This Girl Read online

  her thoughts. She eventually raises her head and looks me straight in the eyes. “You’re in love with her, aren’t you?”

  I pause.

  Am I?

  I sigh and clasp my hands behind my head, not sure what to say. “I’m trying so hard not to be,” I say quietly, admitting it to myself for the first time.

  When she hears my confession, she looks up at me, her expression stoic. “Try harder, Will. I need her. I can’t have her wrapped up in this whirlwind, forbidden romance. That’s the last thing we need right now.” Julia shakes her head then looks away again. Her disappointment stings. I’ve let her down.

  I take a step closer to her and look her in the eyes, making another promise that I pray to God I’m strong enough to keep. “It doesn’t matter how I feel about her, okay? I don’t want her consumed by what’s going on between us any more than you do. She just needs a friend right now, that’s all this is.”

  She hugs herself and looks past me at my house. “I’ll let her stay tonight,” she finally says. “But only because I agree with you that she needs time to process everything.” She shifts her gaze back to mine. The tears still fresh in her eyes, I can do nothing but nod in agreement. She returns my acknowledgment with her own nod, then turns to head home. “You better sleep on the couch,” she says over her shoulder.

  After Julia is back inside, I return to my own house and lock the front door. I walk into the bedroom but Lake doesn’t acknowledge me. I slide into the bed behind her, placing one arm under her head and my other arm over her chest. I pull her to me and hold her while she cries herself to sleep.

  13.

  the honeymoon

  WE REMAIN RELAXED in the water, holding on to each other. She’s resting her head on my shoulder, quiet and still. She presses her lips against my shoulder, opening them slightly, and she kisses me. I inhale as she grazes my shoulder with her lips, softly kissing along my collarbone, then up to my neck. When she reaches my jaw, she pulls back and looks at me. “I love you, Will Cooper,” she says with tears in her eyes. She leans in and presses her lips to mine. She tightens her grip around my waist with her legs and places her hands on the back of my head, filling me with slow, deep kisses. I don’t think she’s ever kissed me with such intensity and passion before. It’s like she’s somehow trying to show her gratitude through her kiss.

  I let her. I let her thank me for a good five minutes.

  When her lips finally separate from mine, she unwraps her legs from around me and grins. “That was for loving me like you do.”

  She kicks off the wall and floats on her back across the pool. When she reaches the other side, she props her elbows up behind her on the concrete ledge and smiles at me from across the pool. I’m left breathless, wishing we were back in the hotel room already.

  “It’s too bad you like my shirt now,” she says, still grinning mischievously.

  “Why is that?”

  She releases her grip on the ledge and brings her hand to the top button of her shirt. “Because,” she says in a sexy whisper. “I’m really tired of wearing it.” She unbuttons the top button, revealing the outline of her bra. As many times as I’ve seen that bra in the last twenty-four hours, it’s a whole hell of a lot sexier right now.

  “Oh,” I say. As much as I want that shirt off her, we’re in the courtyard of a hotel. I look around nervously to make sure no one is out here. When I look back at her, the second button is unbuttoned and her fingers are already working on the third. She hasn’t taken her eyes off mine.

  “Lake.”

  “What?” she says innocently. The fourth button is undone now and she’s working on the fifth.

  I slowly shake my head. “That’s not a good idea.”

  She slides the shirt halfway down her shoulders, revealing the entire bra now. “Why not?”

  I try to think of why it’s not a good idea, but I can’t. I can’t think. All I want to do is help her finish getting the damn shirt off. I swim across the water and ease closer to her until our faces are just inches apart. Without taking my eyes off hers, I grasp the sleeves of her shirt and pull it the rest of the way down her arms, then yank it off completely. I throw the shirt onto the concrete patio, then lower my hands to the button on her jeans. She gasps. I lean in and whisper in her ear as I slide her zipper down. “Why stop there?”

  I thought I’d called her bluff, but I should know better than that. She wraps one arm around my neck and helps me pull her jeans off with her other hand. I grab her thighs and pull her flush against me, then spin us around until I’m against the ledge again. She braces her hands against the pool wall behind my head. I sink us both lower until our chins are barely above the surface of the water.

  We’re pressed firmly together; the only things separating us are my jeans and her underwear, and one of these items is about to go. I slide my thumb into her waistband at the hip and begin to inch her panties down. I pull them down just far enough. “What now?” I say, moving my hand farther down as I wait for her to call retreat.

  She breathes heavily against my lips as her chin submerges and re-emerges against the waves of the water. Rather than call retreat, she closes her eyes, daring me to keep going.

  She gasps when I unclasp her bra with my other hand and begin to slide it off her.

  “Will,” she says against my lips. “What if someone comes out here?” She covers herself with her arms when the bra is completely off.

  I throw it on the concrete in the spot next to her shirt and I smile at her. “You started this. Don’t tell me you’re about to call retreat now.” I kiss her on the chin and trail a line across her jaw with my lips. She uncovers her chest and sinks lower into the water, then pulls me against her.

  “Retreat is no longer in my vocabulary,” she says, finding the button on my pants.

  “You two almost done here?” someone says from behind us, causing Lake to abandon her current mission. She throws her arms around me and buries her head against my neck. I glance to the left and see a hotel employee standing just inside the gated entry, his hands on his hips. “I’ve got to lock up,” he says.

  “Oh, my god, oh, my god, oh, my god” she whispers. “Where the hell are my clothes?”

  I laugh. “Told you it wasn’t a good idea,” I say against her ear.

  I keep my arms wrapped tightly around her and look over at the man, who appears a bit too amused at our plight. “Um. Could you throw me those?” I say, pointing to Lake’s shirt and bra, which are several feet away. She’s got a death grip on my neck.

  The hotel employee looks down at the clothes and chuckles, then looks back at Lake and smiles, almost as if I’m not even here. He walks through the gate and over to the edge of the pool and tosses us the shirt, not taking his eyes off her the entire time. I wrap the shirt over her shoulders and he’s still standing there, staring.

  “Do you mind?” I say to him. The guy finally takes his eyes off Lake long enough to witness my glare. He clearly reads the expression on my face and turns around to head back inside.

  Lake slips her shirt back on while I retrieve her pants and swim them back to her. “You’re a bad influence Mrs. Cooper,” I say.

  “Hey, my plan was to stop at the shirt,” she says. “You’re the one who had other ideas.”

  I let her hold on to me while I help her struggle back into her jeans. “Well, if what just happened wasn’t your intention, why did you lure me into the water to begin with?” I say.

  She laughs and shakes her head. “I guess I just can’t resist those abs.”

  I kiss her on the nose and swing her around onto my back, then carry her out of the pool. We leave a sopping wet trail the entire way back to our hotel room.

  •••

  LAKE IS SPRAWLED across the bed on her stomach, wearing the robe I’ve fallen in love with. I’m stealing that robe before we leave here. She’s flipping through the channels on the TV with the remote, so I crawl onto the bed next to her and take the remote from her hand.


  “My turn,” I say. I flip it to ESPN and she grabs the remote back from me.

  “It’s my honeymoon,” she says. “I should get to watch what I want.” She turns her attention back to the TV.

  “Your honeymoon? What am I? An afterthought?”

  She continues to stare at the TV without responding. She glances at me, then back to the TV. After a few seconds, she shifts her gaze in my direction again and I’m still staring at her. “What’d you say?” she teases. “Were you talking?”

  I grab the remote from her and press the power button, then chuck it across the room. I grab her wrists and roll her onto her back, pinning her to the bed. “Maybe you need to be reminded who wears the pants in this family.”

  She laughs. “Oh, believe me, I know you wear the pants, Will. You even wear them in the bathtub, remember?”

  I laugh and kiss her ear. “If I remember correctly, you wore clothes in the shower once, too.”

  “Unwillingly!” She laughs.

  insanity

  AFTER I FINISH cooking breakfast for the boys, I walk to my bedroom and slip inside, shutting the door behind me. The last thing I need is for them to know Lake spent the night here last night.

  I sit on the edge of the bed by her feet. If I were to sit any closer, I wouldn’t be able to prevent myself from reaching over and touching her or hugging her or stroking her hair. It was torture holding her last night while trying to hold back the urge to kiss away her pain. Torture. Not that I didn’t give her a light peck after I was sure she was asleep. I might have also told her I loved her after I kissed her hair.

  Torture.

  “Lake,” I whisper. She doesn’t move so I repeat her name. She rustles slightly, but doesn’t open her eyes. She looks so peaceful and serene right now. If I were to wake her up, reality would just hit her again. I stand up and decide to let her have a few more moments of peace. Before I leave the room, I walk to the head of the bed and lightly kiss her on the forehead.

  •••

  “WHAT IF SHE loses weight?” Kel says.

  “She doesn’t need to lose weight,” I say as I scoop a spoonful of eggs onto his plate. I walk back to the stove and set the pan down.

  “Well, if you don’t think she’s fat and you like to kiss her, then why don’t you want her to be your girlfriend?”

  I spin around and face both of the boys. “I like kissing her?” I ask, afraid of his answer. He just nods and takes a bite of his food.

  “You kissed her that night you took her on that test date. Lake says you didn’t kiss her, but I saw you. She says you can get in a lot of trouble for kissing her and that I didn’t see what I thought I saw.”

  “She said that?” I ask.

  Caulder nods. “That’s what she told us. But Kel says he saw what he thought he saw and I believe him. Why would you get in trouble for kissing her, anyway?”

  I wasn’t expecting the third degree this early in the morning. I’m too tired to turn this into a life lesson, though. After everything that happened last night and having Lake next to me in my bed, I’m pretty sure I didn’t even get an hour of sleep.

  “Listen, boys,” I say, walking back to them. I place my hands on the bar and come face-to-face with them. “Sometimes, there are things in life that are out of our control. I can’t be Lake’s boyfriend and she can’t be my girlfriend. We’re not going to get married, and the two of you aren’t going to be brothers. Enjoy the fact that you get to be best friends and neighbors.”

  “Is it because you’re a teacher?” Caulder asks pointedly.

  I drop my head in my hands. They’re relentless. And intuitive.

  “Yes,” I say, exasperated. “Yes. It’s because I’m a teacher. Teachers cannot ask their students to be their girlfriends and vice versa. So Lake isn’t going to be my girlfriend. I’m not going to be her boyfriend. We aren’t going to get married. Ever. Now drop it.” I walk back to the stove and place lids on all the pans to keep the food warm. I don’t know when Lake will wake up, but I need to get these boys fed and out of this house before she walks out of my bedroom. How in hell would I explain to them that teachers and students can’t date, but they can sleep in the same bed.

  •••

  AFTER BREAKFAST COMES and goes and she’s still asleep, I walk the boys over to Julia’s. Kel and Caulder rush in, but I feel inclined to knock on the door so I lag behind. When Julia opens the door, she shields her eyes from the sun and looks away.

  “Sorry. Did I wake you up?”

  She steps aside to let me in and shakes her head. “I don’t think I’ve even slept,” she says. She walks back into the living room, so I follow and sit on the sofa. “How is she?”

  I shrug. “Still asleep. She hasn’t come out of the bedroom since she got there last night.”

  Julia nods and leans back into the couch, then rubs her hands on her face. “She’s scared, Will. She was so scared when I told her. I knew she would take it badly, but not like this. I wasn’t expecting this reaction at all. I need her to be strong when we tell Kel, but I can’t tell him when she’s this emotional.”

  “It’s only been seven months since her dad died, Julia. Losing a parent is hard, but the possibility of losing both of them at her age is incomprehensible.”

  “Yeah,” she whispers. “I guess you would know.”

  She still doesn’t seem convinced that Lake’s reaction is normal. Everyone reacts differently to devastating news. I didn’t even cry right away when I found out my parents died, but that’s not to say it wasn’t the worst moment of my life.

  I was on my way to a game when I got the phone call. I was the emergency contact on their records. The person on the other line was telling me there was an accident and I needed to get to the hospital in Detroit. They wouldn’t tell me anything, no matter how much I begged. I tried calling my parents cell phones several times but never got an answer. I called my grandparents to tell them about the accident, since they were just minutes from the hospital. That was one of the hardest phone calls I’ve ever had to make.

  I drove as fast as I could, holding my cell phone in my hand against the steering wheel, keeping a constant eye on it. All I could think of was Caulder. I just knew something terrible had happened and that my parents weren’t answering their phones because they wanted to tell me in person.

  When an hour passed and even my grandparents still hadn’t called, I tried their phone for the fifth time. They weren’t answering, either. I think it was after the sixth time I called them and they pushed it through to voicemail that I knew.

  My parents. Caulder. All of them. They were all dead.

  I pulled up to the emergency room and rushed inside. The first thing I saw was my grandmother doubled over in a chair, crying.

  No, she wasn’t crying. She was wailing. My grandfather had his back to me, but his shoulders were shaking. His entire body was shaking. I stood there and watched them for several minutes, wondering who these people were in front of me. These strong, independent people I had admired and respected and thought the world of. These people that could be broken by nothing.

  Yet, here they were. Broken and weak. The only thing that can break the unbreakable is the unthinkable. I knew the moment I saw them alone in the waiting room that my worst fears were confirmed.

  They were all dead.

  I turned around and I walked out. I didn’t want to be in there. I had to go outside. I couldn’t breathe. When I reached the grass across from the parking lot, I fell to my knees. I didn’t cry. Instead, I became physically ill. Over and over, my stomach repelling the truth that I refused to believe. When there was nothing left in me, I fell backward onto the grass and stared up at the sky, the stars staring back at me. Millions of stars staring back at the whole world. A world where parents die and brothers die and nothing stops to respect that fact. The whole universe just goes and goes as if nothing has happened, even when one person’s entire life is forced to a complete halt.

  I closed my eyes a
nd thought about him. It had been two weeks since I had spoken to him on the phone. I had promised him I’d come up the next weekend to take him to his football game. That was the same weekend Vaughn begged me not to go. She said midterms were in two weeks and we needed to spend time together before then. So, I called Caulder and canceled my trip. That was the last time I had talked to him.

  The last time I would ever talk to him.

  “Will?”

  I looked up after hearing my grandfather’s voice and he was standing over me, looking down. “Will, are you okay?” he asked, wiping fresh tears from his defeated eyes. I hated seeing that look in his eyes.

  I didn’t move. I just lay there in the grass, looking up at him, not wanting him to say anything else. I didn’t want to hear it.

  “Will . . . they . . .”

  “I know,” I said quickly, not wanting to hear the words come out of his mouth.

  He nodded and looked away. “Your grandmother wants . . .”

  “I know,” I said louder.

  “Maybe you should come . . .”

  “I don’t want to.”

  And I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to set foot back inside that hospital. Back inside the building that now housed the three of them. Lifeless.

  “Will, you need to come . . .”

  “I don’t want to!” I screamed.

  My grandfather—my poor grandfather just nodded and sighed. What else could he have done? What else could he have said? My entire life had just