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“No.” I shook my head, even though his words were getting to me. He always knew how to break my restraint. Because he was different too. He was more to me too. “It’s not worth it.” Since he was more, I didn’t want him to get hurt.
“Baby.” Cupping my face, he came in for a kiss. I knew the moment his mouth touched mine, I’d be a goner. We’d be right back where we started, sucked into the moment and forgetting reality...again. So I dodged away, making him seethe.
Letting me retreat, he blew out a hard breath and dragged his hand through his hair. “Okay,” he muttered. “I know tonight freaked you out—”
“It didn’t freak me out. It opened my eyes.”
He didn’t like that answer. His eyes narrowed and his teeth clenched. “Look, I know the chances of us actually making it through this unscathed seem impossible, but—”
“But what? You want to keep plowing forward as we are until we’re exposed and everything explodes in our faces?”
Throwing his hands into the air, he shouted, “I don’t care about exposure. I care about staying with you.”
I slammed my fists to my hips. “Well, staying with me isn’t good for you.”
Noel barked out a laugh. “What the hell ever. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I had to raise myself with no guidance of how to be a good person, how to build good study habits, how to feel like someone actually cared about what happens to me without me needing to fix all their problems in return, how to depend on someone else. You taught me all that. I need you, Aspen. Jesus, you really have no idea what you’ve done for me in the time we’ve been together, do you?”
Hugging my waist, I paced across the floor, craving some space before I wavered. “I’m not saying what we had together wasn’t...wonderful. But there are other very important things to consider here. Other people to consider.”
Noel sat on the couch arm I’d just vacated and stared across the floor at me as a dawning horror list his gaze. “What we had together?” he repeated slowly.
Everything inside me clenched with dread over what I was about to do. “I think—”
“No.” He shot to his feet and stalked toward me. “Don’t you dare say it.”
I scrambled backward, my eyes widening. But he caught me and clutched my shoulders tight. His eyes commanded me not to say a word. But I did anyway. “We need a break.”
“No,” he growled. “We started this together, fifty-fifty. We are not ending it unless both of us want out. And I say no.”
“Noel.” My voice cracked, and his face fell.
“Damn it, Aspen.” He dipped his head and came in to kiss me. I set my hand against his chest.
We stared at each other, eye to eye, both of us breathing hard as my little cat clock on the wall with the swishing tail and shifting eyes ticked back and forth, filling the silence.
“Fine.” His fingers eased off my arms as he took a step back. But his eyes remained intent, still full of fight. “You take your break. Take however long you want to think about it, or whatever shit you think you need to do. But I’m not. I’m still in this one hundred percent, and I’m not going anywhere until you realize we belong together despite everything there is against us.”
Without waiting for me to respond, he marched for the front door and jerked it open. His footsteps pounded on the front porch, growing fainter as he left. Holding my fingers to my lips, I tried not to cry.
Noel cared so much he was going to fight for us no matter what. It made me love him more than ever, which broke my heart even harder.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
“Never underestimate a pretty little liar.” - Sara Shepard, Pretty Little Liars
~ASPEN~
Four grueling, awful, incredibly long days passed. And I didn’t see Noel once. I think he was torturing me on purpose. He knew my willpower was nil. He knew I’d have to see him soon. And honestly, tomorrow—when he walked into my classroom for Early American Literature—couldn’t come soon enough. I needed my Noel fix. Now.
I tapped my fingers against my chin, unable to concentrate on my work as I stared longingly at the cell phone I’d set on the corner of my desk. When I started to reach for it, thinking I could send him one little text, just to say hello, I mentally slapped myself and snapped my fingers back to my keyboard.
No. Bad Aspen.
I turned my attention to the screen of my computer where I was entering scores into the campus’s grading system, and couldn’t focus on a single thing. I hated entering scores. I might have to go completely paperless just to bypass the monotony of score entering.
The only class so far where I’d decided to go paperless was Noel’s. And it was going surprisingly well. After we’d started our relationship, I’d had the students in his class turn in their next essay electronically. That way, I didn’t see a name when I read their papers. I just read them as fairly as possible, assigned the score when I was done, and that was that, they were instantly in the system. That part, I loved.
The scary part came when I realized I’d had no idea what letter I’d given my own boyfriend, because I hadn’t been able to discern which paper had been his. After I’d finished with everyone in the class, Noel and I had checked his score together. I think I nearly squeezed his fingers off I was so nervous by the time we saw he’d gotten a B.
