One Hot Fall Term (Yardley College Chronicles Book1) (3 page)

I thought I’d be happy—I could keep the memory of making love with Ryan in my heart forever.

It just makes letting him go hurt so much more.

Inside me, his cock softens and when I shift to snuggle against him, it slides out. He pulls off the condom and leaves it by his jeans. I know he’ll actually put it in the garbage, not toss it in the woods. Funny, how all these small things make him so wonderful and special to me.

He kisses the top of my head. His chest moves quickly up and down.

“I wish I wasn’t going, Mia,” he says huskily. “Right now, I want to spend the rest of my life in bed with you.”

I giggle but it hurts. I stroke his hip, loving the way his hipbone is a solid, prominent ridge. He has the sexiest hips and the most beautiful flat, taut abdomen. “We aren’t even in a bed,” I tease. “And military college has been your dream for years. You
have
to go.”

One arm is around me. With his right hand, he smooths my tangled hair. “I wouldn’t be going to college if it weren’t for you.”

“You would. I bet you were their first choice.”

“I doubt that, Mia.” He sits up to look at me. “But if you hadn’t tutored me in calculus and functions and algebra, I never would have had the marks. How were you so patient with me?”

“You’re smart, Ryan.” It wasn’t his fault that he had to look after a drunken father for most of his life, so he missed a lot of school. Homework wasn’t a priority when he worried about his dad either dying in a car accident, a bar brawl, or from alcohol poisoning. Ryan had barely learned to read, I realized when we started dating. It meant he couldn’t cope with subjects like math and science, too, never mind English lit. How could he learn mathematics when he couldn’t make any sense out of a word like ‘congruent’?

I tutored him, and soon realized just how smart he was. I made him see that he could achieve his dreams and he worked hard to do it. When he got his scholarship, I felt just as happy as he did—we’d done it together.

Ryan nuzzles my neck. Then he whispers, “We’re going to make this work, Mia. We can keep in touch, and we’ll see each other at Thanksgiving and winter and spring breaks.”

He straightens, looks as me earnestly.

I nod. This isn’t what I expected. I thought…I thought we would be letting each other go.

“We will make this work,” I repeat, as though saying the same words somehow makes a pact with fate.

But I’m determined to do it. When you’ve been given the perfect guy on a silver platter you would be insane not to make it work.

A screen door slams up at the cabin, the sound echoing over the lake. I jerk up from Ryan’s chest, and he gets to his feet. Next thing I know, he’s handing me my clothes.

“We’d better go back to the party,” he says.

His going away party, combined with the last blowout of our graduating high school class. This is our last weekend before college. The last weekend I’ll see Ryan until Thanksgiving.

Tomorrow I go back home and spend my last evening with my mom. On Monday, I go away to Yardley College, while Ryan finishes packing for military college. My dad will drive me to Yardley. I’m scared thinking about the
looooong
drive. But what can I do?

I’ve been with Ryan and now everything’s changed.

I’m dressed and so is Ryan. I grasp his hand, ready to go back to the party, but he turns me to him and cups my face. His hands are strong but gentle when he touches me. He pulls me into a long, slow, steamy kiss. “I love you, Mia. I’m never going to let you go.”

Guilt, happiness, joy, apprehension—it all explodes in me. I keep the damage to two tears that fall to my cheek.

Ryan brushes them away. “Don’t cry. We’ve still got another day.”

I wish…

I don’t know what I wish. I can’t tell Ryan the truth about me, but I can’t make him love me based on lies, can I?

Footsteps sound on the gravel path that leads down from the cottage to the dock. Now is not the time for admitting crappy stuff, I know. I want to keep this special.

I’ve found love, as amazing as that is.

There is no way I want to let it go.

***

My dad honks his horn in the car at eight in the morning. I was watching out for him, and I go out, carrying my backpack and my battered duffel bag, letting the screen door slam behind me.

My eyes are red and aching because I cried until late last night, then got up at six, and cried some more in the shower. Tired, depressed, I stumble down the steps of mom’s house wrestling with my over-stuffed duffel. The handle breaks and it rolls down the rest of the steps. I run after it. My hair is a half-dried tangle in front of my eyes, and I shove it back. But suddenly my backpack is taken from my shoulder and someone hauls my duffel up by its one good handle.

I look up, surprised Dad would have done it—

I was staring into Ryan’s blue eyes.

Dreaming—I have to be dreaming. I rub my eyes, but Ryan is still there. The sun is coming up, and the glow of it illuminates him with gold. His lop-sided grin melts my heart. “Did you really wake up at this insane hour to say goodbye?” I whisper.

Then I panic. I know I look like crap. My eyes are puffy, as if I’ve stuffed cotton balls under my eyelids. There are purple shadows below them, and they’re rimmed with red. I didn’t even bother to comb my hair. I was too busy stuffing last minute things into my bag, and dealing with mom who had overslept and was having her own panic as she raced around in an long t-shirt and bare feet to make me breakfast.

Mom doesn’t want to see Dad. So she’s inside, watching from the living room window. To say my last goodbye to her, I’ll have to go back in—because she won’t come out.

But there’s only one thing I care about at this moment.

This is the way Ryan will remember me. Desperate, I try to claw through my hair with my fingers.

He smiles at me. I paw at my hair faster. He carries my bag as if it weighs nothing and puts is in the back of my dad’s Mercedes SUV. That vehicle makes me laugh. It cost a fortune, I’m sure, but the Mercedes logo is so huge on the front it looks more like a kid’s toy. As if it was made by Tonka’s high end division.

With his hands free, Ryan reaches up and touches my cheek. “I didn’t sleep last night, Mia.”

I did, a bit. And I feel guilty that I did at all. It makes my heart do strange things—grow bigger, skip beats, hurt like crazy—to know he stayed awake all night. I stroke his arm, my fingers brushing the bulge of his biceps, his solid muscled forearm.

“I couldn’t let you go without one more kiss,” he says.

Actually, I wish I could hook my fingers in the belt loops of his jeans, drag him behind some bushes and make love to him one more time. It’s too late for that. My dad passes us.

He’s not really my dad, because my birth father took his own life when I was really small. When I was two, my stepfather married mom. He’s the only father I’ve known, even though he and mom have been divorced for over four years now. He is good-looking, almost as tall as Ryan, in fairly good shape, with boyish features, and dark-brown hair that’s still thick but is going grey, and dark brown eyes. I take after my mother, inheriting her red-blond hair and blue eyes.

“Is that everything, Mia?” Dad asks. “We should get on the road.” He looks at Ryan.

But I have no desire to introduce them. Why bother when my stepfather is barely a part of my life—and that’s the way it has to be? When he first insisted on paying my way through college, I told him no. Flat out no. I had money saved up. Not enough, but I knew I would get to college eventually.

Mom and Ryan convinced me to let him do it. Mom said he owed me—she knew why. Ryan didn’t know anything about why my stepfather would owe me—and I would never tell him—but he couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t take the opportunity.

Ryan’s father obviously couldn’t send him through school. Ryan essentially supported and looked after his dad.

I took my stepfather’s offer. But I applied to smaller colleges, away from Washington D.C. where my dad lives. I decided to go to Yardley College which is in New Hampshire, to study Architecture. This is my dream. I only wish the price wasn’t so high.

Ryan and my stepfather are looking at each other and I know I have to act like any other girl would—a normal girl without a lot of baggage. “Ryan, this is my dad, Daniel Reynolds. Dad, this is Ryan Taylor, my boyfriend. He went to high school with me.”

“Good to meet you, Mr. Reynolds,” Ryan says, and he holds out his hand.

Dad shakes his hand, while giving Ryan a once over. I roll my eyes. Dad grills him with a few questions, and Ryan replies that he’s heading to military college on a scholarship. It’s as if my stepfather is judging whether Ryan is worthy. He has no right and my stomach churns.

“I have a couple more things to get from the house.”

“I’ll get them with you,” Ryan says.

He helps me bring the desk and chair I bought that are not yet assembled, and are still in boxes. This is all I’m bringing—two pieces of furniture, some clothes, my laptop, and my art material since it’s my love of drawing that gave me a good enough portfolio to get into Architecture school.

My dad is on his phone, sending emails, so I stop with Ryan at the back of the SUV. We stand so close we could be trading breaths.

“I’d better go,” Ryan says. “I wish we didn’t have to be so far apart.”

I want to stall him. I’m desperate to do that. But at the same time, I don’t want to say anything that might make him change his mind about college. I love him too much not to let him go.

It was hard work for me to convince him to leave his father and do this—even tougher than it was for him to convince me to take my stepfather’s offer.

“It will work.” My voice wobbles. I surge up and I touch my lips to his. Damn, I so wish my stepfather was not a witness to this. What is he thinking about it? I really don’t want to know.

Ryan’s hands go around my waist and I lock my arms around his neck. I almost fall into him I want to be so close to him. He’s warm, and has that earthy, sweet, sexy smell I associate with Ryan. A smell I want to remember so I can imagine it every morning when I wake up at Yardley.

In front of my stepfather, Ryan is a gentleman. He doesn’t touch my butt or my breasts. His large hand stays on my low back, warm, strong, and comforting.

It’s frustrating because I want to touch him all over one last time. Or make love to him.

In the background, my father makes grunting noises, then makes a few short, abrupt phone calls. But this is my last moment with Ryan and I’m clinging to it.

Finally, Ryan steps back. His black Ford truck is parked behind my father’s car.

He lifts my hand and kisses my fingertips. My knees quiver. Never have I had any guy do that to me. I feel like Elizabeth with Mr. Darcy. How she didn’t jump Darcy’s bones the very instant he bowed over her hand I can’t imagine.

I want to grab Ryan by his hoodie and pull him into the cab of his truck, rip off his jeans and make love to him. Except I can’t. My belly aches with frustration. I want to make up an excuse to drag Ryan back in the house, a reason to bring him into my bedroom. So we can do it quick, up against the wall, but my dad says, “We have to get on the road, Mia.”

“Sorry, Mr. Reynolds,” Ryan says. He ducks his head down to me. “Text me as soon as you arrive.”

God, God, God, why can’t I have just a few minutes alone with him? But it’s too late.

My throat aches as I promise, “I will.”

But I think I’ll phone him, not text. Just to hear his deep, husky voice say hello.

Ryan walks away from me, toward his truck, but he’s watching me the whole time. He stumbles in a divot in our driveway. Grins.

My last view of him, before he jumps into his truck, is blurred. Tears fill my eyes and threaten to pour down my cheeks.

Ryan gives me one last wave from inside the cab of his pickup. Then he turns around, his strong arm resting over the seat behind him, and he backs out.

“Goodbye,” I whisper.

The truth is, I want to hold onto him, but should I? Probably, at military college, there’s a decent, smart, honest, good-as-gold girl that he deserves. Ryan really doesn’t know anything about me. He knows “re-invented me”. The “me” who is keeping my past secret.

I know keeping Ryan is probably selfish. I’ll ultimately break his heart, because someday I’d have to tell him all of the truth.

Then he’s going to hate me, because he’s going to know I’m not what he thinks I am.

“Come on, Mia,” Dad grumbles, impatient. “Let’s go. I have a lot of driving to do over the next few days.”

I walk around to the passenger side. Get in the car, curled up against the door. I stay silent as Dad backs out of the driveway. Mom comes to the door and stands on our broken concrete stoop. She has a dressing gown wrapped around her and a cup of coffee in her hand. She waves goodbye.

I turn around and wave, until Dad turns left and she disappears from my sight. Now I’m alone with my stepfather and I feel weird. So I let my head rest against the door beside me, and I close my eyes and pretend to fall asleep.

***

I drive eight hundred miles with my stepfather and I barely say a word. He talks a lot. He always does when we’re together, as if talking can make the past not exist. I act like I’m listening—I guess I do listen, really. All my life I’ve been obedient—I’ve rarely strayed from the rules, and I’ve always done what I’ve been told. The only claim to rebelliousness I’ve ever had was through sex…until I discovered that didn’t fill any of the emptiness inside, it didn’t make any of the doubt or pain go away.

Dad talks about his work, about Lisa, about the house they are renovating and what great taste Lisa has. I try not to think about our crappy rented bungalow. One thing my mom’s divorce taught me was to be able to take care of myself and any kids, and that I can’t rely on a guy to do it for me.

Even with Ryan, who is a decent guy and probably a guy who would stay married for a lifetime, I know I need to earn an income too.