Make It Count

by Megan Erickson

  Kat grabbed his hand so he had to follow as she trotted up the stairs. “Come on. I guess you get to meet the King and Queen of Brazil now.” She shot a wink over her shoulder.

  When Kat opened up the large oak door and Alec stepped onto some sort of fancy-looking tile floor, he was instantly aware of his worn jeans, scuffed Converse and thin T-shirt. At least he’d done his hair. Kat must have noticed him inspecting himself because she told him, “Quit it, you look fine. My parents are far from intimidating.”

  One look at Kat’s father as he strode down the hallway proved her wrong.

  He was about Alec’s height, skin the color of Kat’s and hair a blue black, dressed impeccably in navy slacks and a white polo shirt.

  Mr. Caruso smiled, his straight teeth bleached white, his dark eyes missing nothing as they roamed Alec’s face. Kat introduced Alec as her “friend from school,” which stung. Her dad held out his hand, which Alec promptly shook in a firm handshake. “Rafael Caruso.”

  He then turned his head to his wife, whose heels clicked down the hall toward them. “Helena! Come meet Mr. Alec Stone.”

  A pretty woman, with hair the same as Kat’s, wearing a tight gray dress walked up behind her husband, smiling warmly at Alec. He instantly liked her as she hugged him. She looked like a grown-up Kat, all blue eyes and delicate features.

  They invited him into the kitchen, a massive room with high ceilings and gleaming appliances and black granite. Alec sweated, worried he didn’t belong here.

  Mr. Caruso motioned him to sit at the counter on a stool and asked about his major and what he wanted to do. There was tension in the air between Kat and her parents. Alec could feel it, but didn’t know the source.

  The only time Kat came to life was when her father asked Alec what his parents did.

  Kat stiffened beside him like a little pit bull and turned icy eyes on her father. “Dad, quit it with the grilling, okay?”

  Mr. Caruso paused mid-sip of his water, blinking at her, clearly surprised at his daughter’s outburst.

  Alec didn’t want to brush Kat off, because she was trying to protect him. He placed a hand on her thigh and said sincerely, “Hey, it’s okay. I don’t mind.”

  She searched his eyes for a minute, then nodded.

  He turned to Mr. Caruso. “My mom is a manager at a day care and my dad passed away when I was five. He was a police officer.”

  Kat’s dad placed his glass gently on the counter. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  After her parents excused themselves to do whatever important things they needed to do on a Friday night, Kat turned to him. “Are you hungry?”

  His stomach rumbled at the thought of food. When did he eat last? Hell, did he eat at all today? It’d been the longest day of his life, it felt like.

  She stuck her head in the refrigerator and rummaged around, speaking over her shoulder. “What do you want? I can heat up some leftover feijoada. Or I can make you a turkey and Havarti sandwich. I think we have some of that good stone-ground mustard . . .”

  “Kat.” He laughed. Havarti? What was that?

  She ignored him. “Ooooh, it looks like there is some left-over—” she paused, taking a sniff of something in a container. Then she made a face and gagged. “Okay, that’s a no-go on the left-over lasagna. Because it’s not lasagna. It’s beef stew and that white stuff is not cheese. It’s mold. Okay, so—”

  “Kat!”

  “What?” She whipped around, hands on her hips.

  He took a breath. “I don’t care. I can eat a bowl of cereal.”

  “You are not eating a bowl of cereal for dinner. Mom would kill me. Do you like feijoada?”

  She said the word so fast, with a slight accent. It turned him on and confused him at the same time. “Fay what?”

  Kat paused, a blank look on her face before she laughed. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking. Oh, it’s a Brazilian dish. Black beans, sausage, bacon—”

  He held up a hand. “You had me at sausage. And bacon just added to my excitement.”

  She smiled with a faint blush and he wondered if it meant something to her that he wanted to try a dish from her family’s country.

  Kat plopped a large, foil-covered dish on the counter and began scooping contents onto a plate before popping it into the microwave. “Then that’s what you’re getting.”

  Feijoada—however it was said—was delicious. It tasted like it’d been cooking all day and Alec ate two helpings. Kat avoided him while he ate, wiping down already clean counters and rewashing the same dish three times, running water and drowning out his attempts at conversation with her. He didn’t realize what changed between the parking lot of the bowling alley and driving to her house.

  Did she not want him here? What kind of relationship did she have with her parents? The knowledge that he didn’t know—that he didn’t know all there was to know about Kat Caruso—bothered the hell out of him.

  He was in so deep with this girl.

  By the time he was finished eating and the kitchen was back to sparkling, it was nearing midnight. Kat led him upstairs, directly into a room that was so brightly painted, it was blinding.

  Kat pointed to a walk-in closet. “You can throw your stuff in there.”

  Alec stopped in the doorway and glanced around. “Where am I going to sleep?”

  “Um . . . the bed,” she said slowly.

  “What bed?”

  She pointed to the pink monstrosity in the center of her room. “That bed.”

  He’d rather sleep on the floor. “Where are you going to sleep?”

  She put her hands on her hips. “Where in the heck do you think I’m going to sleep? In that bed!”

  He clutched his duffel to his chest like it was a parachute and he was thirty thousand feet in the air and stared at the bed like it was the open door of the airplane. “We’re going to sleep in the same bed with your parents in the house? No way. Your dad probably has some sort of weird Brazilian way to torture and kill people.”

  “Alec, my parents do not care if you sleep in my bed with me. Trust me.”

  He narrowed his eyes, wondering if he could trust her.

  She threw up her hands. “I’m twenty years old! They don’t care!”

  He dropped his parachute-duffel and mimicked her action. “Well, sorry! My mom wouldn’t even let us be in the room with the door closed, let alone sleep together. She’d probably be serving us milk and peanut butter and jelly with the crusts cut off.”

  Kat chuckled. “Well, welcome to the house of heathens.” She pointed to a door off to her right. “There’s the bathroom.”

  With a furtive glance into the hallway for any roaming Brazilian bodyguards or something, he ducked into her room. They readied for bed in silence and after the emotion of the day, Kat looked half asleep by the time he crawled in beside her.

  He rested his hand on her hip as she cuddled back into him. “I like to be the little spoon,” she murmured.

  “Kat, we have some things to talk about . . .”

  “Tomorrow.” She yawned. “Sleepy.”

  He took a deep breath, hoping she’d be back to the Kat he knew. Then he nuzzled his nose into her hair and breathed in her familiar citrus scent. “Okay. Tomorrow.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  KAT WOKE UP to a weight against her back, hot breath coating the hair at her neck. Alec’s fingers were still laced with hers, and she ran her fingers over his blunt, bitten-off nails.

  He stirred behind her. “You awake?”

  She rolled over to face him. “Nope.”

  Alec’s hair was sticking up on one side, smashed down on the other. Without his glasses and face still slack with sleep, he looked like a teenager.

  “I have morning breath,” she informed him.

  His grin was adorable. “I do, too. We cancel each other out, like if we both had onions for dinner.”

  “I don’t think it works like that.”

  He ignored her and pressed his lips to hers for a
chaste kiss. She fingered the corner of his mouth, loving the feel of the ridges on those full lips as he pulled away. He darted out his tongue like a lizard and licked her fingers.

  She laughed and lowered her fingers to his collarbone, watching the skin shift under her touch. “So what happened with your car? I thought you never ran out of gas with that high-tech pencil-and-notepad system.”

  He chuckled. “I drove to my mom’s before I came here and I guess I was distracted. Forgot to write everything down.” He grabbed her hand and brought it up to his mouth, kissing her ring finger, and she wondered if he picked that finger on purpose. He drove here to talk her out of dropping out of school, right? He’d said it himself. Despite what he said to her in the car and the way he held her last night, she struggled to believe it was all real. And that it’d last. But then he laced his fingers with hers and rested them on his chest. Her heart warmed at the sight. Maybe this could be . . .

  “I know most people would just cough up the money to get it fixed and wouldn’t want to keep track of all the numbers like I do.”

  Something about his words or his tone scraped under her skin like a splinter. “You mean most people aren’t smart enough to do it, right? Like me.” Her voice threatened to crack. “That’s what you’re thinking.”

  Alec’s eyes blinked, awareness replacing the sleep haze. “Wh–what are you talking about?” he stammered. “No, that’s not what I meant.”

  It was like she’d flown too close to the sun. And as the heat melted the wax of her wings, she plummeted to the cool depths of the earth. Of course she couldn’t keep track of those numbers. He knew it and she knew it. The reminder chilled her to the bone. She wanted to go back to last night when he kissed her with rain-coated lips. But her guard had been down then, drained from the day and so eager to see him. But now she’d had a full night’s sleep and was well-rested enough to fend him off.

  She yanked her hand, but he held it fast. “Shit, hold on. I didn’t mean it like that.”

  His hand rose, and she braced. Because if he ran his thumb over her cheekbone, she was a goner. As much as she wanted to stay in bed, snuggling with him, hands linked, she needed to get out. She needed time to get her bearings. And her barriers.

  Kat tugged her hand again and this time he let go. But it hurt, like she’d left a strip of skin behind in his.

  She rolled off the bed gracelessly. “I need to pee.”

  “Kat—”

  “Be right back!” she called over her shoulder, tripping over clothes on the way to the bathroom.

  Once she closed the door, she leaned on the sink and took deep breaths. And then flashed back to another time she holed herself up in a bathroom with Alec right outside the door. Except this time, she knew what he looked like under those black boxer briefs. And she knew what it felt like to be the focus of those intelligent green eyes. What would it feel like to fall even deeper for him and see those eyes turn cold or exasperated or irritated? And worse—sick of her? Max had done it, every other guy had done it. Why not Alec?

  She bit her lip as her eyes welled with tears, so she turned on the shower to cover the sobs. Then she stripped out of her clothes and reached to pull back the shower curtain when a knock rattled the door.

  “Kat! Come on, let me in. We need to talk.”

  She debated. Get in the shower? Lock the door? Or throw on a towel and face him?

  “I’m coming in,” he announced, making her choice for her. She turned off the shower and then whipped a lush pink towel off the rack and covered herself.

  He could already see inside her brain, she didn’t need to be naked in front of him, too.

  The doorknob turned and Alec strode in, slamming it shut behind him. He hadn’t put on pants or a shirt. Jeez.

  “What’s going on?” He squinted at her, having left his glasses back in the bedroom.

  “I need to shower.” She announced.

  His eyebrows rose. “You need to shower. Right now.”

  No, what she needed to do was cry. And then eat a lot of ice cream and watch some sappy romance movie while she leaked tears onto her pillow. “Yep, right now.”

  “That was a stupid thing for me to say—”

  “It’s fine. Everything’s fine.” She hated how that answer was so remote.

  Alec’s eyes flashed and his jaw clenched. He shook his head. “Don’t do that. Don’t say you’re fine when you aren’t.”

  Kat swallowed, and stared at her pink-painted toenails. There was a chip on the big toe of her right foot. She needed to fix that.

  “Kat . . .”

  She didn’t want to talk about it. She wanted to be alone to think in peace because she couldn’t with his body and skin and hair and eyes taking up all the space in the bathroom.

  So she changed the subject. “I have a lot on my mind.”

  Alec’s anger faded rapidly, interest taking its place. “Oh?”

  She took a deep breath. “I went to visit my sixth-grade teacher yesterday. Turns out she mentioned she thought I had a learning disability to my parents. Specifically dyslexia. They didn’t do anything about it because they didn’t want me ‘labeled.’ ” She raised her eyes to his. “So, I could have been getting help this whole time. I didn’t have to struggle so much.”

  Was that sympathy in his eyes? “Shit. I’m sorry.”

  She shrugged and looked away. “Yeah, me too. But, I made an appointment with the learning disability center on campus. I explained my situation and they’re eager to see me.”

  Alec smiled and took a step closer. “That’s great. I’m so proud of you. I’ll help you out. I actually researched dyslexia and wrote a whole outline of techniques you can use. Did you know dyslexia can often be diagnosed along with attention-deficit disorder? We might want to look into that . . .”

  He rambled on, his eyes barely even focused on hers, lost in some nerd-world where he had a pet project, some cute girl he could rescue from the depths of the class rank and push to the top. He didn’t even realize she was in the room, drowning in the blood from the reopened wound in her heart.

  What was happening? Was this all she was to him, a problem to be solved? Alec had a huge future ahead of him. He’d surely graduate from Bowler summa cum laude. Then he’d go on to attend an elite law school where he’d meet some lovely female brainiac with shampoo-commercial hair who understood nerd puns and dreamed of bestowing her children with names like Aurora and Ender. Kat would just be some story he could tell his socialite wife and his judge friends when he was forty and drinking hundred-year-old Scotch in a ritzy country club. I dated this dyslexic girl in college and helped her pass her classes. She’s a teacher somewhere in Jersey now . . .

  All her fears had been realized. Once he found out what she was really like, he hadn’t pushed her away like all the other guys, but it was still all he saw—the defective Kat. Did he see the witty Kat anymore? The fun Kat? The Kat he slept with?

  Nope, all he saw was how to fix her. She vowed to herself—no more guys who couldn’t see past her gray matter to who she really was.

  He finally stopped his monologue. “What do you think?” he said, taking a step toward her. He was too close and those eyes too knowing. This was too much and too real and she didn’t want it. Kat clutched the towel at her chest, knowing this was going to hurt her as much as it hurt him, but she was on the defensive now. And she blocked him the only way she knew how.

  She curled her lips into her most sultry smile and cocked a hip. “So, like I said, I need to shower, so you might want to leave . . .” She dipped the towel a little so the tops of her breasts peeked out, then waggled her eyebrows. “Unless you want to watch.”

  And that was it.

  Her block thrown. Her walls up. And Alec knew it.

  His face crumbled, his eyes closing slowly, painfully, and his whole body slumped, like someone had liquefied his bones.

  If she could hear over the thunderous shattering of her own heart, she was sure she’d hear Alec’s bre
ak, too.

  Through it all, she kept that fake smile in place. Because although she stood in front of him in only a towel, that smile was the only thing preventing the nakedness of her heart. But behind that smile, and behind that towel, she was bleeding from the inside.

  Alec shook his head, running shaking hands through his hair. “You’re shutting down.” His jaw clenched, the green in his eyes flashing like cold peridot. “I can see it. Don’t pull this bullshit on me.”

  This had to end soon because she didn’t know how long she could keep this up. But she couldn’t give up now. It was almost over. She let the towel slip a little. “So, you want to watch then.”

  Disappointment. That’s what showed like a harsh headlight in his green gaze. “Jesus Christ, Kat.”

  His words bounced off her smile. “Okay, then, your choice.” She forced herself to keep her voice light and breathy, like Marilyn Monroe. But to hide the tears gathering in her eyes, she turned around before dropping the towel. Seconds later, the bathroom door slammed and she didn’t have to turn around to know she was alone.

  She turned on the shower and stepped inside to let the pelting water muffle her sobs.

  ALEC SAT ON the edge of her bed, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, listening as Kat turned off the shower and rattled around in the bathroom.

  How could she take his words so wrong? How could she think he’d call her dumb? He hadn’t meant it that way. She had to know that. But then in the bathroom . . . fuck, what was that? She’d turned on the sex kitten he knew she relied on when she felt cornered.

  He wished she’d just show her claws instead. Then they could scratch and hiss at each other until they were weak and then make up.

  But instead she shut him out.

  The door opened and Kat stepped out in just a towel. Fresh-faced, she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. But she wasn’t his. She’d made it clear he didn’t have permission to get inside her head.

  Her face twitched with nervousness when she saw him before she straightened her shoulders and twisted her lips into that sultry smile.

  She walked over to her dresser and rummaged around, pulling out a pair of jeans and Bowler University sweatshirt. With her back to Alec, she tugged her pants on under her towel, then dropped the cover to pull on a bra and sweatshirt.