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“Maybe,” he says. “We’ll see. I haven’t gotten that far yet. My mom assumes she’ll handle everything… because that’s what she does. I wouldn’t mind having someone outside our family.”
“No one else will ever have your back like family would.”
He moves his hand from the table to my thigh and squeezes it. “Yeah, you’re right.”
We sit in silence for a while, and I pretend to study, even though Preston is too distracting. His fingers skate along my thigh, his delicate touch too much for me to stand.
“Are you doing this on purpose so I’ll change my mind about library sex?”
The dimple in his cheek pops. “Is it working?”
“Yes.” My cheeks redden. “But I do need to study. For real. I have a test tomorrow that counts for twenty-five percent of my grade. Don’t you have practice or something else you can do?”
“Nah, I’d rather bother you.” He laughs. “I don’t have practice until tomorrow morning. I’m so ahead on my managerial accounting class that I finished all of my work in the lecture hall.”
“I’m sure you could find hundreds of things to do other than sit in a library.”
“Yeah. But you’re here. So, unless you plan on relocating to my bedroom, I’m staying here until you tell me to leave.”
“You can stay as long as you stop distracting me.”
“You’re an A student, Bex. I’m sure you’ll ace this class, whether I sit here with you or not.”
“You’re skating dangerously close to the line we were never supposed to cross,” I joke.
He cocks his head at me. “Oh, yeah. And how so?”
“We spend a lot of time together. Some would consider this dating with how much we hang out.”
“I don’t think so.” He scratches his jaw, thinking it over. “I’ve never taken you on a date. McDonald’s doesn’t count.”
I chuckle at his comment. “If you took me to McDonald’s for a date, we would not be dating anyway.”
He laughs, and then tucks a loose strand of hair behind my ear. “I’ve never liked being around another girl as much as I do you. You make it so easy, Bex.”
“And you make this very complicated for me.”
“How so?”
“Because you make me want to break the last rule. We’re so close to doing it, too. You know it as much as I do, don’t you?”
He nods. “I thought it would be easier to be friends with benefits. But I like you. A lot more than I thought I would.”
“Me, too,” I confess.
“You never told me what happened. What made your dad come up with these rules? Tell me, Bex. Please. I want to know everything there is to know about you.”
I bite my lip, nervous. “Only a handful of people know this story. Will you promise you won’t freak out if I tell you? And you can’t tell your friends.”
His expression darkens. “What happened to you?”
“Please, Preston. Promise me.”
He covers my hand on the table with his and nods. My entire body trembles from the fear taking over.
What will he think of me after I tell him?
Will he be able to look at me the same way?
He glances down at my trembling hand and grips it tighter. “It’s okay, Bex. I got you. It’s just me. You can tell me anything.” His tone indicates he’s telling the truth.
I can trust him, which is why I want to tell him. He should know why we can’t be together. Why my dad would kill him for being here with me.
“When I was in high school, my dad coached the ice hockey team. Kellan Lehane was his star player.”
His jaw clenches at the mention of Kellan. He knows him, played against him the first game of the season.
“Kellan was my dad’s favorite… just like you are now. I was shy, kept to myself. I had friends, but I wasn’t popular. Not like Kellan. Everyone loved him.”
Preston grips my hand. His anger shakes through me.
“We dated for a few months. My entire life changed when I met him. All of a sudden, everyone knew my name. I had all these new friends. He made me feel special, like I was the most important person in the world.” I hesitate with the next part, choking down the bile rising from my stomach. “Kellan was my first. I was so in love with him. Or at least I thought I was. It was more lust than anything.”
“Please don’t tell me he hurt you,” Preston whispers, his voice deep and serious. “I will fucking kill him if he did.”
A single tear falls from my cheek, and he wipes it away with his thumb. “Just let me finish. This is hard for me to tell you.”
“We all have a past,” he says. “It’s how we take those painful lessons and change our future that defines us.”
“I’m so afraid of how you’ll react and what this will means for us after you know the truth about my past. I don’t want all of this to go away.”
