Chapter 26
"Get the fuck away from her!" Colin's voice reverberates in the hallway and all eyes turn to him. He moves among the students, who step aside and make room for the infuriated guy who cuts between them threateningly.
I cringe in front of Carson Tillerman, who spent the last five minutes trying to pin me to my locker and with a fake smile asked me to help him with his algebra homework—“the way you help Colin.”
"Young," Carson doesn't seem intimidated by the angry bull rushing toward us like a derailed train.
"What do you think you're doing?" Colin's face turns red, looking from Carson to me, and then back to his football team mate.
"Just asking for help," Carson says innocently. "Your grades have improved, and we all wondered what magic the redhead pulled on you."
Colin looks like he'll lose it completely in two and a half seconds.
"I didn't say anything to anyone," I hasten to defend myself. I didn't tell anyone about the tutoring, and I certainly didn't tell them that Colin and I had been a couple for a month. Maybe just Henry, and I'm pretty sure he didn't open his mouth.
"I'm warning you, Till." Colin takes a deep breath, as if trying to inject oxygen into his brain, which is currently suffering from some sort of incomprehensible failure. Maybe he doesn't want people to know? Maybe he's ashamed of me?
Before I can take offense, the situation escalates.
"Come on," Carson moves another step toward me, "tell us what her method is. Sucking you're dick every time you don't fail?"
Colin raises his fist and hits the face of his opponent, whose head flies backward and hits the locker behind him. He drops to the floor without a single blow back.
"No one comes near her!" Colin screams at the mass of man lying at his feet, then raises his head and directs his words to anyone who can hear and to anyone who might have thought to act stupid. "No one talks to her, about her, no one breathes in her direction!"
"Relax, man . . ." Carson stammers in confusion at the aggressiveness Colin shows.
"And you . . ." He takes a big step over Tillerman, who grabs his head in his hands. I cling to my locker and hug my books tightly.
"I didn't say a word." I shake my head. My heart is about to leap out of my chest.
"I know," he snorts, grinning, leaning his hands by the sides of my head on the locker door behind me.
"How long has he been bothering you?"
"He didn't . . . I didn't . . . it was the first time."
"Glad to hear." He leans forward slowly, and the silence in the hallway is like a roar in my ears. Everyone is waiting to see what Colin will do to me. Everyone is trying to figure out what the hell the story is.
"Drop your books," he whispers with an amused smile. I obey immediately, and the books fall to the floor. Colin pulls me to his chest and smashes his mouth against mine in front of all the stunned bystanders who have just won tickets for the hottest show in town. I don't quite breathe, but my body gets a life of its own, and my hands are free to enter Colin's hair and hold his mouth to me again.
"Young is fucking the geek," someone shouts, causing Colin to break the kiss wildly.
"Who's the hero who said that?" He doesn't bother to turn his head to the audience, and no one dares admit he has done something completely idiotic. "The next time you bother me while I'm kissing my girlfriend, I won't be forgiving." He stares at me hard, his eyes burning.
He called me his girlfriend.
In front of everyone.
His girlfriend.
"Where were we?" He raises an eyebrow mischievously and doesn't wait another moment before demanding ownership of my mouth, my heart, and my life, all together.
The voices in the hallway can jump up and call me whatever they want. Colin Young is mine, and even if no one else understands why, I know, and he knows, and that's the only thing that matters.
"Elizabeth," Colin whispers beside me. "You have to wake up, love."
I refuse to open my eyes. It's much more fun staying in the hallway and kissing him.
"Lizzie, baby, you have to pick up Viv."
Reality forces me to get up. I open my eyes, clutching Colin's arms on the couch. A few minutes after he fell asleep I got up off the floor, lay down next to him, and covered us with a blanket I saw lying on the edge of the sofa. I'm warm and pleasant, and after all these years without him, I'm willing to allow myself a few minutes of stupidity.
"Hey." His face still looks terrible.
"Hey," I answer in the voice of a seventeen-year-old girl hovering on a cloud.
"You smiled in your sleep. I guess you dreamed of me." He smiles a tiny smile.
"I didn't dream of you."
"So you call someone else Colin?" He raises an eyebrow, "Was he as good as me?"
"You're a fool." I refuse to disengage from his embrace.
"You have to move."
"Five minutes." I curl up into his chest. Absolutely stupid, there is no doubt about it.
"Kiss me." His request makes my head rise to him.
"You'll want more than a kiss." A shudder passes through me when I think of the moment when he'll want more. More than I can give him.
"Not today," he answers in a sure voice.
"Don't put your hands in my shirt, okay?" We're so close, and I know that if we kiss, his hands will wonder out of habit, and they may get to the wrong places.
I can kiss him, I want to kiss him, but I don't want his hands wandering.
"Because of the scar?" He doesn't move an inch, watching every movement in my face.
"I don't like what's hidden under my clothes," I exhale. "I hate the scar, hate my body. You knew me differently."
"You're the woman I love." He seems to enjoy saying it after all the years he couldn't. "Nothing's going to change that."
"And the scar?"
"That you got when you gave birth to my daughter, the most precious thing in my life?"
His answer is meant to calm me, warm my heart, but the fears, they refuse to release, refuse to let me embrace the moment.
"I'm afraid you'll disappear," I let them straighten their heads and roll off my tongue. "Get what you want, reach your goal and loose interest in me."
"I asked you to marry me, and you refused."
"You didn't mean it. You panicked when you heard that I couldn't have children. You might want to protect me and shelter me, but there's no chance you want to get married."
"Lift up your shirt," he asks in a quiet but steady voice. All I do is shake my head. Colin doesn't seem impressed by my refusal, but he keeps his hands to himself and asks again. "Lift up your shirt."
I move the blanket with trembling hands. Colin moves back to the end of the sofa and gives me room to expose myself to him. His eyes slide to my stomach, and when I lift my shirt up a few inches his voice becomes soft.
"Pull your pants under the scar line."
I grab the tip of my pants with my fingers and roll them down until the incision is visible. I hold my breath and let him look at what I wanted most of all to hide from him.
"Is that the whole story, love?" he whispers, as if expecting some monstrous discovery that has not materialized. "That's what scares you, that should deter me?"
"My body changed." my voice cracks. "You pumped up, and I . . ."
"You've become a woman," he interrupts me, before I have an opportunity to describe exactly what I think of myself. "Do you know how attractive you are?" He looks up from the scar until our eyes cross and lock.
"You're just happy that my boobs have grown." I let go of my pants and put my shirt back in place.
"They sure did." He seems very pleased with the matter. Not that I thought otherwise.
"Horny." I roll my eyes.
"Elizabeth," his voice rattles in a second, "you have to pick up our daughter. Do you really want to open my hormone levels for discussion now?"
I didn't think about that, and I should have. This day is making me a complete idiot. First I took him home instead of taking him to the hospital, and then I sat on the carpet, stroked him and told him I loved him, and now we're talking about my boobs. Where did I think it would lead?
"I haven't been with anyone since you left, Colin." I look down, my cheeks beginning to burn. "I'm not ready."
"So we make out like teenagers," he chuckles. "It'll be fun."
"Really." I don't believe him for a moment, he's not going to want to make out with me until I'm ready.
"Lizzie," he picks up the doubt in my eyes. He reaches for my cheek and strokes it. "You need time, I understand that. You have to trust me again, and I have to prove myself."
"Are you sure?"
"I'm sure." He nods and smiles again. "And anyway, we are not going to do anything for as long as I look and feel like this."
"Afraid you'll disappoint me?" I tease him joyfully after all the times he teased me.
"My lip is bruised, baby," he replies with a grin. "I might be able to ignore that when I kiss you, but we both know where I want to put my mouth."
"Horny." I'd rather not think about his mouth right now. I know what his mouth can do, and what his fingers can do, and the burning between my legs makes it clear to me that every cell in my body knows it too.
"Go and pick up Viv." He leans over me and kisses my forehead. "I'll call her tonight."
"What about the kiss you asked for?"
"You have to want to give it to me."
He changes the rules of the game, transfers the power to me, making me the one to act, to initiate. He knows what he's doing—he doesn't want to give me excuses. If I'm the one who kisses him, I'll have no one to blame but myself. And when his face is so close, I really don't care. Damn the consequences. My stomach flutters and my heart pounds like a racing horse on the finish line. Damn it all.
I kiss him, taste him, stroke his tongue with my tongue. Without hesitation I put my hands in his shirt, my fingers burning against his smooth, muscular skin. He leaves his hands above my shoulders, holding my face, stroking my cheeks and pressing his tongue back and forth into my mouth. Dazed by the kiss, dizzy with the heat that envelops us, we refuse to take air. Refuse to remove our lips, which speak the language we both know so well. A language forgotten and resurrected. A language that can't be silenced anymore, because it screams the word we both understand: love.