He reached for my left wrist and circled the watch there. “The same with the constant time check?”
“Yes and no.”
I looked down and touched the timepiece.
“Doc tells me it’s an obsession…it’s something I need to do without even realizing it, probably because I was running late that day. See, that’s what was so funny the first day in your class. I couldn’t believe I was late. I’m obsessed with time. Everyone knows that. I always need to see it or hear it…and now I sound like a crazy person.” I laughed, but it sounded out of place in light of the current topic—hell, maybe I was crazy. “Shit.”
“No, no. Don’t do that.”
“Don’t do what? Be embarrassed that I’m so fucked up? I don’t even know what it’s like to be normal anymore. I don’t even know who I was before that day.”
Grayson took my shoulders in a tight hold and shook me gently—trying to get me out of my own head.
“Addison, no one could go through all of that and come out the same. Who’s asking you to be that girl? Child or adult, that doesn’t make you crazy. It makes you human.”
“Yeah?” I mocked, feeling my crazy morphing into misplaced anger. “Tell that the to the rest of them. Tell it to my father, who avoids me unless he needs someone to slap around, or my mom, who comes to every track meet just to make sure I win. Because if I don’t…what was the point of me being late that day? The only way I made it through these last two years was to be someone else. If I am the best and the most popular, how can anyone pity me?”
Grayson took my hands and gently squeezed them. “I think for most, it’s the easiest emotion to feel when someone is—”
“Damaged?”
“I was going to say suffering.” Grayson ran a hand up through his own hair and cupped the back of his neck. “That’s why you’re attracted to me, am I right? Because I didn’t know you back then?”
“Honestly?”
“Yes, Addison. I want you to be honest, please. Always.”
“At first, yes. But not now.”
“Why, what’s changed?”
“I told you. When you look at me, you see more.” I cradled his face in my hands and let my eyes roam over him. “And when I look at you, I see for the first time the possibility of everything.”
“Fuck,” he swore under his breath. “How do I fight against someone like you?”
“You don’t. I can be good, Grayson. I can behave. Just say you want me. That you want to be with me always.”
“How?” he asked, circling my wrists. “How could this ever work? We’d have to sneak around. We’d barely see each other outside of school.” He shook his head like he couldn’t believe he was even contemplating it and touched me under the chin. “Do you want that? Can you live like that? Always watching what you say and when you say it? Not ever being able to tell anyone anything?”
“I just want to be with you, is that so wrong?”
“No. But the law says otherwise. My position as your teacher makes this impossible. Right or wrong? I don’t know which is which anymore.”
“This is right. Right here. Just you and me. Anywhere else and it wouldn’t even matter.”
“Yes, but we aren’t anywhere else, Addison. It is what it is.”
Grayson caressed my hair and then repeated the gesture several times without saying anything.
How could something so simple be so comforting?
“I wish it were that easy. There’d be no problems if you were out of school.”
Sitting back slightly, I placed a hand against his chest. I was starting to feel frustrated. I couldn’t help my age any more than he could help his occupation. “But I’m not, and you’re here anyway.”
His eyes latched onto mine, and the beating of his heart sped up as if I’d just reminded him of whom he was with.
“Yes. I’m still here. That should show you how much I’m willing to risk.”
I traced one of his brows and promised, “I will never betray you. Not ever.”
Grayson closed his eyes and tipped his head back to face the sun, and I couldn’t help but lean in and place my lips against his throat, trying to soothe his obvious agitation.
“I never knew.” He took my lips in a kiss that was as tender as it was passionate before he spoke again in a state of astonishment. “I never knew that I’d risk everything, even my freedom, just to touch someone. Just to touch you.”
“And now that you know?”
“Now I have a choice to make.”
One year.
If I’d met her only one year later or waited a fucking year—none of this would be an issue. But that wasn’t the case.
As I held the girl sitting in my lap, I knew I’d crossed lines and broken laws. The shocking thing was, I didn’t care anymore.
“What are you thinking? Tell me,” she encouraged as she fingered my hair gently.
“I’m trying to decide what we should do.”
Addison frowned. “We? I can make my own decisions, Grayson. I don’t need you to make them for me.”
“Yes, but they may not be the right ones.”
“And yours are?” she accused as she moved off my lap and away from me. “You’re not doing anything differently than I am.”
Lunging forward, determined to make her listen, I pushed her back on the grass and hovered over her.
“No. I’m not. I’m naked in the middle of a field with a student. My student. I need to think for a fucking minute. I feel like I’m three steps behind because I never thought I’d be standing here to begin with. God, when did this become my life?”
“Let me ask you something,” Addison posed, her blue eyes full of sincerity. “If I wasn’t your student, what would you want?”
After the story she’d just told, my answer was easy and honest. “To take you away from here and start over somewhere new.”
A beautiful smile, one that I’d never seen, appeared on her lips. She seemed like a completely different person. “I’d go with you.”
“For a day?” I asked skeptically as I played with her hair.
She covered my heart and vowed earnestly, “Forever.”
I blinked down at Addison and was reminded that by law she was still a girl and ultimately…
“You are my student, Addison.”
As she nodded, I wondered where we would go from here.
“So, what do you want?”
Before I knew what I was saying, “I want Brandon gone” was out of my mouth and hovering between us.
She lifted up and kissed the corner of my mouth. “That’s easy.”
“I want you to graduate.”
Kissing the other corner, she promised, “That I can do.”
I tangled my fingers through the back of her hair and held her in place as I looked her in the eye and made it very clear. “I want to help you.”
“I want that too.”
She touched my cheek, and as her eyes fluttered closed and her black lashes swept her creamy skin, I couldn’t help but kiss it and confess, “I never want you to stop needing me.”
When her eyes opened, she softly kissed my mouth and asked, “Then what choice do you have left to make?”
She was right, what choice was there?
Right or wrong, it had already been made.
Chapter Nineteen
Past…
“Addy! Hey! Wait up, would you?”
Brandon.