“Yes, but there are…extenuating circumstances that dictate what I can and can’t do.”
“Like what?”
His fingers are tracing over the scars on my arms. He’s obsessed with the long, jagged one that spans from wrist to elbow—a desperate attempt by me to end it all when I was sixteen.
They found me too quickly, though. Not that I’ve told him the reason behind it yet.
I let my fingers twist in his hair as I explain, “Many things will determine whether or not I get my trust fund at twenty-three.”
“Like what?”
He waits for an answer, but I say nothing. I can’t. There’s too much he doesn’t understand. There’s too much he can never know. If I tell him, it will tear everything apart. For the first time in longer than I can remember, I feel happy. I don’t want to lose that now.
A long silence stretches out between us, and Caleb eventually pushes himself up on his elbows to look down at me. His lips are still swollen from earlier, from the way he pulled me down his throat, gagging and gasping. His hair is slightly messy from the way I threaded my fingers through it, making him take me just the way I wanted.
But then he pulls my mind from the blowjob when he asks, “This another one of your secrets?”
I swallow and bite back a sigh. “Pre-law or pre-med were the two majors I could pick from.”
“Yeah, figured, but what else? You made it seem like more than one thing was holding you back.”
I clear my throat and run a hand up his back. Agitation wells up inside of me with the prying. But then again, he deserves the answers I can give him.
“Nothing else significant. Just some minor stipulations.”
That’s a lie, but it’s enough to stop his prying. Instead, he lays his head on my chest, his fingers playing with my nipple once more.
“Is working with your uncle and your cousins really what you want?” I ask him, trying to turn the tables on him.
“Yeah, I’m a simple guy. The scrapyard is job security, and I can make a steady income. My business degree will help them out.”
“You don’t ever have any higher aspirations?”
“What? Being engaged to a dude who works with scrap isn’t lofty enough for you?”
I squeeze his neck. “That’s not what I meant.”
“You kind of meant it. Admit it. Guys like you don’t usually go for guys like me.”
That was true a month ago. Now I don’t know what I ever saw in anyone else.
“So, where will you go to law school?” he asks.
My hands still, and I feel dread well up inside of me. This is one of the things I haven’t told him, hoping like hell I’d never have to. But here I am.
“Harvard, most likely,” I rasp.
Once again, he leans up and stares down at me. “Shit, that’s across the country, Whit.”
I wet my lips, my eyes flicking from his to the wall. “Yeah.”
“Have you been accepted yet?”
“No, I need to take the LSAT and then go from there, but that’s the school of choice. My parents have insisted on it.”
“What if you wanted to stay here? There have to be some good schools nearby?”
“There are but…I just don’t know if it’s possible.”
