“What the fuck am I doing here?” he muttered to himself as he buried his face in his hands.
I swallowed, feeling slutty and evil for what I’d just said and torturing him more than I should have. But he was the one who’d come to me; he’d started this.
As much as I wanted to rail at him for stirring up the hornet’s nest of our chemistry, I couldn’t stop thinking about how he’d been driving over to see me while I’d been getting off to a picture of him in my head. The person I’d been craving had actually been wanting me back. He still wanted me now. It was thrilling and heartbreaking and so beautiful to know; I slid down in the opened doorway to sit and pulled my legs up to my chest, hugging my knees as I watched him struggle through whatever battle was going on inside him.
He lifted his face to look at me, and seemed to crumble. “God, you are so...” He shook his head.
A warm glow flushed my skin. No one had acted so enthralled by me before. It sucked that the first person to show a spark had to be forbidden, but I loved the sensation it had on my ego, regardless.
He watched me for a second before shaking his head and saying, “Spend the day with me.”
I wanted to grin and sigh even as my shoulders fell. “Noel, we discussed this on Tuesday.”
“No, actually, we didn’t discuss anything. You just left and—” When I opened my mouth to argue, he held up his hand, “I totally understand why. But something’s happened since then.”
“Okay.” I nodded, hoping it was a miracle that had happened and Ellamore had changed their school policy to allow student-teacher relationships. “What happened?”
He didn’t answer immediately. Frowning after a long gap of silence, I opened my mouth to ask if he was okay, when he said, “I just got out of weight training...like, I came here straight from there.”
“O...kay,” I said slowly. He didn’t look as if he’d come straight from training. The other day, he’d been wearing his sweatpants and had wet hair. Today, he was rocking dark brown pants and a black and gray-striped shirt with long sleeves, which molded to the contours of his chest and made him look too yummy to be sitting on my front porch.
He blew out a loud breath.
“Coach corralled all of us together and had a little talk.” By the ominous tone of his voice, I knew I wasn’t going to like what his coach had had to say. “After the big scandal on the volleyball team and how much media attention it caught, he decided to make a new rule that if any guy on the team was caught with any staff or faculty member on campus in any inappropriate way, we’d immediately be kicked out of the football program. And since I have a football scholarship...”
“You’d lose your funding and have to leave Ellamore entirely,” I finished for him.
“Right,” he said with the faintest tremor in his voice.
I closed my eyes. “Well, I assure you that I’m not going to go to your coach and tell him—”
“I know that,” he muttered, clearly irritated. “That’s not why I’m here.”
Flickering my lashes open, I frowned at him, confused. “Then why did you come here?”
“Because...because I wanted to see you,” he rushed the words as if saying them fast would give him the courage to mean them.
I blurted out a startled, nervous, confused laugh. “I’m sorry but...you just told me the risk for us has just doubled. This would affect both of our lives now, Noel, not to mention what it’d do to your brothers and sister, who are counting on you.”
“I know.” He groaned and gnashed his teeth. “You just had to mention them, didn’t you?”
“Well, someone has to. And since I’m the one in the position of authority, I should be the one to take responsibility and say no. We’ve already gone too far. It stops here.”
“No. Just listen to me. Please.” The desperation in his voice tore me up. I hated knowing I was causing him misery. “I let you go on Tuesday because you were the only one who’d pay the consequences if anything happened. I didn’t like that. But now...now, we’d both be putting in the same risk. I have just as much to lose as you do. So...we have equal footing.”
With a high-strung laugh, I shook my head. “You’re not making any sense. How could you even suggest...I mean, after you just completely spelled out the consequences for both of us?”
“Because I do know the consequences. I know exactly what would happen if we started something and were caught. But now...now I want to know the consequences if we didn’t do anything.”
“Noel,” I whispered. He must’ve heard the rejection in my voice because he was quick to cut me off.
“I’ve been going crazy, Aspen. My sister calls daily with problem after problem. My mom hasn’t been home in weeks, and it’s making me feel like the guiltiest piece of shit because I’m not there for them. Meanwhile, I’ve been working my ass off every night to make enough money to help them, while trying to keep my grades up and...and everyone around here has completely different expectations of me, thinking I’m some carefree football hero who has nothing to worry about except the next game or keeping myself in shape, or which girl I’m going to take home tonight. You’re the only person who understands everything, both sides. And I...I feel things for you, like there’s this connection with you. I...fuck, I don’t know how to say this. You know how much I suck at putting words together.”
I hugged my knees tighter to my chest because it felt like my heart wanted to explode out of my ribs. Telling myself to keep quiet, I said, “You’re doing a fair job so far.”
He glanced at me, and his eyes swirled with emotion as his lips tipped with pleasure. “It’s not just physical,” he said. “I mean, sure, the chemistry is like, pow. But I just...I like being around you. I like that you know...me. And I like learning about you. I just...I want to know what we’d be like, what we’d be missing if we did nothing. I want to know if maybe there’s...more. What if...fuck, I don’t know. What if it’s worth risking everything to be together?”
It didn’t seem possible that anyone wanted to even consider such a risk for me. Rita, whom I loved like a mother, certainly hadn’t felt that strongly for me. She’d never risked her career or her family for my benefit. So hearing Noel say what he’d just said completely melted my defenses. Torn, I bit my lip and glanced at him. And, damn, his eyes were pleading.