Make It Count (22 page)

“Don’t let her leave, Max!” Alec hollered from upstairs, followed by another thump, and Max’s eyes narrowed on her.

“Bye!” She yelled and hauled her butt out the door as fast as she could, then took off down the street. Thank God she’d worn flats today and had been running, because she needed speed.

She made it all the way to the Pizza Box before feet pounding the pavement caught up to her and a voice called her name.

She stared up at the sign of the restaurant, buzzing faintly in the afternoon sun, and remembered weeks ago when she stood right here and wished with all her might she’d hear her name spoken by that voice.

She’d gotten her wish. But it was too late now.

She slowed to a stop because her shoes were starting to give her blisters and her bag was heavy.

When she turned around, Alec stood five feet away, barely breathing hard, and she wanted to smack him just for that.

“Why’d you leave?” he asked.

“I have things to do.”

His jaw clenched. “If this conversation goes the same way it did at your house, I’m going to scream, Kat.”

Did he think that was fun for her? She wanted to scream, too.

He stepped closer and she took a step back. He did it again and she took another step back. He sighed and pleaded with her with those eyes, the ones she never could resist. And there she was again, sucked right back into Alec Stone’s gravitational pull.

Stupid science.

He took a step forward, slowly, and this time she held her ground. A small smile tugged at his lips. “Why’d you come to see me?”

It was on the tip of her tongue to make a joke, like,
I wanted to see you in your boxer briefs
, or
I left my underwear behind your desk
, or
Was that a gun in your bed or were you just happy to see me?

But she was tired, oh so tired of the barriers and the games. And she had come so far in loving herself for who she was. She wouldn’t let anyone knock her down to where she had been.

“Max said you were upset and he thought I could help, so I came.”

Alec cocked his head. “Just like that. Because you thought I needed you and you could help, you came.”

She nodded.

He took another step closer and now he was so close that if she extended her index fingers, she’d brush his.

“Kat.”

She raised her eyes from staring at their barely touching hands to see his gaze on her, soft and so full of . . . no, it couldn’t be . . .

He grasped her hand and brought it to rest on his chest, over his heart. “Don’t you feel it? All that negative crap I’d been holding inside is gone because of you. And the good I’m filling it with? That’s you.”

The people walking around them didn’t exist, and it was just her and Alec now, in a little private force field, connected by her hand on his chest. She inched closer, so their chests brushed, her hand between them.

His other hand rose and cupped her face. She blinked slowly as his thumb swiped her cheekbone. He done it before outside of the Pizza Box and walked away. But he wasn’t walking away now. “Kat, I was working on a plan to talk to you but then I got that phone call and everything kind of got shot to shit.” He took a deep breath, his eyes locked in hers. “But you have to know. I’m sorry. You have to know when I look at you, I see a girl who laughs at her own jokes, who’s so funny and adorable, she makes me smile after I talk about losing my dad. A girl who drops everything to comfort a guy, even though he made her feel like a project that needed to be fixed. And I see a girl who’s so brave because she goes to college knowing it’s going to hard, but she wants to make something of her life.” He leaned down and dropped his voice. “And I see a girl who most definitely does
not
have the best ass on campus.”

Her laugh bubbled out of her throat. She never thought she’d hear words like that from Alec or from any guy, really. And for some reason her mind processed the whole situation as hilarious. What started as a giggle turned into full-blown hysterical laughter as she threw back her head. Alec laughed with her until they were both bent at the waist, wheezing through the last of their chuckles.

Kat straightened first and wiped her eyes. Her chest itched as the hole in her heart he’d made weeks ago healed, and she wanted to scratch at the scar. “That was amazing. Did you practice that?”

He ran his tongue over his teeth and smirked. “I did, actually. Did I do okay? I winged the last part.”

She stepped back into that force field, realizing finally that it was two ways. She had her own force field, pulling him to her. “You did great.” She touched her lips to his, just briefly only a brush but the feel of his ridged lips was home.

He cupped her check again. “I’ll spend the rest of my life proving you should love yourself as much as everyone else loves you.”

God, he was too much. She felt the blush creep up her cheeks. “I know I still have some work to do on myself. Statistically, I love myself about seventy-five percent as much I should.” She took a deep breath and went for it. “But I want to conquer that last twenty-five percent with you.” She laid her hand on his chest.

Alec’s smile split his face and he grabbed her head with both hands. “You talking in percentages about how much you want to be with me is a total turn-on.”

Kat laughed and gripped his wrists. “How turned on?”

“Oh, I’m at about eighty percent and quickly gaining.”

“I’ve been at a frustrating ninety percent for two weeks. I walked in a drugstore and got hot and bothered in the hair-products aisle.”

Alec threw back his head and laughed. “Holy shit, Kat. My life was boring as hell before you.”

He reached for her face and she closed her eyes as he swiped her cheekbone with his thumb, the touch full of tenderness and possibly something that started with a big L. She’d think about that later.

“I know I said some stupid shit to you at your house when I was mad and I’m sorry for that,” he said. “But the thing is, what I like about you is that I don’t know how your mind works. I don’t know what you’re going to do and say next. You make my life interesting.”

They were like the justice scales tattooed on Alec’s back, balancing each other out. Alec kept her grounded and she kept him on his toes.

“Well, you balance me, so I guess we do something for each other,” she said.

Alec smiled. “You know, when I first met you, I thought you were this girl who rode the edge of a wave. One push, and you’d fall in.” He met her eyes. “All I wanted to do was keep you up on that wave. Brace you so you’d stay stable.”

She closed her eyes briefly and leaned into his touch. “I’m not on that wave anymore. I’m right here, on solid ground with you.” She leaned in and brushed her lips over his. “And that’s right where I want to be.”

He sighed into the kiss, then pulled away a fraction to whisper, “Ditto,
meu coração
.”

Her breath caught in her throat. His pronunciation was a little off, his
r
not as fluid, but just the fact that he had obviously looked it up and probably practiced threatened to melt her into a pile of goo at his feet.

She placed his hand on her chest. “You’re my heart, too.”

They stumbled back to his town house, the walk a blur of giggles and stolen touches and kisses that probably weren’t appropriate for public consumption.

And then they were at his front door and up his stairs and collapsed into his bed.

They stripped each other, taking their time, relearning each other’s bodies.

When the touches became more urgent, she stretched her arm and rummaged in his nightstand.

Teeth clamped on her hipbone and she yelped, then looked down to see Alec releasing her skin from between his teeth, smirking. She narrowed her eyes at him and held the condom above her head. “I’d watch where you put those, because I’m the one who’s in charge of our prophylactic situation.”

He grabbed her ankle and easily hauled her down the bed under him. Then he ripped the condom from her hand and held it between his index and middle finger, raising an eyebrow. “You were saying?”

She huffed. “You really suck at seduction. Because I’m not sure annoying the crap out of the girl who is naked in bed is a good idea.”

He hummed in response, dropping the condom on the comforter and then dipping his head. His lips began nibbling behind her ear and then ran down her neck. When he made it down to a nipple and she arched with a moan, a chuckle breezed over her skin. He raised his hand to her head and ran it through her hair. “You’re so beautiful. Your skin, your hair. Those lips that have driven me crazy since you sucked on that damn smoothie straw in the library.”

Her body shook in silent laughter. “It was so easy to tease you.”

“I knew you were doing it on purpose.”

He kissed her again, thoroughly, his hands roaming, touching every inch of her skin until her whole body tingled. Then finally, finally, he rolled on the condom and entered her slowly, while she clung to him, her arms around his shoulders, one leg around his thigh and the other around his hip.

She concentrated on his eyes, those beautiful orbs hidden as his eyelids fell to half-mast. Everything about him felt right, from the way he filled her, to his gentled nibbles on her lips, to his soft words telling her how beautiful she was. How amazing. How perfect. How she was his.

She’d never viewed sex as much more than something fun. But with Alec, it was about reconnecting, about showing each other how much they cared in every way possible.

It was beautiful.

As his thumb rolled between them, her climax built slowly, starting at her toes and creeping up her legs until it shot up her spine. She cried out and he kept his eyes on her face, only releasing himself when the aftershocks of her orgasm were over.

She stayed wrapped around him, rubbing his back with her fingers, appreciating the hardness under the soft skin.

Chapter Thirty

I
T WAS
LIKE
music. The baseline thud of his sneaker-clad feet on the street. The steady beat of his exerted heart. The swish of his pumping arms against his shirt. The background orchestra of college-town bustle.

It’d been so long since the weather had been nice enough to stretch his legs for a run. Too long.

He didn’t know how many miles he’d run. His lungs burned and his muscles ached, but he picked up the pace.

Because his finish line was Kat’s apartment. For the first time in his life, he wasn’t racing to outrun that threatening dark cloud. He was racing to get to the sun.

The last month had been amazing. The more time Alec spent with Kat, the more ways she amazed him. She told him everything that went through her head now, since she told him she didn’t feel self-conscious or that he would judge her. He woke up every morning smiling, wondering what Kat would say or do that day.

When she told him she beheaded a primate at the end of her statistics animal-cookies project, he thought he was going to die laughing.

He hadn’t realized life could be this fun. He hadn’t realized he could find a girl like Kat, who understood him.

He hadn’t realized a girl like her would love him.

But she did, somehow, and he thanked the Fucking King Fuck of all Fucks she did.

Not that it was a surprise, but thankfully, his mom was a full member of the Kat Caruso Fan Club. They’d driven home to have dinner with her a couple of nights ago. His mom had been in a tizzy, e-mailing him dozens of recipes, asking him what Kat liked to eat, what she didn’t, if she had food allergies  . . .

Alec finally wrote her back, told her to throw some barbecue chicken on the grill and be done with it.

She didn’t listen, and when they showed up, she was half in a panic attack, pulling him aside and wringing her hands because her chicken cordon bleu wasn’t “pretty.” He’d hugged her and told her it didn’t matter.

Kat hadn’t noticed a thing, ate everything on her plate, then asked to see family photo albums.

When his mom showed Kat a picture of his father holding him as a baby, Kat had stroked the photo, a thoughtful look on her face. Then she turned to him, her smile shaky, and said, “You look like your father. Wish I could have met him.”

His mother had to excuse herself. When he went to check on her, she was in her bedroom, sitting on her bed, twisting his father’s wedding ring, which she wore on a chain around her neck.

He sat down beside her and she’d said, “She’s one of the good ones.”

He hadn’t disagreed.

Alec didn’t slow until he spotted Kat’s apartment. His body urged him to keep running, but he knew he needed to cool down a little and stretch. He’d told her he’d take her for ice cream, a reward for getting an A on a history paper. When he had his breath back and muscles relaxed, he knocked on Kat’s door. She let him in with one hand on top of her head, a bobby pin in her mouth.

He walked past her and grabbed a bottle of water from her mini-fridge. She walked up behind him and touched her nose to his back.

He jerked away. “Did you just smell me?”

She didn’t even look embarrassed. “Yeah, I did. How do you not smell?”

“Uh . . .”

“You run miles in seventy-degree weather and you don’t smell.” She cocked a hip and his eyes strayed to how amazing she looked in her thin cotton dress. “You’re like a ferret. Did you know that ferrets at some pet stores have their scent glands removed?” She turned and walked into her bedroom, rambling on about ferrets and he followed her, shaking his head and laughing.

He picked up her laptop off of her desk. “Hey, before we go, can I check my e-mail?”

Kat rummaged in her closet. “Sure.”

Alec sat on her bed and booted up her laptop while she busied herself spreading purses around her.

“Alec?”

He hummed in response, half paying attention while typing a quick e-mail to Danica about a project.

“Where’s my ID?” She pawed through her purse, the contents strewn on the floor around her.

His fingers froze momentarily as a twinge of regret nibbled at him. “Your driver’s license?”

“No, my fake ID. I’m changing purses, from my winter purse to spring purse, and I can’t find my fake ID.” She huffed, a dark purse in one hand and a lighter-colored one in another. He had no idea there were different purses for different seasons. If he would have known there was going to be a Great Purse Exchange, he might have tried to hide his theft a little better.

He kept his fingers on the keyboard, afraid to look at her. “Oh, I shredded it at the computer lab.”

It’d been a momentary lapse in judgment. He’d seen the ID and it had reminded him of the night he’d fallen in love with her—he knew that now for sure—and how helpless he’d felt. And now that she wanted to be a teacher, getting an underage drinking violation was a serious cramp on getting a job. So he’d taken it. And shredded it. And now he realized that might have been a bad idea to do behind her back.
Shit.

She slowly pivoted to face him. “Okay, let’s rewind.” She made jibberish sounds, like a tape was being replayed backward. “Repeat that again?”

He exhaled and shut her laptop, leaning over to place it on her desk beside her bed. He deserved the wrath, he guessed. Leaning back against the headboard, he folded his hands behind his head and met her eyes, enunciating each word. “I. Shredded. It.”

She dropped her purse on the pile on the floor and took a step toward him, hands straightened at her sides. “You shredded my ID? Why the heck would you do that? It cost me two hundred dollars!”

“You’re not using a fake ID, Kat. You turn twenty-one in a month anyway. If you get an underage drinking arrest, you could get in a lot of trouble, especially now that you want to be a teacher. There’s no way I’m cool with that.”

He was only digging his hole deeper. Her face was so red, he thought steam would shoot from her ears. “You’re not cool with it. You’re not cool with it? You’re not cool with it!” She sputtered.

He chuckled. “No matter what punctuation you put at the end, that’s what I said.”

“I can’t believe you!” she screamed at him and turned to grab his bookbag. “Let’s see what precious belonging of yours I can shred!”

He moved, hooking her around the waist and hauling her back to his chest on the bed. She went into full freakout mode, like his cat did one time they tried to give it a flea dip, jabbing him in the ribs with her elbows and jamming her heels into his shins.

“Holy shit, Kat! Chill! You’re going to poke my eye out or something.”

“Good, then maybe I can shred it!”

“Calm down!” He slapped her arms at her sides and hooked his legs around hers to hold them in place.

She renewed her efforts, going into some sort of crocodile death roll to dislodge his grip. “No other guys I ever dated cared. They liked that I could go to the bars with them!”

Alec grunted as she slammed her head into his chest and growled, “That’s because none of them loved you enough to look out for you!”

Both of them froze, sweaty limbs under clothes tangled with Kat’s flannel sheets. The only sounds in the bedroom were their gasping breaths.

Alec’s thunked his chin onto the top of her head and rubbed it on her hair.

She spoke first. “Did you just—”

“Yeah, I did.”

“Did you mean—”

“Yeah, I meant it.”

She dug her nails into the skin on his arm. “You love me enough to shred my fake ID?”

“Yeah, I love you enough to shred your fake ID.”

He couldn’t see her, but he knew she smiled. “I love you enough not to retaliate and shred your eyeball after I poke it out.”

He chuckled, her head bouncing on his chest, and then she started laughing, and then they were both rolling in the sheets, tears streaming down their faces.

Then their lips met and then they rolled around some more. Under the sheets. Clothes removed. Limbs still sweaty.

They never made it to the ice-cream shop.