Chapter 24

I dunka fry in cheese sauce, then drag it through a pool of ketchup, creating a cheesy ketchup marriage in my French fry boat.
“I used to be a perfectionist,” I announce, figuring I should probably explain my outburst.
“Well, thank God you overcame that,” Carter shoots back, wryly.
“I didn’t mean to yell at you,” I add. “Although it is largely your fault I failed that test.”
He nods. “It is. I’m sorry.”
“No condom was also your fault. Even if I’d asked you to stop, I’m sure you wouldn’t have.”
Not bothering to confirm or deny, Carter grabs a fry and dips it into my cheesy ketchup. “I’ll buy you the morning after pill, if you’re that worried about it.”
Sitting back in my seat, I demand, “Why are you so calm?”
Carter regards me warily, pausing with his drink halfway to his lips. “Do you not want me to be calm?”
“The natural reaction to me yellin’ at you about possible pregnancy and blamin’ you for potentially ruining my life does not seem like placidity—especially mere hours into a brand new relationship. You should be runnin’ for the hills right now.”
Shrugging, Carter takes a sip of his drink, then says, “Getting yelled at sometimes is part of the girlfriend package. I knew what I was signing up for. To be honest, I’ve given you more reasons than most to yell at me, so it was probably past due.” He puts his drink cup down and glances up at me. “You’re scared. I’m not gonna get mad at you for getting scared.”
“I am not scared,” I shoot back, on instinct. Missing a beat, I ask for clarification, “What do you mean, I’m scared?”
“You freaked out about the test, but that’s not what you started yelling at me about. That was just the thing that decimated your composure. You’ve told me everything that scares you about me in tiny increments. I think I might finally have the whole picture.” He grabs a fry and points it at me. “Curiously, the event responsible for you bombing that test isn’t even on the list anymore. If it is, it’s the last item, and only added on because you’re already mad at me and looking for reasons. That’s odd, but cool. Works out well for me. I can snip the wires of all the things that do have you freaked out, but if I had to cut that one, you’d be just like any other girl. You’re not, so you’re worth more to me, and you should relax. I’m in no hurry to get rid of you, I’m not interested in anyone else, and I am not going to ruin your life. Change it a little, maybe, but not ruin.”
“That’s easy for you to say now,” I mutter. “You think you’re invincible. I’ve had visions of onesies dancing through my mind all day. I can’t handle the stress of risky sex. We can’t do that again. I’ll go on the pill or the shot or something, but it takes a good month to kick in, so for the foreseeable future, if we’re going to have sex, you need to wrap it up.”
“I don’t think I’m invincible,” he disagrees. “It just doesn’t scare me as much as it does you. We don’t see it the same way. You view an accidental pregnancy as something that would automatically ruin your life. I don’t. While I’m certainly not trying to get you pregnant, if it happened, I wouldn’t fling myself off a bridge over it.”
“No, you’d fling me off the bridge,” I mutter at him.
Carter smirks. “I wouldn’t fling you off a bridge, either. I’m an asshole in a lot of ways, but not when it comes to kids. I like kids. If I knocked you up, I’d take responsibility. I wouldn’t run off and leave you here slaving away and taking care of my ‘Carter clone’ all by yourself. And you’re too smart to go to community college, anyway,” he adds dismissively.
“Just for the first two years,” I defend. “To save money. I’d only be takin’ general education classes anyway, then for my last two years I’ll transfer somewhere else.”
Carter’s eyebrows rise. “Wait, that’s your actual plan? Not just your teen mom horror scenario, but what you actually plan to do?”
“Unless I can get a full scholarship elsewhere, yeah. I mean, I’m still hoping for that, but I’m trying to stay realistic to avoid being crushed if it doesn’t happen. I can’t afford tuition at out-of-state schools without financial aid. There’s a school in PA where students in the top 10 percent of their classes get free rides. Out of all the schools I’ve looked at, that one seems like the best fit for me, so I’m hoping I can go there. The campus is beautiful, too. You should see pictures of it in fall, with all the trees.” I sigh. “I want to go to school up north so badly.”
“Fall’s my favorite, too,” he agrees. “You ever experienced a northern fall?”
I shake my head. “I’ve always lived here. Never even visited. For my 18th birthday present, my mom wanted to surprise me with a weekend in New York, but she couldn’t come up with enough money to pull it off.”
“That sucks. A weekend in New York isn’t long for a first visit, but better than nothing. Where were you planning to stay?”
“I don’t know,” I offer, eyeing the basket, debating whether or not I want to keep eating. “We never got that far. Somewhere in Manhattan, I imagine.”
“When the season’s over, I’m going for a visit. You should come with me.”
I’m glad I’m not eating or drinking anything when he says that, because I might actually choke. “Come with you? In a few months? To New York?”
Nodding like it’s no big deal to make plans for us a few months out, he says, “Yeah, why not? I’ll be going anyway, and it’ll be more fun with company. I can show you around that corner of the city, show you around campus. I’ve gone for school visits already, but this time I’ve gotta go check out the apartment and sign some papers.”
“What apartment? Columbia is setting you up with your own apartment?”
“No, not Columbia. My parents. It’s my graduation present.”
Blinking, I reiterate flatly, “Your graduation present is an apartment in New York?”
As if that’s a normal gift, he casually reaches for a French fry. “My dad got a pretty good deal on it. Ugly divorce. NYC real estate is always a good investment,” he offers, when I continue to stare. “It’s a 10-minute walk from the school, and since I’m going to be there for many years, it makes more sense to buy than to rent, anyway. We aren’t renters.”
Still struggling to wrap my head around the ability to buy your son a New York City apartment, I offer, “I guess four years of rent in New York would be pretty pricey. Does that mean you won’t come home for summers?”
“Not just four years. After I graduate, I plan to go on to Columbia Law. I’m sure I’ll come home for visits, but not the whole summer. I’ll have a life there, not here. New York is home; Texas is just a pit stop.”
Every part of what he just said is fodder for some intense dissection, but I am stuck on the absolute hilarity of the first part. “Did you just say, Columbia Law?”
His brown eyes sparkle with a hint of shared amusement. “I did.”
“You’re going to law school,” I repeat, dumbstruck. “You are going to law school?”
Flashing me a grin, he says, “That’s right. I’m going to be a trial lawyer. Not what you expected?”
I throw my head back and laugh. It’s probably an inappropriate response for a lot of reasons, but I can’t help myself. When I catch my breath, I bring my gaze back to him. Seeing he’s not offended by my laughter, I ask, “Are you at least going to be gettin’ the bad guys off, or are you the one puttin’ them away? I have to know how deep your hypocrisy runs.”
“Does it really count as hypocrisy if I’m well-aware of it?” he shoots back. “Most hypocrites are in denial, fumbling around with bullshit justifications and empty reasons why they’re special and breaking the rules doesn’t make them a bad person. People who do bad things but need to believe they’re still good—that’s a hypocrite. That’s not me. I don’t lie to myself like that. I don’t have to justify my actions in order to sleep at night. I don’t blame anyone else for the way I behave, or pretend I’m being fair when I’m not. I know I’m fucked up, I just don’t care.”
Sighing, I tell him, “You’re shameless. I think that’s one of the reasons I like you, though.”
“Probably. One of the many,” he half-jokes.
“Oh, so many,” I mockingly agree. “It’s impossible to keep track of all the reasons. I should really keep a spreadsheet for all of them. Update it every time I think of one.”
Smirking, he grabs the last fry and drags it through my cheesy ketchup concoction as he stands up. “You’re such a nerd.”
“Better than being a sociopath,” I tell him, watching as he gathers up all our garbage and takes it over to toss in the trash. I grab my drink and follow him, taking a few quick gulps so I can finish it before we leave.
Carter glances back at me over his shoulder. “I told you before, I’m not a sociopath.”
“You’re something abnormal,” I tell him.
“I protect my inner world from people, that’s all,” he offers. “Give them something easier to swallow, since that’s what they need. Keeps everybody happy.”
I shake my head as he opens the door for me. “You can’t make everybody happy. That’s impossible. If you try to, eventually you’ll snap.”
“Well, I did nearly rape a girl in an empty classroom. Does that count?”
My heart freefalls and my jaw drops. I look at him with wide eyes, but he merely shrugs and heads for his car like referring to what he did to me is no big deal. Trailing along behind him, I say, “Wow, I don’t even know what to say to that.”
Because he’s absolutely depraved, he follows up that reminder of our first encounter by stopping in front of my car door, locking an arm around my waist to draw me against him, and giving me a lingering kiss.
Because my depravity apparently matches his on some level, I wrap my arms around his neck and kiss him back, allowing myself an intoxicating hit of his affection. His free hand moves to cradle my face and he deepens the kiss. His tongue tangles with mine and sends an answering jolt of electricity through my veins. Thoughts of last night suddenly spring to mind, memories of his hands on my body, the tightness of arousal in my core, that incredible fullness when he pushed himself inside me.
That tightness is back, twisting and tugging. Carter’s arm around my waist loosens and his hand drops lower so he can grab my ass while he kisses me. I gasp against his mouth, closing my eyes and dropping down from my tiptoes to break the kiss before we get too carried away.
Breathing a little unevenly, I tell him, “We need to get back to school.”
Instead of agreeing, he caresses my face and gives me another, briefer kiss. “Or I could fuck you in the backseat now, and then we could go back to school,” he suggests.
Smiling faintly, I shake my head and step out of his embrace. “There’s no time. Mr. Fitz is waiting.”
“Mr. Fitz likes me,” Carter insists, but he lets me move away. “I can just tell him I need your assistance for something football-related, I bet he’d let you skip the whole period.”
“Don’t even try it, Mahoney. You’re bad enough for me without tanking my grades. If you ruin my GPA, I’ll follow you to Columbia just to cock block you. I’ll follow you everywhere you go and tell all your potential wives that you have a small penis.”
“That’s not true,” he points out.
“But they’ll never know that, because my methods will be so effective they will stay far, far away from it. I’ll bring a Tootsie Roll for visual aid. I will become the bane of your existence, and then I’ll be like, ‘Well, you should’ve let me maintain my GPA and then I’d be at college in PA right now, but nooooo.’”
Carter smirks, catching me around the waist again and pressing me up against his car. “One small flaw in your plan, princess.”
I let him smash me against the warm metal at my back. Holding his gaze as he leans in until our chests are touching, I ask, “Oh yeah? What’s that?”
“If no one else is paying my dick any attention, I’ll make you pick up the slack.”
It shouldn’t send a thrill through me when he tells me he’d ‘make me,’ because he’s him, and I know he actually would. He seems to have twisted something in my brain though, because instead of wanting to push him away for saying something so perverse, I want to hook my leg around his hip and draw him closer. I want to spread my thighs and feel his heat between them. I want to play with him, egg him on, tell him to go on and do it, then.
But I can’t, because I really do need to get to class.
“Maybe that was my diabolical plan all along,” I tease, lightly.
“Maybe it was.” Carter smiles, dragging the back of his hand along the curve of my jaw. “Well played, Ellis. I hope you read the fine print, though. Now you’ve locked yourself inside a cage with the beast.”
“That’s okay,” I joke, just before his lips brush mine. “I’ve got thick skin, and I’m beginning to like when you nibble on me.”