Hanging by a Moment (Keeping Score #2)

by Tawdra Kandle

  “Already did. She’s the one who let me in.” I toyed with a dark curl of her hair. “She seems nice.”

  “Nice?” Quinn rolled her eyes. “There are a lot of ways you could describe Zelda, but nice isn’t usually one of them. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I love her. But it’s taken some doing.”

  “Babe? I really don’t want to discuss your roommates right now. But I do want to say something else. I need to tell you I’m sorry.”

  “For what?” She arched her neck, wariness etched on her face. “What did you do?”

  I shook my head. “Nothing. And that’s the problem. I should’ve been up here to visit you before now. I went through our entire freshman year without seeing your college, and I justified it by saying to myself that it was just Birch, the same place we’d grown up near all our lives. But that was dumb, because it’s not the college I needed to see—it was your place in it. And your people. It’s ridiculous that I haven’t met Zelda until now, and it’s shameful that I didn’t see your dorm last year. And I’m sorry, Mia. So fucking sorry for letting that happen.”

  She shook her head, but I saw the tears gleaming in her green eyes. “It’s okay, Leo. Really. I understood.”

  I blew out a long breath. “I know you did, and that makes it worse. I want to say, you should’ve told me to get my ass up here, but honestly? You shouldn’t have had to say it.” I smoothed back her hair, combing my fingers through it. “And while we’re on the subject, I’m sorry for last summer, too. I was an asshole. I shouldn’t have stayed down in Carolina. I should’ve come up here and lived at the shore with you and your mom, or at least gotten a job at home, where I could’ve seen you every few days. I was hurt that you decided to spend the summer there, and I never stopped to think how unfair that was.”

  Quinn closed her eyes. “Thank you for saying that, but it was just as much my fault. I didn’t talk to you before I took the internship, and I think . . . maybe it was because I knew what would happen. Nate said it was like I was testing you, making you decide when there really wasn’t any right choice.”

  “What if I said I had an idea for next summer, one that didn’t come with any hard choices?” I nuzzled her neck, murmuring close to her ear. “One that comes with so much togetherness, you’ll probably get sick of me. And all the hot sex your pretty little body can handle?”

  Quinn cocked her head. “I’m listening.”

  “The camp where I volunteered last summer? The director called me this week. He’s setting up for next year, and he offered me a job.”

  “Okay.” She frowned. “Not seeing where you’re going, though.”

  “I talked to Coach about it, and I told him one of the issues would be having a place to live. I can’t stay on campus, and I can’t live in the camp housing, like I did last year. They only house volunteers. Coach has a townhouse that he and his wife rent out to students during the school year, but it always sits empty over the summer. He said I could live there, just for the cost of utilities and keeping it occupied. Maybe do a paint job and a little maintenance.” I spanned her ribs with my hands so that my thumbs teased the sides of her boobs. “And you could live there with me.”

  Her eyes widened. “Really? I could? Your coach would be okay with that?”

  “Totally. He doesn’t care as long we don’t trash the place or have loud parties.”

  “We could do that!” She grinned. “We could be together the whole summer. Just the two of us. Like . . . like playing house, in a way.”

  “Practicing for the future.” I wriggled my eyebrows up and down suggestively. “And Coach said there are always summer jobs on campus, or even with the businesses just off campus. You could find something if you wanted, or you could just lay around all summer and write or whatever.”

  “That sounds like heaven. It totally makes up for last summer. And it makes me feel even worse for not coming up with a better plan last year.”

  “Nah, enough of that. No more sorry.” I kissed her forehead and then leaned mine against hers. “Are we all done with the apologizing now, do you think? Because I think I might have mentioned we have this place to ourselves for one night. I’d like to get to the part of the program where we make up, because you and I? We’ve always rocked the makeup sex. And then I want to get on to the other types of sex on the menu tonight.”

  Quinn wriggled to sit up a little straighter, her sweet little ass grinding into my cock. “There’s a menu? Oooh. What’s on it? Is there dessert?”

  I chuckled, grasped her hips and resettled her, this time so that she straddled my body. “There’s appetizer, entrée and dessert, babe. But I have a feeling that three courses aren’t going to be enough for me tonight. We might need to expand this menu a little bit.”

  Quinn’s eyebrows rose as she lifted herself up a little and then sank down, rubbing the heat between her legs against my aching dick. Two layers of jeans separated us, but I swore I could feel her already.

  “Remember that first night, in the playground?” She wound her arms around my neck, her eyes on mine, boring into my soul and completing every part of me that was wanting. “You got me off just like this, grinding me. I was so mortified because I came so fast and I’d never come in front of anyone before. Ever. And you said it was just you and me. Us. And that I should never be embarrassed by anything that happens between us.”

  “I remember.” And remembering, my erection grew. “That was seriously so hot, babe. You just let go and trusted me, and I swore I’d never let you down.” I held her chin between my fingers. “I have, though.”

  “This is my point.” She spread her legs a little wider, letting her eyes drift halfway shut. “You said we should never be ashamed. I think that goes beyond just sex. I’m glad you said you were sorry, and I’m glad we talked. But now it’s over, and we’re moving on.”

  I framed her face with my hands and brought her lips to mine, kissing her open-mouthed and with intensity. “I like your way of moving on, Mia.”

  “Mmmmm.” She slid back a little, stripped off her hoodie and the T-shirt beneath it in one fluid motion. I groaned at the sight of her luscious tits spilling over the lace cups of her bra. Still watching me, Quinn unhooked the bra and shook it off.

  “Is this part of the makeup sex, or have we gone right into the appetizer course?”

  “Didn’t you hear what I said just now? We don’t need makeup sex, because that’s all in the past.” She backed away, off my lap, reached between us and unbuttoned my jeans before she tugged down the zipper. Dropping to her knees, she gazed up at me through her eyelashes and began to ease my pants and boxers down my legs so that my cock sprang up, hard and interested. “And I’ve decided I’m going to choose the first item on the appetizer menu.”

  She bent forward so that her turgid nipples brushed over my thighs and took the head of my dick into her mouth. I sucked in a fast breath and leaned back, closing my eyes in pure unadulterated pleasure.

  “Babe, you can order for me every time.”

  Summer between sophomore and junior years

  “Quinn, did you do laundry last night? I need a T-shirt for today.”

  I rolled over in bed and groaned. “No. I was up late working on that article for class.”

  Leo’s voice became louder as he came back into our bedroom. “Shit. I need a shirt, and I’m running late.”

  I opened one eye and caught sight of him running a hand through his damp hair. “Sorry. I thought you were putting a load in yesterday afternoon. You don’t have anything clean to wear?”

  “It’s not that I don’t have anything clean. I need my uniform shirt, specifically. I’ll have to get one out of the dirty clothes and hope for the best.” He dumped out the hamper in the middle of the floor and began sorting through it.

  Guilt threaded through me. “I could toss it in the dryer real fast. It might help.”

  “No, I don’t have time.” Leo snapped out the words. “If I get there late, I have to park way out in the far lot. And
then . . .” His voice trailed off. “It’s just a mess.”

  I heard the frustration in his voice and felt even worse. In an effort to jolly him out of his funk, I teased, “Oh, you mean you don’t like the girl groupies who hang out by the entrance, just hoping for a glimpse of Leo the Lion?” I put on high-pitched tone. “‘Leo! Hey, Leo? Look at me! Take a selfie with me, Leo! I love you, Leo! I want to have your babies!’”

  “Stop.” His face was drawn, and there was more than annoyance on it. “It’s not like that’s fun for me. I wish they’d all just leave me the fuck alone.”

  “Sorry.” I’d lost count of how many times I’d said it in the few minutes I’d been awake. “I was just trying to lighten you up.”

  “Yeah, well, you don’t have to deal with the damn press and the girls. I just want to do my job. I wish—” He growled and kicked at the pile of clothes.

  “What? You wish Carolina hadn’t won the championship last year? You wish you hadn’t been the guy who caught the winning touchdown? You wish you weren’t so hot that your picture became the most downloaded college football photo on social media?” I sat up, hunching my back over my bent knees. “Or you wish you hadn’t taken the job here this summer? Or you wish you hadn’t asked me to come down here and live with you? Or . . .” I swallowed over the lump in my throat. “You wish your girlfriend took better care of you? Did your laundry and cooked you decent dinners?”

  “God, Quinn. Just—no.” Leo straightened. “I’m not saying any of that. I just wish things were different. I never wanted all the attention, you know that. I only want to play the game.” He picked up a shirt and tossed it over his shoulder. “And a fucking clean T-shirt.”

  “Oh!” I swung my legs over the bed. “I just remembered. You have one shirt for work that’s still clean, in our suitcase. From when we went to Charleston last weekend, and we thought you’d have to go right to work from there, remember?”

  His face cleared a little. “Yes! Is it in the closet still?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. I forgot to move it when I was putting stuff away. Sorry.” There was that word again.

  “No problem.” He disappeared into the closet and emerged, pulling the shirt over his head and then bent to tie his sneakers, resting his foot on the edge of the bed. “Hey, Quinn. I’m sorry I jumped on you. Things have been so crazy.”

  That was the understatement of the year. Or at least the summer. We’d both been so excited for this, to live together on our own for two whole months. Leo had loved volunteering the summer before, and his new job was managing all the volunteers and coordinating their work. And I’d gotten an on-line gig, writing for two different news blogs and their feature columns. Not everything that I produced was picked up for inclusion on the sites, but it was good for me to get both the experience and the line on my resume.

  At first, everything had been exactly as I’d expected. It had been so much fun to go grocery shopping together, choosing food and planning our meals, making the bed together every morning and climbing back into it every night. The coach’s townhouse wasn’t anything fancy, but it was clean and well-maintained, so we had no complaints.

  We’d needed this time together. The months since Leo had visited me at Birch had been filled with stress and change. Leo had been playing so well that he was consistently starting every week, which raised his visibility around campus and also brought him attention nationwide. He was flattered when it began, but as the season went on and his name was mentioned more often on the college football programs, tensions grew, both between Leo and his teammates and between us.

  And then there was Matt. The more attention Leo got, the more surly and nasty Matt was. He was still second-string quarterback, and he hated that he hadn’t bumped Thom Wilkens from his spot. Each week, Matt drowned his sorrows in alcohol, women and even more alarmingly, drugs and violent behavior. He’d gotten warnings from the coaching staff, and each time, he managed to pull it back together enough that things calmed down. But everyone could tell it was only a matter of time before all hell broke loose.

  His relationship with Gia was in constant turmoil, too, and it felt as though we were all collateral damage. Throughout sophomore year, they’d spun wildly out of control, veering from the weekends they spent together in bed, hardly ever coming up for air, to other weeks when they screamed at each other and slept with other people. Well, to be fair, it was always Matt sleeping around; in the aftermath of their meltdowns, Gia mostly got drunk and played depressing music. Loudly.

  Leo hated what was happening with his friend, but like the rest of us, he was powerless to stop him. I knew, too, that he felt guilty about his own success, as if that were somehow a slap in the face to Matt.

  But this summer was going to be different. The first few weeks were perfect; Matt had moved back to South Jersey for the summer, where he was living with his grandparents again. This was part of the plan put into place by the university, in exchange for Matt being able to return to school—and the football team—in the fall. He had to toe the proverbial line, take summer classes at Birch and attend substance abuse therapy sessions. Leo and I both had our doubts about how effective this plan was—Matt’s grandparents had never been the most hands-on adults, even when he was younger—but for now at least, Matt wasn’t our problem.

  And then about three weeks after we’d moved into the townhouse, the Lionesses were born.

  It had all started on a slow week in the sports world. A journalist with a small Southern news organization, looking for a story, had decided to do a piece on the up-and-coming college players ahead of the season. Something about Leo had intrigued her, and she’d done a little more digging into his past. The spin she gave his pre-college life got her article picked up beyond her own publication, but it was the picture of Leo after the championship game that made the whole story go viral.

  Leo went from being a vaguely familiar name among those who followed college ball to being a face recognizable all over the country. Two of the national morning shows talked about him during their pop culture segments, both mentioning his mother’s battle with leukemia and his old high school nickname—the Lion.

  The next day, a group popped up on social media. The Lionesses were made up almost entirely of girls, and their sole reason for existence was the adoration of my boyfriend.

  That was fun for me.

  Although the Lionesses’ membership stretched from coast to coast, there was a devoted cluster right here near Carolina University, made up of girls who lived locally and those who happened to be staying on campus over the summer. Leo and I weren’t exactly hiding, and the story about him had mentioned his job at the camp—This talented young man isn’t taking his summer off for fun and sun—instead, he’s working at a football camp for underprivileged children, teaching a whole new generation the love of the game that has sustained him through hard times. Even so, neither of us expected the Lionesses to turn up every morning at the entrance to Camp Bryant.

  The first few days, we’d both laughed at it. Leo had taken pictures of the crowd with his phone, sending them to me with a caption that read, Jealous, babe?

  I wasn’t. I knew how much Leo loved me, and those girls meant nothing to us. Leo learned to get to work early enough to score a spot in the lot closest to the back entrance of the camp, and we waited for it all to die down.

  But it didn’t die down. Instead, there were more pictures, more stories and more exposure. Leo began to dread the daily gauntlet he had to run to get to work, and we both had to shut down our social media accounts.

  Things got even worse when one of the crazier Lionesses surreptitiously followed Leo home one afternoon. By the next day, when I went out to make an early-morning coffee run, there were twenty girls camped outside our door. To say that they were all dismayed to see me would be more than accurate. The original article that had lit this firestorm hadn’t mentioned that the sexy Lion had a girlfriend, and so the chicks outside immediately jumped to the conclusion that I was just
a piece of tail. They’d booed me and jeered, and I’d had a sudden flashback to high school, when I’d had the audacity to date the football star.

  As it became more apparent that I wasn’t just some random hook-up, the verbal and virtual assaults intensified. Messages popped up on my phone, calling me every vile name in the book. Unattractive and unpleasant pictures of me were floated around the web. Even though I no longer even glanced at my social media accounts, it was impossible to ignore what was going on. I was afraid to go out, afraid someone would know me as the Lion’s girlfriend.

  Now, with his clean T-shirt stretched over his broad chest and his sneakers tied, Leo straightened. He regarded me with a frown, and I wondered if my expression reflected my mixed feelings about our perfect summer.

  “I know things have been . . . different than we thought.” I spoke slowly. “And if we’re talking about wishes, I wish that story had never been written. I hate that you have to deal with those crazy girls. But it’s got to end soon, right? I mean, doesn’t everyone say the public has a short attention span? Something big will happen, and you’ll be yesterday’s news.”

  Leo shrugged. “I keep hoping. But I’m not so much worried about me as I am about you. When was the last time you were out of the house?”

  I grimaced. “Um . . . three days ago? When we went to pick up the pizza?”

  “Mia.” He sighed. “The townhouse complex security is keeping everyone away from the front door. No one’s going to bother you again when you go out. There are no girls sitting out there now, waiting to pounce on me. Or you. It’s safe.”

  “I know.” I lay back on the pillow, staring up at the ceiling. “They’re not at the door. But they’re still out there, Leo. When I stop at the grocery store, it feels like people are staring. And I can’t even go online anymore, except for work. The things people write about me . . .” I closed my eyes. “It’s so ugly.”