Anger ripples through his features then.
As if like ‘save,’ the word ‘protect’ is his trigger as well. As if he hates that he doesn’t get to do that for me.
“Not my job,” he pushes out before glancing down.
At my belly, and I suck in a breath.
I pull my hands away from him. I pull myself away and go back down on the floor.
He lifts his eyes and I have to press my spine against the dresser again. Because that possessive light is back. It’s dark and bright and hot and it makes flutters move inside my belly.
It makes me think that he knows.
He knows.
“For the last three weeks, I’ve been trying to track you down,” he says, his gaze coming back up. “I’ve been waiting by the side of the road. I even went to your fucking fence, wanting to scale it. I’ve been going to your favorite places. To your pink cupcake shop, and I talked to the most boring people I’ve ever met in my entire life. Just so I can ask them about you. Because —”
And then I have to ask him, how can I not, “What boring people?”
“I don’t know. Some waitress.”
“Teresa,” I breathe out.
“What?”
“Her name is Teresa. The waitress you were talking to.”
His eyes narrow. “How the fuck do you know?”
“Because I was there,” I confess, lowering my eyes. “I saw you. I thought you’d moved on or something. And when I saw you with her, I —”
“You ran.”
I look up at him through my lashes, at the anger in his expression, and nod. “And I know about the fence too. I-I was there last night. I hid behind a tree.” He grinds his jaw as I go on. “I didn’t want to see you. After… you know.”
His jaw tics for a few seconds. “Yeah, I do know. Good thing though I found you here. Because I’m done fucking around. I’m done being played with. Because if I hadn’t found you here, this time when I went to your fence, I was about to climb up. I was about to hunt down your dorm room. And make no mistake, I would’ve found you. I would’ve woken up your whole fucking school to find you. I would’ve broken into your dorm and carried you out of there on my shoulders, you understand? Because I’m running out of patience now and we’ve got things to talk about.”
I know.
I know.
I know we do.
But he has to understand that I don’t know how. I don’t know how to tell him that…
I take a few fearful breaths as my stomach churns. Bile rises up my throat but I somehow manage to whisper a lone word. “I’m…”
Before I trail off.
Before I have to swallow and breathe out.
I can’t say it. I can’t. I can’t.
I…
And he breathes out too.
As he studies my face, as he probably studies the fear on my features.
He grinds his jaw again before exhaling a resigned breath and filling the silence. “First, I want you to know that I’m clean. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”
It takes me a few seconds to really get his meaning.
When I do, my cheeks get even more heated because I didn’t think of that.
In everything, I didn’t think of that at all.
“Yes,” I whisper.
A grave look enters his eyes. “I mean it. I’m clean. I haven’t had sex in a long time. I wasn’t lying when I said…”
“You said what?”
Another tic of his jaw. “When I said you haunt me. I’m not gonna lie, I’ve tried. But I…” He shakes his head. “I couldn’t. Mostly because I spent a lot of time in the past two years, either drunk or angry. At the shitty job, at my fucking father. So yeah.”
My heart twists at the shitty job.
The thing he has to do because he made a deal with his dad. For me.
God, what a sad, awful pair we make.
“So you… d-didn’t?” I whisper, the only thing I can do at his big revelation.
He swallows. “No.”
Oh God.
He didn’t.
He couldn’t. Like me and I…
"I –"
He doesn’t let me speak though. “If I wasn’t clean, if I didn’t know that I was clean, I never would’ve fucked you raw. Nothing you could’ve said to make me do that. To put you at risk like that. I want you to know that.”
I nod. “I know. I know you wouldn’t have.”
I absolutely do know.
I know his crazy protectiveness. His crazy need to keep me safe.
Which has been the biggest irony of my life ever since I met him.
Ever since he made me dance for him in the woods.
The villain I fell in love with somehow acts like a hero.
And maybe that’s why it didn’t occur to me. That he’d put me in jeopardy like that.
As soon as I realize this, I realize something else too.
I realize that he pulled out in the end.
I mean, I knew that. I remember that. I felt him come outside of my body but I hadn’t grasped the real importance of it. The true importance of him pulling out.
It was smart, yes, but more than that, he did it to protect me.
He did it to keep me safe.
Even after I asked him not to, he protected me that night in so many ways.
As if he knows what I’m thinking about, he says, “Not that it did much good, did it?”
Before he glances down again and my belly feels warm at his comment.
Heated and alive.
“Reed,” I say, and he looks up.
Thank God.
I don’t want him looking at my belly.
Not right now.
Not yet.
“You know what else happened that night, don’t you?” he asks, studying me. “Besides me taking your virginity.”
The quickening in my belly grows.
It grows to epic proportions and I feel this absolute stark need to touch it.
To cradle my flat belly.
Just because he’s watching it.
Just because he’s waiting for me to say something. When I don’t, he asks, “Is there something you want to tell me?”
My chest starts to heave and the craving to touch my belly reaches the sky.
The answer to his question almost bursts out of my mouth and shocks me. I didn’t think that this would be my answer. I swear I didn’t.
I didn’t think my answer would be yes.
Yes, yes, yes.
There is something that I want to tell him.
There is.
For all my running and hiding and denying, I never thought that when he asked me point blank, when he looked at me with those possessive eyes, the urge to tell him would be this strong. That I would have to stop myself from saying it.
That I would have to tighten my body and clench my teeth to keep this thing a secret.
But I have to.
“I’m on the pill,” I blurt out.