Up In Flames(9)
Author: Nicole Williams

“I was getting ready to call Bill,” he said, tilting his bag of popcorn my way. I curled my nose and shook my head. My appetite had been next to non-existent lately.

“Why were you about to call Uncle Bill?” I asked. Dad’s younger brother, my uncle, was the town sheriff. I wasn’t exactly the kind of person that, if he wasn’t my family, would be familiar with the town sheriff.

Correction, I didn’t used to be that kind of person. Now I was the kind of person who made out with boys while her unsuspecting boyfriend was asleep. Cheating had to be on the list of gateway indiscretions that led to incarceration, right?

“Because the last time you were late to one of Logan’s games, you had strep throat. Even then, you made it before the pitcher took the mound.” Dad’s voice was as light as a person as serious as him could be. I knew he was teasing, but it struck a sensitive chord.

“I had killer cramps this morning,” I lied. “I could barely get out of bed.”

That wasn’t the first lie I’d told Dad, but after last night’s lie and last night’s make-out session with Cole, I was starting to become a serial liar. This, I knew I wasn’t okay with.

At least I could still be confident about something.

Dad shifted and cleared his throat. Girly business made any man uncomfortable, especially dads when it came to their daughters. “Well, I’m glad you’re feeling better and could make it,” he said, his face looking a shade redder.

Poor Dad. You would have thought being a single parent, the one who’d raised me the better part of my life, he’d be more comfortable talking about things of a female nature.

He was anything but comfortable.

So, not only had I lied to him, but I’d made him squirm. Maybe Cole was right: I wasn’t the good girl everyone thought I was.

“I talked to Logan for a few minutes before the game,” Dad said, shifting the conversation. “He said he feels like he’s barely seen you this summer. Is everything all right with you two?”

I almost flinched. I knew he couldn’t know about Cole and me, but that question couldn’t have been posed at a better time to make me feel like the worst person ever.

Looking onto the field, I made sure to avoid the home team dugout. “He’s been really busy with baseball, and I’ve been working a ton, too,” I said. I’ve also found myself wildly and inexplicably attracted to another guy who has the word HEARTACHE drawn in thick black Sharpie on his forehead. “We’re only a couple weeks into summer, Dad. Logan and I have plenty of time to hang out before . . .” I paused and tried again. “Before . . .” Nothing came. We weren’t heading back to high school in the fall. In fact, in Dad and Logan’s mind, the only place we were heading in the fall was to an altar. However, I couldn’t let go of the hope of heading off to one of the universities I’d been accepted to.

It was a pipe dream, and I was a fool for clinging to it, but I just couldn’t let go yet. I loved Logan and I loved my dad, but why did I have to give up what I wanted for them? I’d never ask them for the same.

Thankfully, my phone saved me from stumbling over the “before, before, before” conundrum. I didn’t really need to check it. Everyone who would call me, other than Dani, was here, but I did, and when I saw the number—the same number I’d missed a couple dozen calls from in the past week—I smiled.

Cole was one button away. At least his voice was. I was tempted, more than with any of his other calls, to answer. Whatever Cole had done, however he’d worked his way inside my defenses, I couldn’t break free of him, and I most certainly couldn’t forget the way that kiss had felt. If mouths could commit the act, his made very hot, passionate love to mine last night.

As much as I wanted to answer, I knew I couldn’t. For more reasons that just being surrounded by my dad and my boyfriend. I might want Cole in ways I couldn’t explain, but I knew I couldn’t have him in plenty of ways I could explain.

Sighing, I pushed ignore and pocketed the phone.

“Wow, so that confirms it. You really are ignoring me.” A familiar voice came from beside me. “I was hoping you’d lost your phone or something.”

I peeked over at my dad. He was, along with most everyone else, focused on the game. Leaning forward, I propped my elbows on my knees, trying to block Cole from my dad.

“What are you doing here?” I hissed over at him. He was standing to the side of the bleachers and, at this height, his head was right in line with mine.

“It certainly isn’t for the warm welcome,” he replied dryly while I did my best to focus on the patch of grass just beyond his left shoulder. I’d made the mistake of looking at him for too long, staring at his mouth and remembering the way it had played with mine.

I raised my eyebrows and waited for him to reply. Sans sarcasm.

“Since you seem to have some sort of vendetta against answering my phone calls, I got worried. I know we’re in small town nowhere here, but a young, beautiful girl walking alone on dark roads is not smart, Elle.”

I almost corrected him. I hadn’t walked. Other than ducking into the trees when I saw his headlights approaching, I ran.

“I wanted to make sure you made it home and didn’t run into any chainsaw murderers, rabid bears, or—”

“Too smooth for their own good smokejumpers who like to take advantage of girls in dark planes?” I smirked at him before I remembered my dad was barely a foot away. A quick peek revealed he was still engrossed in the game I had yet to watch a second of.

“If that was me taking advantage of you,” Cole said, his eyes skimming down my face until they paused at my mouth. The corners of his mouth twitched. “I don’t seem to remember you complaining.”

I swallowed, pressing the heat of his voice and the glimmer in his eye out of my mind. “I was too busy trying to dodge your mouth to complain.”

And chalk another lie up on the board for Elle Montgomery.

Cole leaned in closer, his eyes only glimmering brighter. “No, you weren’t dodging me, Elle,” he said. “If anything, you were too busy moaning in my mouth to complain.” He made a small noise then, what I guessed was his imitation of the foreign noises I’d made last night.

I knew my skin was reddening, but I wasn’t sure if it was due to embarrassment or anger. I wasn’t an angry person by nature, but Cole seemed to bring out emotions I’d thought were nonexistent, or dormant at the least.

When he made a similar noise, this one not so quiet, I slugged his arm.

Of course, this only made him laugh.

Casting another look back at Dad, I made sure my eyes were in full glare mode before looking back at Cole. “Those weren’t moans,” I half whispered, half hissed. “Those were groans of pure and utter disgust.”

Cole’s smirk didn’t fade. He was apparently just as capable this morning as he had been last night of seeing right through my act. “If that was the way you show pure and utter disgust,” he said, scrunching his face up dramatically before letting it iron out around another long moan. I was gearing up to slug him again when he dodged, his all-out smile in place. “Hit me up again.”

I blew an annoyed rush of air through my nose. I hated being stuck to this bleacher. I wanted to leap off of it and either slap him or kiss him. I didn’t want to care about what everyone else would think and just go with my instincts.

Of course, I didn’t.

“I’m fine,” I said, taking in another calming breath. “Obviously. Other than a deranged man with an enhanced sense of self”—I made sure to outdo that smirk of his— “I made it home just fine last night.”

His chuckle rocked his entire body. His whole body rocking reminded me of the way it had felt against mine. My next thought jumped right to the picture of how his body would feel bare, rocking into mine . . .

Excellent. I’d just become a hormone enraged thirteen year old boy with only one thing on my mind.

“Still fighting that girl I’m so smitten with?” Cole guessed, giving me a knowing look. Please, for the love of God, please don’t say he really can read my mind. Especially not the last ten seconds of thoughts. “I thought we’d made some good progress in setting her free last night.”

“She put up a good fight,” I said, rolling my eyes and giving in to his teasing. “But so did I.”

Talking about myself in both the first and third person should feel strange, but it didn’t. I’d been ignoring it until Cole came along, but my life felt like I was living it in both first and third person most of the time.

“Obviously,” Cole agreed, regarding me like I wasn’t quite the same girl he’d been with last night.

I wasn’t.

But when his eyes stayed on me, softening when they explored my face, I was, too. My life had literally gone from uncertain to downright confusing in one loaded look from Cole Carson.

Leaning into the side of the bleachers, Cole crossed his arms and watched the baseball game for a minute while I watched him. “Since I have the day off and this town’s entertainment options give watching paint dry a run for its money, I think I’ll hang around a while and see if that repressed Elle makes a reappearance.”

At that moment, I kind of wished she’d show up too. “You like repressed Elle, don’t you?”

The corner of his mouth lifted. “No,” he said, “I really like her.” He glanced at me through the corner of his eyes. His mouth curled higher. “But I kinda dig stick-in-the-mud Elle, too.”

This admission made me happier than it should have. I shouldn’t care what Cole thought of me and the other me. It shouldn’t matter.

But it did. A lot.

For reasons I didn’t understand, but for reasons that didn’t really matter either. He liked me, all facets of me. He didn’t choose one over the other or expect me to only let one side of me show. He might have preferred one side of me, but he didn’t not like the other part.

“She kinda likes you, too,” I said, almost whispering.

Cole turned to me, and I swear, I would have been content to live the rest of my life staring at the expression on his face. It was sexy as all heck—this was Cole we were talking about—but it was affectionate, almost adoring.

“Which one?” he said in that low voice.

Instinctually, I leaned closer to him. “Both of them.”

I knew I was an inch or a word away from pressing my lips to his in the middle of my boyfriend’s baseball game, in broad daylight, for all my friends, family, and lifelong acquaintances to witness. Another instance where my heart didn’t give a darn about what I knew.

“Logan’s up, Elle.” Dad’s voice broke through my haze.

I might as well have been electrocuted for the way my body snapped upright, my head turning towards the game. I chanced a quick look my dad’s way. He was totally oblivious to the man lingering beside me and the flushed expression that man had given me.

Logan was already squared up at home plate, his number twelve facing me. I was usually so focused on the game I knew when he was on deck, long before he went up to bat. Exchanging waves and smiles as he walked up to the plate had become something of a tradition.