Chapter 22: Our Secret Moments: Chapter 22

CAT We all have those people in our lives who just know things. You never ask them why or how they’ve somehow acquired the wisdom they have. They just have it and it’s like a superpower you’ll never understand. That’s exactly how my grandma JoJo is.

The second I went to meet her today, she had one look at me and said, “You look like you’ve had sex.”

“How do you even know these things, JoJo?” I ask, slouching in the chair across from her. Well, technically her judgement is off. I didn’t have sex. I had extremely passionate phone-sex with the hottest man to ever exist, there’s a very clear difference. When she raises an eyebrow, I shake my head. “Actually, I don’t want to know.”

She shrugs, tightening her electric blue cardigan around her. “Who’s the lucky guy?”

“No one you’d know,” I say, resetting the game of Go on the table between us. I know she doesn’t buy my bullshit. Both Wes and Connor have met my grandma multiple times when she stayed with us during the summer, and she would spoil them rotten as if they were her own grandkids. She also knows the amount of crushes I had on Connor growing up.

“You look just like your mother when you lie, you know?” she teases, smiling at me.

The way I always get compared to my mom in looks always sends a weird pang of something through my body. It’s not that I don’t remember her. I have millions of pictures and videos of her on my phone, so it would be impossible to do so. I just feel guilty that people can see so much of her in me and she’s not here anymore. That’s why I want to do well in school so I can make something of myself, so her legacy isn’t tarnished.

“Well, I’m not lying,” I say, crossing my legs. JoJo holds eye contact with me, not dropping her defiant gaze from mine. She has a way of looking at me that makes me want to spill my deepest darkest secrets. Mostly because I know she’ll keep them, and she’s probably one of the only people who would care to listen. “Okay, fine.”

“That’s my girl,” she says, cheering. Her cheer quickly turns into a chesty cough and I lean over, immediately pushing her herbal tea back into her hands.

“For your information, I didn’t have sex. Not the conventional way you think, anyway,” I murmur, twisting my fingers between the hole in my jeans.

“Glad to know you’re being creative,” she gets out around a cough. I frown. She has zero filter, this one. “As long as you’re being safe, I’m happy to see you’re moving on. You don’t have to be so afraid of love, birdie.”

My eyebrows pinch together. “I’m not afraid of love, Jo.”

“No, you’re afraid of what it does to a person,” she says, seemingly having me all figured out. “Just because you think your mom didn’t have much going on before she met your dad, doesn’t mean the same thing is going to happen to you and it doesn’t mean her life before him was insignificant. You can be your own person in and outside of a relationship.”

I sigh, rolling my head back. “It feels like it’s three separate timelines. The time before you’re in love, the time when you’re in love, and then there’s the after. I don’t want the person I am now to change just because I get into a relationship.”

“The person you are before you meet your soulmate isn’t going to change just because you’re experiencing life differently. A new lens is good, Catherine. Rose tinted glasses aren’t always harmful,” JoJo explains before taking another sip of her tea. “You don’t change. You grow.”

“Yeah,” I sigh, “I guess.”

“What have I told you about guessing, Songbird? You don’t guess unless you are absolutely unsure. I’m telling you this because it’s true. Not for you to just guess, okay?”

I let her words settle over me. The idea doesn’t sound so bad when she puts it like that, but looking at the relationships around me, that kind of change frightens me more than it excites me.

I don’t want to be a different person just because I’m in a relationship. I don’t want to act differently or say things differently. I don’t want my past to be a time that I class as ‘before’ instead of yesterday. Change is a scary yet inevitable thing.

“Your dad loved your mom, Catherine,” my grandma says. My eyes start to prickle with tears at the mention of their love. “He loved her so much. So much so that I don’t think he knew what to do with it at the time. And now she’s gone, it feels like a piece of him is gone too. He’s submerging himself into his work to avoid that. Part of me thinks that he’s just trying to shield you from his hurt.”

“I don’t want him to do that,” I whisper. “We’re supposed to be helping each other, but all he’s done is push me away and I don’t feel like I can talk to him.”

“You’ll find a way, Birdie, I know you will,” she encourages. I reach out and clasp her hand between mine, needing her close to me. “I don’t know the ins and outs of whatever you’re doing with this new boy of yours, but keep him this time, Cat. Promise me you’ll do that. I just want you to be happy. To hope.”

I swallow. The desperation in her eyes throws me off. I’ve never seen her look so serious. She’s always laughing, always down to make a dirty joke or poke fun at one of her friends. I can tell she needs this.

“I’ll try.”

For her and for my mom, I want to try.

CONNOR “Oh, shit,” Wes exclaims, still upside down. “I have an even better idea.”

“It can’t get any worse than your last one, so hit me,” I say, giving him the floor. Usually, if I manage to get all of his bullshit out in one sitting, he’ll shut up for the rest of the day.

We’ve been in the gym all morning, preparing for our next away game. Wes has been doing more shit-talking than he has working out and he’s completely convinced that his best ideas come to him when he’s upside down.

So, he’s leaning against the wall, topless, his hands on the ground, his legs kicked up as he rattles on to me about how I’m supposed to get Cat to date me. I must be delusional if I think that any of Wes’s advice will actually work.

Okay, maybe the sexting thing did help, but still.

He doesn’t know about the way I fucked my fist to the sound of her fingering herself over the phone and I’m going to keep it that way. I was not planning on taking things that far the other night, but sometimes desire gets the best of us. I don’t know where exactly we stand, and I want to let her know that I’m in this for keeps.

“She’s into rom coms. Just watch one of those and bring it up casually in a conversation. She’ll be all over it,” he pants, his face completely red. That’s actually not a bad idea.

“Real question. Do you ever actually use these tactics, or are you just that repulsive that nobody wants to date you?” I ask, trying my hardest not to laugh.

“Nah, I’m saving these for the right girl. In the meantime, I’m happy being the best wingman to you, Connie boy. God knows you need it,” he replies, his voice strained. I don’t even argue with him on that.

“Dude, you’re going to pass out. Get down,” I say, scrubbing my hands across my face.

“I’m not. You see all the red on my face? That’s just my ideas, slowly falling down to my brain. It’s science. Don’t question it,” he says confidently.

“I really don’t think that’s how that works, Wes. You’re–”

I barely get my sentence out before he collapses right on top of me.

“Am I dreaming, or is there a really hot doctor in front of me right now?”

The guy has been passed out for the last ten minutes and of course the first that comes out of his mouth is something stupid. He blinks up at his ‘doctor’ who rushed here when I had no else to call and was happy to help us out.

He’s right. She is hot. Barely conscious or not, he shouldn’t be hitting on her.

“You would have a hot doctor if you called an ambulance like a normal person,” Cat says, helping me push Wes into a sitting position against one of the walls in the gym. “Why did you call me anyway? I’m hardly first aid trained.”

“Connie boy wanted an excuse to see you again, so he forced me into doing a handstand for an hour,” Wes mumbles, lying straight through his grin. That bastard.

“Is that true, Connie boy?” Cat mocks, tilting her head at me. She has the audacity to bash her lashes at me as if I haven’t been thinking about the way she moaned my name a few nights ago. As if I haven’t spent every night since then tossing and turning, hoping she’d call me again for round two. Or better yet, turn up outside my door.

“It’s not,” I mutter, standing to my feet. “Wesley is a liar.”

“Yeah, well, Wesley has a mild concussion, so maybe we should be nice to him.”

“He’s referring to himself in the third person. That’s not a good sign, is it, Doc?” I ask Cat, feigning concern. Her eyes light up, playing along with me.

“That isn’t a good sign. You’re right. Maybe he needs to go to a real doctor,” she says, tapping her chin. Wes shakes his head twice before wincing at the pain.

“No! Please. No real doctors, they creep me out,” he begs, his grey eyes pleading like a little puppy. Cat and I both laugh, and she stands to her feet.

“I’ll get you a drink. Stay here,” she says when her laughter dies down.

Like the dumb bunny I am, I follow after her, needing to be close to her again. She doesn’t say anything when she gets to the vending machine, and I don’t either. I wait for her to pick up the water before snaking my hand around her waist, crushing her chest to mine and capturing her lips.

She tastes exactly like home. Everything about her feels like it was made just for me. The soft dip in her hips as I hold her close to me. The faint gasp that escaped her lips in surprise before her body relaxed into mine. The sweet taste of her lip balm against my mouth and the fresh feel of her tongue that slips into my mouth when my hands find their way into her hair.

She pushes off me slightly, keeping her lips pressed to mine. “Connor,” she whispers against my lips. If I could bottle that sound and keep it forever, I would. There’s something so sacred about the way she says my name. Nobody says it like her.

“Hm?”

“Someone could see,” she whispers.

I open my eyes then to see she’s looking up at me with a worried expression. I look around us. The gym isn’t particularly full, but it’s not empty either. It’s the second one we have on campus that mostly sophomores and junior’s use, so there will definitely be people we know around.

For once in my life, I don’t want to play it safe. I don’t want to be the perfect Connor Bailey who is always on edge, waiting for the other shoe to drop. I want to be the kind of Connor Bailey who gets to kiss Catherine Fables in hallways whenever we want.

“I don’t care,” I say. I reach out for her, slipping my finger between the belt loop in her jeans. “If it takes touching you like this for everyone to know you’re mine, I’ll do it happily.”

She hums. “Quite possessive over someone you’ve only made out with once.”

“We’ve done more than make out, Cat,” I whisper, dropping my mouth to the shell of her ear. She shivers. “I’ve wanted you for years. You’ve just been too blind to notice it.”

“I have not been blind. I’ve just been in it for the long haul,” she admits nonchalantly. She shrugs. “That’s all.”

My chest lights up with pride, my face cracking into a smile at her words. I knew it wasn’t just me that felt this pull between us. “So, you’re admitting that you’ve always had a crush on me?” I tease, tugging on the belt loop of her jeans.

“I’m not admitting anything, you—”

I silence her lie with a kiss. It’s the kind of kiss you get lost in, where it’s just all tongue and teeth and hands and strangled moans.

When I kiss Catherine, she gives me everything. Everything about her fits so perfectly with me that we don’t even have to try to make each other feel good. Her whole body is in tune with mine.

I kiss across her jaw, her cheek, down her neck until she’s writing beneath me. “Catherine likes me,” I whisper into her neck, blowing a raspberry and she laughs, gasping for air. I plant more kisses across her face and neck until she’s covered with me. “You like me. You like me. You like me.”

“You’re so annoying,” she gets out through a laugh, pushing me off her.

She looks at me – like, really looks at me. Her beautiful eyes travel from my hair which she’s messed up, down to the curve of my lips and when her eyes snag on mine, I swear I almost drop right to my knees, ready to beg her for literally anything.

Once she’s had a good enough look, she steps into me, fists my shirt and pushes herself against me. The force of her grip and the hunger in her eyes sends a heavy feeling of want throughout my body. Knowing that she’s turned inside out as much as I am makes me want her even more. When her hand twists in my shirt and her lips are inches away from mine, I stop her, gripping onto her waist until her legs tighten around me. She gasps when I press her against the wall and she’s still gripping onto my shirt like her life depends on it.

“Who’s the possessive one now, huh?” I murmur against her lips. Her eyes flash when she presses herself into me again, feeling the hardness in my jeans.

“Feels like it’s still you,” she whispers before kissing me so hard I almost lose my balance.

I give her everything with my kiss. I tug on her bottom lip with my teeth, desperate and needy for more. It feels branding — as she says, possessive. It was absolute torture watching her in a relationship with somebody else and now that I finally have her, I want to show her exactly what it’s like to be mine. To be worshipped. To be cared for and looked after.

It feels like we’ve been making out in the corridor for hours, neither of us stepping apart to take a breath until someone walks past clearing their throat. We break apart and I drop her back to her feet. Her deep brown lips are swollen, her pupils dilated as she raises a shaky hand to touch her lips.

“When am I going to see you again?” I ask when we finally start walking back to Wes. I hope the poor guy hasn’t passed out again.

Her eyebrows scrunch as she turns to me. “Coach says I have to come with you to the away game, anyway. So, I’ll see you then.”

“That’s in a week, Cat. I need to see you before then,” I groan, sounding like a child. She stops, crossing her arms against her chest, challenging me with her eyes. “Just me and you,” I add.

“I need to study,” she mutters. Right. College. Work. Things that exist outside mine and Cat’s relationship.

“Then let me study with you,” I suggest, “I’m a good study buddy.”

She chews on her lip for a minute, glancing down at the floor and then back up at me. I know how hard she works. She’s always put in one hundred and ten percent into everything that she does and college work is no different. I used to think that all she did was study until a few years ago when she started to let loose – courtesy of my sister and Elle.

“Okay, fine. Meet me at Grand, tomorrow, at six,” she says, sticking a finger in my face. I grasp her small hand between mine, pulling it to my lips and kissing it. She rolls her eyes at me. “Don’t be late.”