Nineteen
Cade
I was already most of the way through my physics assignment when the classroom door opened. My seat was near the front, so I didn’t notice until Ms. Coates stopped her lecture. “Yes, Ms. Stark?”
As soon as I heard her say her name, I knew it was about me.
“Could you please excuse Cade Warren? His mother is here to see him about an important matter.” She was all self-confidence. Not a note of anything unusual in her voice to betray the lie.
It helped that the lie was easy to believe. Most of the students boarded on campus, so parent drop-ins were not the norm, but everyone knew who my mother was. Just because she’d never called me out of class before didn’t mean it wasn’t possible.
“Did the office send a note?” Ms. Coates asked, following protocol despite the fact she was addressing the headmaster’s daughter. Or perhaps because.
“No. His mother saw me in the hall and asked me to get him for her. Should I tell her to go to the office?”
My knee bounced under my desk, and I tried to keep my expression stone, even though I was freaking the fuck out. Whatever Jolie’s scheme was here, there was every possibility it was going to blow up in her face. How could she stay so calm?
It was a needless worry because after a beat, Ms. Coates sighed. “Better take your things in case you won’t be back.”
It took me a second to move, a bit shocked that Jolie had managed to pull this off. Ms. Coates stared at me, waiting for me to leave before she went on, and that was all that I needed to get my ass in motion. Sticking my pencil in my pocket, I dumped my notebook and my textbook in my bag and scurried to the door where Jolie was patiently waiting, a twinkle of satisfaction gleaming in her eyes.
I followed her into the hall, neither of us speaking even after the door was closed behind us. There was no way in hell she was taking me to my mother. Carla would never dare to interfere in my school day, even if there was an emergency. I had zero doubt this was Jolie on her own, and there was something romantic about that.
But there was also an incredible risk associated, and with each step we took—each second that passed with the possibility of us getting caught—I found myself getting more and more mad.
What did I expect, though? After not talking to her for four days, did I really think she wouldn’t do something like this?
Finally, she led me down the arts hall and into the empty choir room. As soon as the heavy door clicked shut, she turned to face me, and I dropped my bag to the floor, bracing myself for her inevitable rush into my arms.
A rush that never happened.
“What the fuck, Cade?”
I should have expected that I wasn’t the only one who was mad. She had more right to be than me, honestly.
Even knowing that, natural instinct had me automatically jumping to offense. “Me, what the fuck? What about you? What kind of ballsy shit was that? What if Ms. Coates asks my mother why she needed me, or worse, your father? What if your father had seen us in the hall? Are you trying to get us caught?”
She rolled her eyes. “Ms. Coates never follows up on anything, and my father is preoccupied with the cops and Bernard’s disappearance right now. You don’t think I know how to be careful?”
Immediately, I felt guilty because of course she knew how to be careful, but also because she wouldn’t have had to go to these lengths if not for me in the first place.
“And don’t you dare turn this on me.” She stepped close enough to poke me in the chest with her finger. “Why are you avoiding me? And don’t you dare say that you aren’t. You’ve barely looked at me since Sunday, and if you blame me for getting in trouble, fine, but at least talk to me about it instead of pushing me—”
“He knows,” I said, cutting her off, knowing she’d understand immediately with only those two words.
They hung in the air, stealing the oxygen with their enormity. Admitting it made it bigger, for some reason, as if it hadn’t been real enough already. The sting of the wound on my back certainly hadn’t been imagined.
Her face went white. “He told you that?”
“Not in so many words.”
Relief swept across her features. “He doesn’t know. He can’t know. If he knew, I would have been locked in my room permanently, and he would have definitely let me know that he knew. There is no way. There is just no way.”
“He doesn’t know about you,” I clarified. “He only knows about me, and I’ve been avoiding you because I wanted to be sure and keep it that way.”
It wasn’t the whole truth, but it was close enough. Fear had been the main motivator. I wasn’t going to admit the part where I’d also felt ashamed, and like hell was I going to tell her what had happened that had made me feel that way.
Her brows turned in, a mixture of puzzlement and concern. “What did he say to you? What did he do to you?” As if suddenly remembering I’d probably been physically punished, she started scanning me for injuries. “Was it your back again?”
“I’m fine. A single hit with the cane.”
“Can I see?” She was already trying to turn me around, but I grabbed her hands and held them together with mine, happy to be touching her after several days of staying away.
“I’m fine,” I said again, wanting to reassure her more than I wanted to be exactly truthful. The stripe hurt all the time, a constant reminder of why we had to be careful around each other.
Her body softened, seeming to be as comforted by my touch as I was by hers. “If you’re fine, then why have you been distant? I miss you.”
I bent my mouth to hers, kissing her softly.
“Are you over me?”
I laughed against her lips. “Fuck, no. Never.” Wrapping my arms around her waist, I pulled her tighter against me. “But we can’t do this for a while. Okay? He’s onto me. He’s seen how I look at you.”
She leaned back to stare me in the eyes. “Is that what he told you? That you look at me...how?”
“Like I want you.”
“And that’s all? You didn’t admit it?”
“I didn’t admit shit, but he—”
“He doesn’t know anything. Trust me.” She let out a heavy breath. “You really had me scared there for a minute.”
I didn’t understand why she still wasn’t scared. I was. “Are you not listening to me? He’s watching us. He sees something between us, at least from my side, and that means he’s going to keep looking for it.”
“He hasn’t seen anything. He’s fucking with you.”
“Jolie! How are you being so cavalier about this?”
“Because he does this!” She stepped away, flapping her hands in the air in frustration. “This is how he gets in your head. He makes you think he’s seen you doing something bad so that you’ll turn into a paranoid wreck. Remember when he said he’d caught you looking up porn sites and wiping them from the search history?”
“I swear to God I didn’t do that.” I’d never even heard of the sites he’d mentioned to me, but after getting punished for the thing I didn’t do, I’d been extra careful not to use the home computer for anything but schoolwork.
“Exactly! He never thought you did. He sees a thing, gets an idea, and just fucks with you.”
I wanted to buy her theory. I really, really did. “But this time his idea was right.”
“It doesn’t matter, Cade. It only matters if you admit it. Or if you start acting stupid. Believe me, he’s loving how you won’t even ask me to pass the peas at dinner anymore. He’s watching you squirm, knowing there’s nothing between us, loving every minute of it.”
“Except there is something between us.”
She brought her hands together in a prayer shape, placed them against her lips, and let out a small hum of frustration before speaking. “He doesn’t know. I promise you, he doesn’t know.”
I considered the likelihood that she was right. We’d been so careful, never giving anything away unless we were completely alone. And
when he’d come around the house, he really couldn’t have seen anything but movement. Most likely, he’d interpreted the water fight as two teens having fun, which was enough to piss him off. He hated anyone being happy, least of all me. So was it possible he’d taken the opportunity to make it more? Just to have an excuse to give me pain?
Considering what happened afterward, it did seem more probable that the whole thing had been about scaring me, about making me miserable so he could get off.
And I’d played right into it, walking around the house like I was afraid any step I made would set off a bomb. He had to be loving every second of it.
But if there was any chance he really thought it was true…
I ran my hands through my hair. “Okay, okay. I’m probably overreacting.”
“You are, but it’s cute.”
“But it’s not a bad idea for us to be more careful, Jol.” She was back in my arms, and I turned her around so that it was her against the door and not me. So I could put my weight against her and not have to worry about the pain in my back. “We should have a plan for how we’ll talk to each other if something else happens.” I brushed my nose along hers. “Pulling me out of class was not the most subtle of methods.”
She laughed, and I could feel her breath on my chin, the tremble of her abdomen at my pelvis making my pants tighten. “Fine. Not the wisest of moves. But I was desperate. I really missed you.”
Her sultry tone made my skin feel electric. I’d gotten so used to being in her bed every night that a few days had felt like a lifetime.
But fooling around in a classroom was not a good idea. Anyone could catch us, not just her father.
Besides, I was serious about having a plan. “We keep up the minimal interactions, but if you really need to talk to me, we should have a sign. Something our parents won’t pick up on.”
She thought for a moment, biting her lip as she did, making it hard for me to concentrate at the same time. “The shower curtain in your bathroom,” she said. “No one goes in there but you, but I could easily have an excuse of needing to grab some toilet paper or whatever. If we need to talk to each other, we leave the shower curtain open.”
Pretty clever since I always kept it closed. “That’s good for you, but how will you know to go in there and look?”
“I have to walk by the bathroom on the way to my room. The door’s already open. I’ll make it a habit to look.” Her cheeks pinked up. “I might already have a habit of looking,” she admitted.
I didn’t have to ask. I was equally attuned to her places. Whenever I walked in the lunchroom, I looked over to the spot she usually sat, even though we didn’t have the same lunch break, just because I wanted my eyes to be somewhere that I knew she’d just been.
“So if it’s open, then we meet after class at the greenhouse,” I said. I worked there most days after school, especially now that it was spring. It was officially something I’d been assigned as a punishment, but Janice, the woman who oversaw the school gardening, had requested I stay on to help her with daily tasks, and Stark was none too happy to have me working and out of his hair. “Is it easy enough to find an excuse to come by?”
She nodded as she pressed an open-mouthed kiss on my chin. “I could come by for a fresh bouquet for the dinner table. Or even just to grab some of Janice’s cookies. Really, I could stop by sometime even if the shower curtain isn’t open. She’d never care.”
Appealing as the idea of spending more time with Jolie was, that could not become part of her routine. “It needs to be only for emergencies.”
She made a whiny sound that matched the pout on her lips.
“Jol, this is important. We have to take this seriously. There’s only eight more weeks—”
“It’s seven now,” she corrected.
“Seven more weeks, and then we don’t have to think about being careful ever again. But if your dad catches us before then?” He’d kill me. I was sure of it.
She knew it too, if her sudden seriousness was any indication. “I know. It’s so close, and I want it to be here so badly. I guess I get a little stupid about it.”
God, girl. Me too.
“The shower curtain and the greenhouse,” I said, making sure our plan was solid. “And no more making eyes at me across the auditorium during assembly.”
Again, she flushed, the color in her cheeks sending blood to my cock.
Her hand palming me might have also contributed. “Okay, but come to my room tonight. I’ve left my window open all night, every night this week, hoping you’d come, and it’s not warm enough for that. Plus, I can’t go this long without you.”
I closed my eyes, doing my best to remember the fear that had kept me away from her for days. It wasn’t hard to bring it back. The pain of it still throbbed on my skin, and thinking about it made my cock soften ever so slightly.
But there was no way I was going to make it seven weeks without her. And was there really any reason to try?
Well, we couldn’t fuck in the music room. That was certain.
I placed my hand over hers, then brought it up to my lips. “I’ll see what I can do about finding a condom. Now you should slip out before me. I’m going to need a minute before I can be in public.”
Reluctantly, I stepped away from her. My chest ached every time I had to put space between us. Tonight, though, we’d be together. And soon we wouldn’t have to be apart ever again.
Twenty
Jolie
I sat on my bed, leaning against the wall next to the open window, a blanket wrapped around me to keep away the spring night chill. Where the hell was he?
I stole a peek at my alarm clock only to find it hadn’t moved since the last time I’d looked. To be fair, it had only just been an hour ago that I’d been locked in. Cade always waited at least that long, just to be sure. Thankfully, my father hadn’t felt a need to come in and visit with me this time, but that also meant that he’d been gone quickly, and the wait for Cade felt longer.
Mostly it felt long because it had been four days since he’d snuck in at all. I was coming off of several nights of anticipation, and my whole body was jittery, and for no reason because there was no way that my father had figured anything out about us.
Or was I just telling myself that to make myself feel safe?
I’d become so used to manipulating my own emotions, I didn’t know anymore which ones were real and which ones I created.
This isn’t emotions; this is logic, my inner voice argued. My father didn’t believe that boys had crushes without being provoked. I knew from experience that if my father knew someone liked me, I’d be punished for it.
My father hadn’t laid a hand on me in over two weeks. He didn’t know. He couldn’t know.
I glanced at the clock again, glad to see the number had flipped, and just then, the rap came on the glass. Bolting into action, I flung the blanket and the curtain aside, lifted the window the rest of the way, then stuck my head out and peered up to be sure Cade knew it was open.
As soon as he saw me, he carefully turned around, and I held my breath while he lowered himself down to the ledge and worked his way through the window onto my bed.
“I swear I can’t breathe every time you do that,” I said, throwing my arms around him. Unable to resist, I glanced down. My bedroom was on the second floor, and the back of the house had a walkout basement so it was really a three-story drop. If he fell…
I’d read once that people couldn’t survive any falls over four stories, so it wouldn’t kill him for sure, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t.
“I could climb it in my sleep.” He pulled away from me and shut the window then began to pull me back to him.
I resisted. “The dresser.” We’d become lazy about moving it lately. It was overly cautious, not only because we’d been doing this routine for months and not been caught, but also my father had never in my life come back to my room after he’d locked the door.
If I trusted my logic, there was
really no reason to be anxious about it now.
But logic also told me that I could be wrong.
Without arguing, Cade took his place on one side of the dresser and began to tug it into place while I pushed with my shoulder. “One day he’s going to come up here because he hears us sliding the dresser against the door.”
“It makes me feel better.” That wasn’t exactly true. The only thing that made me feel better was being in his arms.
I needed to be in his arms now.
Want felt warm in my belly and between my thighs. Four months into our physical relationship, and I was still blown away by the intoxication of lust. Before him, I’d only ever thought of sex as a means of negotiation. A price paid in exchange for attention, and usually scraps at that.
With Cade, it was almost always about me first. He’d given me permission to enjoy my body, and with that permission, I’d learned I could communicate with it as well. The form of expression was still so new and unexplored that I found myself choosing it over the methods of communication I’d used all my life.
I took Cade’s hand in mine and pulled him with me back to the bed, letting this action tell him what I’d kept bottled for days: I missed you. I need you. It’s me and you in this together.
He took my lead and pressed his mouth to mine, teasing me with soft kisses. I could practically feel him debating with himself about letting it become more. Four nights without each other meant four nights without talking, and that bond between us was equally important.
But words could wait, and when he slipped his tongue inside my mouth, I sighed with relief and wrapped my arms around his neck to pull him closer. As soon as I did, he retreated—not all the way, not breaking our kiss altogether, but slowing it down. Becoming less aggressive.
It drove me insane. The push, the pull. He was so good at teasing me like that. Giving just little tastes until I was near tears with want and then feeding me a feast. It didn’t take long before I was breathless and clawing at his sweatshirt, needing it off. Needing his skin on mine.
Wild War Page 17