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  We were close, one word from me standing between me and him going all the way. He was ready, and I’d been ready since the day I first saw him. I wasn’t thinking about our past when his hand slid underneath my bra, and I wasn’t thinking about our future when his mouth took its place; I wasn’t even thinking about the present—I was living the present.

  His mouth moved to my neck while his hands traveled beneath the elastic of my leggings, pulling them lower. I lifted my hips to make the job easier.

  “Are you sure?” he said, planting a patch of sucking kisses at my hairline.

  I’d never been more sure about what he was asking about, but a hint of reality wedged its way into my nirvana and, as I didn’t need a reminder for, reality really sucked sometimes.

  “Wait,” I said in between breaths, wanting to strap a piece of duct tape to my mouth immediately after.

  His body tensed over mine, his hands stopping right away. But his mouth took a little longer. Finally, moving his face over mine, he smiled a tortured one. “Okay,” he said. “Waiting.” I could hear his silent questions, they were written so expressively on his face. Why? and For how long?

  Kudos to Lucy Larson for being able to render a reformed ladies man witless.

  “It’s not because I don’t want to, because I do,” I said, my heartbeat still pounding about a monkeyload of beats per minute. “I really do, but I don’t want our first time to be on a wood floor when I’m all stinky and sweaty and wearing shamefully boring underwear.” This is why you never left the house without some jaw-dropping, man-catching undies strategically in place.

  Grinning down at me, he kissed my nose. “Some other time,” he said, pulling my leggings back around my waist.

  “Any other time,” I emphasized, convinced that stinky sweaty sex with Jude on the floor I’d danced across for fifteen years was better than delayed sex. I was just about to tell him this when he sat up, pulling me with up with him.

  “By the way, you failed the convincing me test.” He grabbed my sweater and pulled it over my head.

  “Was that before or after I removed my shirt?” I said, putting said shirt back into position.

  He gave me a cool look. “Before.”

  “Just checking,” I said, pulling the sleeves up over my elbows because making out with Jude Ryder was all kinds of hot, not excluding body temperature. “So was that a first?”

  “I’m going to ask for further clarification on that before I tie my own noose answering it,” he said, his pupils still dilated, still excited.

  “Was that your first time with a girl in a ballet studio . . .” I began, “and getting denied?” I smiled, taking a gulp of water.

  “That was a first,” he said, pulling me into his lap.

  “At least I’ve got one of them,” I teased, tying my arms over his.

  Lifting his hand to my chin, he tilted it up. He didn’t speak until I met his eyes. “You’ve got all my firsts,” he said. “All the ones that matter.”

  I pressed a kiss into his mouth.

  “But, Luce, I need you to promise me something,” he said, his face wrinkling. “If I ever mess things up again, whether it’s a misunderstanding, or shit luck, or I just do what I was created to do and screw everything up,” he paused, exhaling, “I want you to promise me you’ll leave. Drop me like a bad habit and don’t look back because god knows, it can’t be me that walks away since I’m incapable of it.”

  Reality, if you’re listening, bite me.

  “You won’t,” I said, willing or wishing it to be true, probably both.

  “I know. But I’d feel better if you promised,” he said, running the back of his hand down my cheek. “That much more motivation to not mess up.”

  “Okay,” I said, already regretting the words before I spoke them. “I promise.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “Are you going to get in trouble?” I whispered across the seat. Why I was whispering in my own car, I don’t know, but something about the dark, utilitarian building we were stopped in front of dictated hushed voices. “Don’t you guys have some kind of curfew?”

  “Don’t you?” Jude teased, leaning across the console and tickling my side.

  “Yeah, I do,” I said, jolting away from him. “And I’m past it. Plus, I’m grounded and not really minding the whole rules of being grounded. So I’m extra grounded now.”

  “You were at your dance studio,” he said, clearing his throat, “perfecting your moves. How can your parents punish you for that?”

  “You’re every kind of twisted,” I said, shoving his arm before glancing back at Last Chance Boys’ Home. Nothing about it seemed welcoming or warm or conducive to nurturing young boys into men. It looked like the kind of place you dared your friends to go up to on Halloween and ring the doorbell. “You sure you’re not going to get in trouble?” I looked at the time on the dashboard; not quite midnight, but close enough to count.

  “Not as long as I use the back window and don’t get caught,” he said, reaching for the handle.

  “Jude?” I said, winding my fingers around the steering wheel, looking for the right words.

  “Yeah?” He let go of the handle and turned to face me.

  “Just because I want to really try to make this whole thing work--”

  “So do I,” he added.

  “I just want to lay everything out on the table now before we go any farther.” I was nervous, and when I got nervous, my voice got all high.

  “What do you want to know?” he asked, guessing I wasn’t looking for a life story, but fishing for something specific. He was right.

  Taking in a breath, I pressed on. “Is there anyone from your past that could potentially come between us?” I said, peering over at him. “Anyone in your life I need to know about?”

  Jude tilted his head, looking puzzled. “Are you talking about a girl?”

  “Not specifically because I don’t know or want to know the girls of your past—I just need to know if there’s one you still have any kind of ties to.” I’d tried to flush Holly’s name from my brain all week long, but I was a woman; we didn’t just forget the names of our man’s ex flames.

  “Hey,” he said, lowering his head until his face was level with mine. “There’s you, Luce. Only you. And don’t let anyone, most of all yourself, convince you otherwise.”

  Everything inside me sighed with relief. “Okay, thanks,” I said, unwinding my fingers from the wheel.

  “Anything else you want me to lay out on the table?”

  Staring over at him, I wet my lips. “Nothing other than me.”

  His eyes widened in surprise before he could recover. Chuckling, he said, “Anytime, Luce. Name the time and place. I’ll supply the table.”

  “Make sure you disinfect that sucker first,” I called after him as he swung the door open. “I don’t want to catch whatever’s been laid out on the table before me.”

  Pausing with his hand on the door, he suddenly turned and threw himself back in the car. His mouth was on mine before my heart could react and then, once it was trilling at flying speed, his mouth left mine. “Just you, Luce. No one else. There never has been.”

  “That sounds like a convenient case of selective memory,” I said, wishing he’d come back and finish what he’d started.

  “I try to only keep the happy memories,” he said, exiting the car. “If that’s what you call selective memories, I’m good with that.”

  “Me too,” I replied after he’d left, watching him disappear into the dark or into the boys’ home, I couldn’t be sure.

  It was becoming a familiar sight. One light burning in a window late at night, my mom’s silhouette behind it. I was either in deep shit or deeper shit coming home this late at night on the second to last night of my week long grounding sentence. Grabbing my bag, I shoved out of the Mazda and marched up the stairs, not even attempting to mask my footsteps. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I walked through that front door; knowing what to expect from mom
was kind of like flipping a coin. In the morning she might be cold, removed, and act like I was the bane of humanity, and by evening she could be baking cookies and asking if I’d learned anything interesting in class that day.

  For years I’d been able to predict her, I always knew what to expect, and could so accordingly tailor my life around that. Now, I couldn’t. For a teenager who, as a race, thrived on manipulating the routines and regimens of their parents so they could get away with all forms of hedonism, I should have been devastated beyond repair. But I wasn’t. Seeing the pieces of my mom, the one from my childhood, come back together, made me feel like maybe there was hope for our family after all. Maybe we could get back to what we were, never forgetting, but moving on.

  It was a childish wish, but I held onto it.

  Opening the door, I paused in the doorway, waiting for mom to spin on me, not sure if she was going to scold or smile at me. She did neither. Her attention was focused on her laptop and nothing else.

  “Hey, mom,” I greeted, dropping my bag on a nearby chair. “I’m off to bed.”

  “Lucy?” she said, sounding confused. Spinning in her desk chair, she glanced at me and then the clock on the wall behind me. Her eyes bulged. “Are you just getting home?”

  Great. She had just turned into my dad. Didn’t have a damn clue what was going on in her household, but was cordial enough not to raise her voice.

  “Yeah,” I said, grabbing an apple from the counter. “I was at the dance studio practicing a new routine. Time totally got away from me. Sorry.” I was ashamed enough to hang my head. Lying was not something I wanted to list as a top skill on my resume one day.

  “Oh, I see,” mom said, shoving her glasses on top of her head. “That’s all right, just call next time you’re going to be home so late, okay?”

  “Yeah, sure,” I said, grabbing a couple cookies from the jar because I was, for the first time in a week, hungry. “Night, mom,” I said, charging up the stairs.

  “Lucy, wait,” she said, grabbing something from her desk and crossing the room. “This came earlier today.” She was grinning, grinning. My mom had smiled before, but I couldn’t recall a time she’d grinned.

  Glancing down at the stuffed manila folder she was holding, I understood why. My knees buckled right before I collapsed on the stairs.

  “Juilliard,” she said, holding it out to me with both hands like it was an offering.

  I’d been waiting for this for the past year. Well, I’d been waiting for this since the day I learned what Juilliard was all about. Here it was, waiting on the platter of my mom’s hands, deciding for me what future I would live.

  Knowing one piece of mail had the final say in letting me live the dream I’d always wanted was crippling.

  “This thing is pretty thick,” mom said, extending it closer, “and my psychic abilities are telling me this is a welcome packet. So tear this sucker open and let’s celebrate.”

  Juilliard. Dance. Dreams. Future. It was all there, or not there, one envelope rip away. But I wasn’t ready for it.

  “Thanks, mom,” I said, grabbing the packet and running up the stairs.

  “You’re not going to open it?” she asked, looking at me like I’d caught a nasty case of crazy.

  “Not now,” I said, yawning. “I’m exhausted and would probably fall asleep before I read the first paragraph. I’ll check it out tomorrow.”

  “Lucy?” Her voice was tight, worried.

  “I’m good, mom,” I said, looking down at her from the top stair. “I swear. I’m just beat. I promise you’ll be the first to know once I open this baby up.” I waved the packet at her.

  “All right,” she said, followed up with a have it your way look. “Sometime I just can’t figure you out.”

  “That makes two of us,” I mumbled, running all the way to my room.

  The packet haunted me from my desk all weekend long. Mom didn’t push the issue and I just couldn’t find the balls to open some damn letter. I didn’t even mention it to Jude when he called first thing Saturday morning. I’d wanted to get together that night again, maybe dinner and a movie, or maybe picking up right where we’d left off in the ballet studio, but apparently, other than school-related functions, weekends at a boys’ home were synonymous with work. So in between fighting an internal battle in my bedroom, I took a few walks and gritted my teeth and danced through the pain I’d inflicted Friday night. Monday morning couldn’t get here fast enough.

  I parked the Mazda and was all clear through the metal detectors ten minutes before class began. The halls were empty save for a few zero hour students and tired eyed teachers. I knew better than to look for Jude this early before class, but it didn’t stop me from stopping by his locker to make sure. My frown was just forming in front of his empty locker when a strong hand grabbed mine and began leading me down the hallway. I didn’t need to identify the grey thermal or the worn beanie to know whose hand held mine.

  Jude didn’t say anything, he didn’t even glance back at me; he just powered through the hallway, shoving into a dark room at the end of the hall.

  “Good morning to you too—” But my words were cut short as he shoved me up against a wall, his hands and mouth landing on me like they’d been starved all weekend.

  I kissed him back, winding my arms around his neck. And then, because close wasn’t close enough, I put my dancer’s strength and flexibility to good use and leapt up, winding both legs around his hips. He groaned, pressing me harder against the wall, his mouth moving in and over mine with such fury I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t care. In fact, passing out because Jude Ryder had been kissing the breath out of me sounded like something to add to the life goal list.

  Right when I was certain this was it, this was the time and place we were going to go all the way, his mouth slowed at the same time he lowered me to the ground. Now was not the time for slowing down, not when everything was quickening in me, about to explode if we didn’t keep going.

  I groaned when he pressed one final kiss into my mouth.

  “Good morning,” he said, grinning like an idiot.

  I groaned again when he took a step back.

  “I missed you too.”

  I tried to glare at him, but apparently it was a physical impossibility when the person who’d just kissed the living breath out of you was grinning in front of you. “You’re mean.”

  “I know,” he said, brushing my hair back, “but the image of that got me through a long weekend. I needed that.”

  “You’d been dreaming this up in your mind all weekend?” My stomach managed yet another flip-flop.

  “That was all I thought about.”

  Double flip and flop. “Did it meet your expectations?”

  “Exceeded them,” he said, leaning in. “But in my dreams you were wearing this short school girl skirt and nothing underneath.” I felt his smile curve into place as he kissed my neck.

  “Tomorrow’s another day,” I breathed, squeezing my legs together in agony. “Keep dreaming big.”

  “Can do,” he whispered into my ear before sinking his teeth into my lobe.

  “Don’t swallow my earring,” I said, my breath all ragged again. “I hear sterling silver can really upset a stomach.”

  “No earring here,” he said, piercing another gentle bite into my ear.

  I groaned again, but this time it was the frustrated kind. “Then it must have fallen out while you had me pinned against a wall,” I said, sending him a look as I dropped down to the floor, running my hands along the carpet.

  “Are you sure you had one in?” he asked, scanning the floor above me. “I don’t remember seeing one.”

  “I think you skipped through four senses this morning and barreled on through to touch.” I looked up at him, sitting up taller on my knees to take in more of the carpet. Class was about to start any minute and I’d cordon the entire room off before I left my favorite silver hoop behind.

  Walking closer, he continued scanning the floor with
me. “That does happen to be my favorite sense, by a landslide.”

  “No kidding?” I said sarcastically, ready to get down on all floors and inspect the carpet a centimeter at a time.

  “Oww!” I howled, snapping back up on my knees, hoping a chunk of hair hadn’t just been ripped out.

  “Luce, wait. Don’t move,” Jude said, gripping my head in place. “Your hair’s caught on something.”

  I tried pulling in the opposite direction, but my hair was caught good. “It’s caught on your buckle,” I said, begrudging fate that it would allow hair this short to be caught on such a small piece of metal.

  “Stop moving,” he said, holding my head in place. “You’re only making it worse.”

  I pulled back again, grimacing in pain. “Stop telling me what to do and start untangling it then.”

  He laughed, trying to cut it short, but he couldn’t stop.

  “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” I said, looking up at him through a tangle of hair.

  “I wish I could say I wasn’t, but I’d be lying,” he said in between his laughter.

  “You’re so obnoxious,” I said, grabbing his hips and bracing myself for hair extraction.

  Right as I was gritting my teeth, about to whip my head back, the door whined open, the overhead lights flashing on right after.

  “Dude,” a voice said, stopping short in the doorway.

  Another boy popped his head over the first’s shoulder. He lifted a cell phone and pointed it where I kneeled in front of Jude, hands on his hips, his hands on my head, and a flash went off. “This is so going on the internet.”

  When all was said, done, and untangled, Jude’s and my picture did go viral, amassing about ten thousand hits all before the lunch bell rang. Two sophomores had their phones snapped in half and would never dare pass Jude alone in a hallway again, but otherwise Jude managed the unthinkable and kept his hellfire temper caged. Save for the phones and one innocent wall, Jude’s wrath fizzled short. I was so surprised and impressed that he didn’t nosedive into a record setting explosion that I managed to stay pretty zen with the whole of Southpointe, as well as the western part of the country, getting an eyeful of our photo shoot. In fact, I didn’t even feel the urge to defend ourselves or explain what had actually transpired before I wound up on my knees, hands at his hips, head at his zipper because, well . . . no one in their right mind would believe the truth.