Forever Innocent (7 page)

“Pastry attack!” he shouted, still laughing. “Don’t panic, Latte, I didn’t act like the e-mail was from you.”

I snatched at his phone. “What did you say to him?”

I fumbled with the unfamiliar settings. I couldn’t afford a smart phone, so I had no idea what all the icons meant. The envelope seemed logical, but those turned out to be text messages.

Jason scooped up the errant strudels and dropped them in the trash. “All I said was that he should come by the shop today. That you were here.”

“Why did you do that?”

“He likes you. You need to get out more.”

“I want to be the one who decides that.”

“He’s a good guy,” Jason said. “We all approved.”

“What?” I looked around the empty shop. “Who’s we?”

“Pretty much the whole staff who was around last night.”

The phone dinged and I held it away when Jason reached for it. “I should be able to read it first if it’s him.”

Jason shrugged. “Okay, but if you get an eyeful of my sexting, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

God. I walked away from him and sat at one of the tables. After a bit of button pushing, I found the e-mail. It said to come by, as “the girl you gave your e-mail to” was working today. He hadn’t given him my name.

As I suspected, the reply was from Austin. He had class until noon, but then he’d come by.

It would be close. I got off at one to head to class at two. If he came right away, he’d make it. Maybe I could spend my last hour in the back, doing setup. Jenny would be here by then, not Jason, and she’d cover for me.

I stood up and slid the phone across the counter to Jason. “I’m going to stack mugs.”

Jason laughed again. “We’re going to get you laid whether you like it or not.”

Right. That’s exactly what I’d been avoiding all this time. I wasn’t going to break now. In the year after Finn died, I studied the failure rate of every form of birth control. All of them had chinks in their armor, including the shot, which I’d been on.

The only way to avoid it was to side with the Catholics. Full-on abstinence.

Jason pushed a broom around, catching the crumbs from the pastry incident. His eyes were full of mischief as he pretended to dance with the handle and sweep it into a dramatic kiss. I wasn’t mad, not really. These people wanted something good for me. They just didn’t know any better.

And I wasn’t going to enlighten them.

•*´`*•*´`*•

My heart started hammering the moment the clock struck twelve. Jenny came in through the front, looking harried. “Stupid traffic jam on 52. No accident or anything. Just slow people.”

Jason tucked his apron under the register. “Too many people. Always too many people.” He tied his dreadlocks into a ponytail. “I’d stick around to see the happy reunion, but I have class.”

Jenny leaned on the counter. “What’s he talking about?”

“Nothing,” I said. Austin probably wouldn’t show. No use feeding futile gossip.

Jason halted, his hand on the door. “It’s not nothing! Latte here has a hot hookup with one of the regulars.” He saluted us and headed outside.

“Are you holding out on me?” A customer came in, so Jenny moved around to the back, shoving her messenger bag in a cabinet.

I ignored her and smiled at the middle-aged man asking for a cappuccino. I’d serve him, then head to the back to do setups. Austin could arrive at any time. On a good day, you could get here from campus in about fifteen minutes. In traffic, it might be longer.

Jenny waited for me to hand the man his change before launching into questioning. “Who was Jason talking about? Why don’t I know about this?”

I shrugged. “Some guy gave me his e-mail address yesterday. I left the note in one of the aprons. Jason found it and e-mailed the guy.”

“WHAT? That is a blatant disregard of the hookup code!” She tied an apron around her waist. “Contacting potential boy toys is at the sole discretion of the best friend!”

I moved past her. “I’m going to do the dishes.”

Jenny grabbed my arm. “What does he look like? How will I know he’s here?”

“It doesn’t matter. I don’t think I’m up for that.”

She let go. “It’s because of hunk boy, isn’t it? He’s got you all wired up.”

“Maybe.”

Jenny shook her head. “I guess I’ll be seeing him tonight. Maybe I’ll give him a piece of my mind.”

I walked to the end of the counter and lifted the overflowing tray from the busing station. “Actually, you won’t. Gavin switched too, thinking he’d get away from me. We were both there last night.”

A girl walked up to order something, but Jenny held up her hand. “Just a minute.” She turned back to me. “So you’re saying you had to be on the roof with him after all?”

I shrugged. “There was nothing romantic about it. Just a lab mapping out the Big Dipper.”

Jenny frowned. “But weren’t there stars? Night breezes off the ocean? Anything?”

I pictured Gavin on his back, head on his pack, lying next to me, my fingers still warm from where he held them. My stomach turned, and I could feel my breath threatening to kick up. “No,” I managed to say. “Just lab work.”

Jenny blew a puff of air at her frothy pink bangs in disgust. “Then that class is a total waste.” She finally turned back to the girl. “What can I get for you?”

I pushed my elbow into the door, trying to avoid spilling any of the mugs or cups on the tray. Plenty of dishes to deal with until the end of my shift, unless Jenny got swamped and needed someone to make the drinks while she took orders. Hopefully that wouldn’t happen. We didn’t serve anything substantial here, so lunch tended to be quiet.

Rinsing dishes to load into the industrial washer was good, mindless work. My Tuesday/Thursday schedule was tough, two upper-division lit classes with a murderous reading list, but the first novel quiz wasn’t until next week, and I had all weekend to catch up. I didn’t have a bead on the profs here yet, but I figured most classes were the same. Read the books, figure out the instructor’s preferred interpretation of the text, and spit it back at them on the midterm.

I swore if I ever got a class of my own, free thinking would be required, not regurgitation. But maybe one of these profs would surprise me.

The door to the back opened and Jenny peeked through. “Someone’s here for you.”

I glanced at the clock. 12:32. Not close enough to the end of my shift to sneak out.

“Can you get him to leave?” I asked.

“I don’t think this one is going to be easy to put off.” She pushed the door open wider, and Gavin’s frame filled the doorway.

I backed up a few steps. “What are you doing here?”

“You told me you worked at a coffee shop on Broadway. I’ve been to six today, trying to find you.”

“We have class tomorrow.”

“I didn’t want to see you in class.”

“Oh, boy!” Jenny said and ducked under his arm.

He let the door close behind her.

I held a damp rag out in front of me like a pathetic shield. “I don’t know you anymore. The Gavin I used to know wouldn’t just take off like you did last night. Like you did at the funeral.”

“You’re not the same either.”

I lowered my arms. “What are you talking about?”

“You’re so sad all the time.”

Rage bolted through me. “How dare you come in here and judge how I feel, now or ten years from now!” Jesus, he’d walked right out. How could he stand here and ask me why I was sad?

“I lost everything too!”

“NO!” I could tell my voice was hitting a shriek, one that would penetrate into the shop. I forced it down. “You made your choice. I was the one who had to live with it.”

His jaw was so tight that a muscle in his cheek started twitching. The only time I ever saw him like that was after his dad had done something awful, thrown things or threatened him. How many times had he run to my house after a shouting match?

God. I would not cry. Would. Not. I was strong. I was a survivor. I had gone four years without him, and I could go plenty more. This time I would walk away. I no longer cared about my shift, or the hours. Martin wasn’t going to fire me over leaving a little early one day.

I whirled around to sign out. Forget that, Jenny could forge my name. I’d text her later. I just wanted away from here.

But Gavin still blocked the door.

I walked up to him. “Let me get my things. I need to go to class.”

He didn’t budge. He wore all black again, a Dead Kennedys T-shirt from a 2011 concert. I didn’t know that band. He’d been to a show, and I had no idea where or when or what music he listened to. I knew nothing about him anymore.

“Gavin, please, let me go.”

Suddenly his arms were around me and he jerked my head into his chest. His heart hammered against my ear, and I could feel how overwrought he was, even though he was trying to hide it.

We stood there, glasses clinking in the room next door, the damp rag in my hand now between us, getting us both wet. I could feel time ticking along with the beat of his heart, slowing, revving down. I knew this was where I belonged, but there was no way to stay there.

“I have to believe we found each other for a reason,” Gavin said.

I shook my head against his chest. “No. It’s too late now. We can’t do this.” I tried to pull away, but his arms were a vise.

“Look up at me, Corabelle.”

I didn’t want to. Those blue eyes, that face. They were too familiar, too perfect.

But he made me. His hand came under my chin, and he lifted my head. I closed my eyes, refusing to look, but then his lips were on mine and the shock was so complete that I cried out against his mouth.

He pressed me against him. His kiss was fevered, hot, and everything I remembered from when we were young, plus so much more. He held my head against him and dove in deeply, his tongue parting my lips. When we fitted against each other every muscle in my body reacted and blood pounded through my veins in places I’d long since left for dead.

And I did feel utterly alive, kissing him back, my arms coming around him, letting the rag fall to the floor. He felt my response and his mouth became frenzied, his hands reaching down behind my thighs and lifting me up so that I straddled him. My arms curled around his neck, and I let go of everything, my fear, my anger, my grief, and just reveled in the heat blasting through me, the connection of our hips and his mouth trailing across my jaw and along my neck.

One of his hands cupped my bottom and squeezed, the other wrapped around my waist. He shifted me down, connecting us in that intimate way I’d only known with him, the roughness of his jeans bulging against my skirt, trapped between us. Despite everything we’d been through, I wanted nothing between us, and to find that place that had always bound us. Passion. Emotion. All the things I held away from myself since Finn, and the hospital, and that misery.

He groaned against my throat, pushing harder against me. Even with all the denim and fabric, I could feel it building, intense and hot and full of need. I clutched him, the strap of my sundress falling off my shoulder. Gavin nudged it with his nose, bending as much as he was able with me riding his hips, flicking his tongue along the lace edge of the bra. He stepped forward, resting me on the high dish counter, freeing his hand to cup my breast, still maintaining the rhythm between us.

I ached, desperate for more contact, for all of him. Every rational thought about where we were, who he was, what had happened was way beyond the glow of how I felt right now, explosive and hot.

The temperature shifted as the door opened, and Jenny’s “Oh, shit!” forced us to break apart.

She pushed her pink bangs out of her eyes. “Just needed to tell Corabelle something.” She appraised Gavin. “Not that it matters now.” She switched her gaze to me. “Loverboy is here.”

Oh, God. By the time I turned to Gavin, his eyes blazed. “You have a boyfriend?”

“What’s it to you?” The words snapped out of me before I could think about how he’d take it.

His fist smashed into the metal counter by my hip, rattling all the dishes. Jenny suppressed a shriek.

“Get out of here, Gavin,” I said.

“I had no idea you were so easy with everyone,” he spat out.

He backed away, and I struggled to catch myself as I slid off the high counter.

The door banged against the wall as he smashed through it to the shop. I hoped Austin wasn’t too obvious out there, because there was no telling what Gavin would do if he figured out which one he was.

“Holy shit, Corabelle!” Jenny said. “When you get back to business, you are BACK.”

I smoothed down my skirt, my hands shaking. I never had scenes like this in my life. “We have a history.”

“I’ll say! Wow! Nobody’s ever pinned me on a dish counter before!” She headed back to the door. “Should I put this guy off? Say you left already?”

I nodded. “I think that’s for the best.”

Jenny disappeared through the door, and I hurried for the loading-dock door that led out into the alley to make sure Gavin had left. Just as I turned the back corner, I saw him roar down the street on his motorcycle.

I pressed my fingers into my lips, tender and swollen. Everything had happened so fast. I didn’t know what to think, except Gavin had reawakened something in me, a dark hunger that was far more dangerous than the passion we explored as teens. I was in trouble, big trouble, and I couldn’t see any way out.

I pressed against the wall. Focus. Remember school. Your goals. Get done. Get out.

Class. I had to get to class.

But my legs ignored me and I slid down until I was on the ground, my knees to my chest, a stupid vulnerable pose in that skirt, no doubt flashing anyone who cared to glance back toward the alley.

Austin appeared in the gap between the buildings, and I prayed he wouldn’t look this way. I scrambled to my feet, ready to flee, but of course the bits of rock and brick crunched beneath my shoes and got his attention.

“Corabelle?” He peered into the shadows.

I ran for the door but damn it, I forgot it locked on the outside. I could hit the delivery buzzer, but if Jenny was busy, she wouldn’t come right away.

He appeared around the corner. “Corabelle, are you all right?”