes grew hooded as I stared up at him in shock. “I’m okay,” I finally said, my own hands coming up to cover his where he was cupping my cheeks. “Are you hurt?”
He shook his head and then dropped his forehead down to mine with a sigh of relief that seemed to rattle the whole truck.
His breath mingled with mine and for a moment I reveled in this closeness. The shock of the near crash left me shaky with relief as well. It could have been worse. We could have been hurt. But we weren’t. He was okay, and so was I.
And now we had to get out of here. Reason started to kick in, slowly but surely. We should check out the truck, see the extent of the damage. I should call my friends, let them know what was going on. I should—
My mental checklist came to a halt as his grip tightened slightly. It was then that I noticed his breathing hadn’t calmed, if anything he was still just as amped, his body tenser than ever as he pulled my body closer to his, his forehead still pressed to mine and his lips moving even closer until we were breathing the same air.
And then…he kissed me.
It happened so quickly, I didn’t see it coming. I couldn’t prepare myself mentally or emotionally for the explosion of sensations as his warm, firm lips met mine with a crushing fierceness that made my heart ache and my belly tighten.
The Perfect Catch (Kissing the Enemy Book 1) Page 4