That night in the shower, I went over everything I had to do at work the next day, as I typically did. I liked to get a list going in my mind before heading to bed, that way I wouldn’t stay up stressing over whether or not I had forgotten something. After I was pretty sure my list was complete and memorized, my mind began to wander.
I thought of Jonah.
Of his hands on me. Of my hands on him. I thought of the way he tasted when we kissed in the diner, and the way he grabbed me and seemed like he was never going to let go. Next thing I knew, my eyes were closed, and I was letting the hot water spool down my skin as I ran my hand down the front of my body. But it wasn’t good enough.
I wantedhimto be touching me.
My eyes snapped open, and I got out of the shower immediately.
We’re done with him, remember?
I told myself this about half a dozen more times as I put lotion on my body, and as I brushed my hair, and as I laid down to go to sleep. In bed, I had to basically play this new mantra on a loop in my mind in order to keep myself from lusting after him again.
But with the lights off and the night quiet, I had no chance of keeping those thoughts at bay. Eventually, they overpowered my better judgement and all I could think about was him. His body, how it would feel pressed up against mine. Becca was right—his rejection only made him all the more attractive.
The more I thought about how he’d turned me down, the angrier I got, and the angrier I got, the more I wanted him.
Finally, I sat up out of bed and tore the covers off.
“I’m Katherine Stevens, dammit,” I said. “And Katherine Stevens always gets what she wants.” I got out of bed, put my sexiest nightgown on, and less than fifteen minutes later I was driving over to his house, just as the nighttime clouds opened up overhead and it began to snow.
Chapter Twelve
Jonah
Ihad a ton of errands to run after work on Wednesday, so Vic went to my mom’s.
By the time I got home to drop off the groceries, it was after nine. I called my mom and she said that she and Vic had a lovely dinner and now they were curled up on the couch watching a movie.
“I don’t want you driving in the snow,” she said. “They were talking on the news, and they think a lot of it is going to stick and you know how I worry about the roads when it’s like this. Just leave Vic here, I’ll get her home before school tomorrow.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive,” she said.
I accepted my mom’s generous offer and went about making myself dinner for one. The frozen dish wasn’t anything special, but it did the trick and I paired it with a large glass of red wine. At ten, I clicked on the TV and settled in for the night. I flipped through the channels to find something loud and stupid, something that would be distracting enough to keep my thoughts off Kat. I’d been thinking about her non-stop since the moment we kissed in that diner, and I was worried that if I didn’t get control over these thoughts soon, they would drive me insane.
I went down the list of the many reasons why I shouldn’t be with this girl, and they all made perfect sense, and yet, those well-planned-out arguments didn’t have any real effect on how I felt. I wanted her, more than ever.
But even apart from the sex, I also just wanted to talk to her. I wanted to see her and explain that I didn’t mean to hurt her feelings when I said that idiotic thing about her having a crush on me. I saw the look of pain in her eyes when I brought it up, and Ihatedbeing the one who caused it.
I just want to apologize.
I grabbed my phone and logged onto Facebook, opening up a message to her, since I had never gotten around to putting her cell phone number in my contacts. I penned a few different opening liners, deleting them each as I went because of how lame they sounded when I read them back to myself. Finally, I had settled on the perfect one, and I was onto the next line of my message, when someone knocked on my door.
It was late, freezing cold, and snowing.
Who could possibly be dropping by at this moment?
I got up from the couch and searched for a jacket before opening the door to find Katherine Stevens herself standing on the other side. Only, she had her back turned to me and she was walking away. She glanced at me as I stepped out onto the porch, and her expression was unreadable.
She didn’t have any make-up on, and she was all the prettier without it.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I realized literally the moment I knocked that your daughter is here, and I should’ve never come. God, I hope I didn’t wake her up. This was so stupid. Just please, pretend like this never happened.”
I reached out for her. “Katherine, wait.”
She paused on the last step. “It’s Kat.”