You and Everything After (Falling #2)(45)

“Do you, like, have any pop culture references? Like…at all?” I continue shading her legs, and then begin filling in her hair.

“Not from the seventies, old man,” she fires back.

“Oh, ha ha. I’m four years older than you; I’m not a senior citizen. I watched a lot of Nick at Nite, and I appreciate the classics. Plus seriously, that’s like saying you don’t know Elvis.”

“Grasshopper is nothing like Elvis,” she says with a little sigh.

“Valid point. Nevertheless, now you’re watching Kung Fu DVDs too,” I say, putting the final touches on her sketch.

“Oh…goody,” her tone completely lacks excitement.

“Just wait, you’ll like them,” I say as I move closer to her, the notebook held to my chest.

“You’re done? Lemme see!” she reaches for it, but I hold it tight, for some reason nervous to show this to her.

“Hold on. Before you look at it, remember, I did it fast, on notebook paper, and I haven’t done this in a while,” I say, but she interrupts with a tsk sound and yanks the pages from my hand. When her eyes hit the paper, and soften, and her bottom lip gets sucked up under her teeth, I finally breathe.





Cass


I wish I really looked like this girl in the drawing. What Ty has done on a spiral notebook in ten minutes is one of the most beautiful and heart-melting creations I have ever seen.

“Well?” he asks. His face looks nervous. It's cute that he's nervous, wants to please me.

“Ty…it’s beautiful. I mean, I don’t look anything like this, but what you drew…it’s beautiful,” I say, letting my eyes wash over the softness in pencil sketched in front of me.

“Yes, you do,” he says, pulling himself closer to me. “I really need paints to do you justice. But yes, this is what you look like—how I see you.”

I think I love him. I know it sounds ludicrous, and yeah, maybe I’m easy, because he just said a full string of magic words that pretty much just flushed the air from my lungs, and wrapped all of him around my heart. But I don’t care. I would risk it all to have him say something like that about me, just one more time.

“Ty,” I say…the rest of what I want to say hung on my tongue, my nerves keeping my feelings on hold, but my will fighting, wanting to push them out. Maybe it’s reason working against me. I know most of what I’m feeling right now is complete and utter swoon from the fact that this older, sexy man has just made me feel beautiful—truly beautiful. But screw reason. I want to jump in with both feet, arms in the air.

He runs the back of his hand along my cheek, grazing my arm and breast until he hits my hand, and he brings it to his lips to kiss softly. I love you, Tyson Preeter. I practice the phrase over and over in my head while he looks at me, touches me softly, and seduces me until I’m ready for anything. Then—there is a chime on my phone, and one on his.

Ignore it, Ty. Ignore it. We’re both frozen, having a silent conversation about how whatever that is, can wait—it isn’t important. And then our phones chime again.

Ty breaks first. And it burns a little that he does.

“It’s Nate. He said he and Rowe—” He doesn’t finish, because I’m reading my phone now. It’s a text from Rowe. She needs to come home, to our room. She and Nate had a fight.

“We could pretend we didn’t hear—” Ty starts, his mouth twisted into a half smile full of equal parts hope and disappointment.

“We could. But we’re not *s,” I say.

“Well, I’m an *. But…no…you’re not an *,” he says, taking a deep breath. “All right, you better get dressed. I’m going to go try and console my needy brother and knock some sense into him.”

“Maybe we can pick this up again…tomorrow?” I ask.

“Baby, you can count on it,” he says.

“Don’t call me baby,” I smirk, and he kisses me one last time, hard, whispering “Baby,” against my lips with his perfect, self-righteous, I-own-you smile.

When he leaves, I pull my clothes on and flip through channels on the TV. Rowe comes in soon after, and we spend the rest of the night watching bad music videos on MTV and not saying a word. That’s probably for the best, because she looks sad. And all I feel is happy. I wouldn’t be a very good friend if I had to speak tonight.

Happy. Happy. Happy.





Chapter 14





Ty


Her call comes when I least expect it—on my way to the gym, to run Cass through her workouts. It’s a special day. I lined up a visit with the McConnell women’s coach—nothing formal, just a quick meet-and-greet. I still feel like Cass is on the fence about trying out, so I thought this might be just the nudge she needs.

Of course, now my focus is shot to shit.

The last time Kelly called, I sent her a text a few hours later. I didn’t hear back from her again…until now. My phone is vibrating in my hand, and I’m tempted to pretend I don’t feel it—to tuck it back in my pocket until I can lock it away in the gym—and continue to put off whatever is waiting on the other line. But I’m also desperate to know.

So I answer.

“Hey,” I say. We’ve been playing phone tag for weeks; formalities seem forced at this point.