Page 46 of Stand

“I’ll be whatever I want to be,” he replied, but it didn’t sound like he was opposing her. After the conversation they’d just had, for him to say that? Sam drew in another shaking breath and found she didn’t have the desperate urge to cry anymore.

She liked his hands on her back. His arms were wiry and strong around her. His legs under hers were warm and supportive. She looked up and he looked down, and she only kissed him to say thank you, but the room might have lit up with the charge between them as soon as her lips touched his.

Tyler backed off and stared at her. Sam was about to apologize—the first time she’d ever done that about one of her kisses—but then he said, “Fuck,” and he was kissing her now with abandon, pressing her head against the wall, filling her mouth with his tongue, his lips hot and wet against her. Sam met him kiss for kiss, time and the world outside the closet meaning nothing.

“Time’s up!” someone shouted from outside, and Sam didn’t even have time to get off his lap before the door opened and four faces grinned down at their dishevelment.

Chapter 12

“Ty.”

Her legs had collapsed her onto the leather chair in front of the desk. Cairo immediately pressed to her side at the unexpected movement.

“I didn’t forget,” she said, holding her head in her hand. “What a goddamn brat I was. God.”

“I told you,” he said. “No one was their best self in high school.”

“Youwere.” She looked up at him. “You were thoughtful and kind, and—”

“You can say that after what I said to you in that closet?”

“You told me the truth. That was what I told you to do. All I was, was a freaking bitch to you and everyone you knew.”

“You stopped,” he said. “I noticed.”

What else could she have done after he’d pointed out so clearly what she’d wanted to ignore?

She’d retreated from her friends but couldn’t drop them altogether. They’d join her at the lunch table, gossiping, laughing, bitching. They didn’t even notice she no longer participated. If she tried to stop them, they laughed at her. And another fact that made her squirm was that she hadn’t tried very hard. She didn’t know how to be the lone voice of reason after well more than a year of leading the group.

Tyler had fared better. They’d busted on him—and about him—made jokes about how he kissed, guessed at how far he’d gone with the great Sam Fielding, and his stock price had gone up a little. At least Sam knew how to speak up in one respect—she made sure no one touched him or his friends again. That got her a lot more ribbing, but Ty was left alone, so she’d accepted their lame jokes as punishment for her actions.

“I stopped too late,” she said. “The damage I did…” She took the end of her ponytail and pulled on it, hurting her scalp on purpose. “I’ve pushed it away. I graduated, and I literally walked away and have never been back. Until I dropped off Jake and Matt the other day, I… I created a story for myself about that time. And I chose what I wanted to remember about it. And jumping you in that closet wasn’t—”

“Youjumpedme? You’re kidding.I’mthe one who took advantage ofyou.” He leaned against a bookcase and folded his arms. “I knew you were drunk and high, and I kissed you anyway.”

“Goddammit,no, Ty!” She saw where his thoughts were going. Had gone. “Oh God. Have you been thinking that all these years?” She leaped up from the chair, startling Cairo again, and grabbed his arms. “No one took advantage of me in those years,” she said firmly. “No. One. You hear me?”

His lips were soft, his eyes tortured. “How do you know?”

The memories were racing behind her words, all the boys, all the goofy good times. Sam the teacher, Sam the yogi, Sam the mistress. And the bravado that was based on fact, that she might have questionable motivations for being this way, but she wasnotgoing to be pitied byanyone.

“We made out because I wanted to,” she said. “I remember it. Believe me.Ikissedyou. And it was exactly what I wanted to do.”

Ty looked at her for so long, she wanted to squirm. He even opened and closed his mouth a couple of times. Finally, he said, “If you are telling me that you were in control, I will have to believe you, because I don’t think you lie.”

“You can believe me,” she insisted.

“But if a small part of me thinks that you’re saying that to make me feel better, because of all the shit that’s been going down the last couple days”—he waved around him—“then I don’t know how to shut that up.”

“I’m not that nice,” she said. “I’m not nice at all, in fact. I do what I want when I want. I feel sorry for your kids, and I feel bad about how I treated you, but I’m not a good person like my sisters. Not enough to lie about this, anyway.”

“All right.” He moved sideways, away from the bookshelves and away from her. “Then it can stay in the past.”

“Absolutely.” Except their last kiss hadn’t been in a closet in senior year. It had been a couple of hours ago. That wasn’t the past at all.

“But we can’t travel with you,” he said.

“I wouldn’t suggest it.”