Take What You Want (14 page)

The other girl shrugged. “It’s digital.”

“Still.”

Ellen shook her head at them both. “Well, it was all beautiful. I’m so glad you had such an amazing time.”

“Start saving up now,” Nicole said. “Next year you’re coming with us.”

Snorting, Ellen took a long sip of her wine. “We’ll see. Do they even have spring break in med school?”

“They damn well better, or I’m not going.”

“Sure.” Ellen rolled her eyes and reached for the remote to turn off the TV.

Carly nudged her. “Anyway, enough about our week. How are you?”

A sneaky smile crept across Ellen’s face. “Good. Really good.”

Cocking one eyebrow, Carly studied her for a beat too long. “Yeah, you are. You seem…different.”

Ellen felt different. She’d dressed like someone who wasn’t afraid of attention, and she could tell she was sitting up straighter and speaking more. It still took effort to choose to stand out, but it was getting easier all the time.

Hope warmed her. If she could carry this part of herself into her interactions with her friends, maybe she could carry it with her everywhere.

“What can I say? A week off from classes did me good.”

Carly narrowed her eyes. “That’s not all, though.”

“No.” Ellen’s face felt fit to burst with the force of her smile. “It’s not.”

With that, she set her glass down and sat forward. She told them everything, from how she’d decided to be more assertive this week to how she’d picked up a random guy in a bar.

“You didn’t!” Nicole smacked her hand against the coffee table. “You never hook up!”

“I know.” Ellen’s face warmed, but she refused to be embarrassed. “But I did. And it was
amazing
.”

“Damn, girl.”

Carly kept her skeptical expression. “That’s not the whole story, though, is it?”

“Not exactly. We spent the whole week together.” She went into what she normally would have considered far too much detail, but it wasn’t anything the other girls would have hesitated to tell her about one of their conquests. None of them blinked an eye, either. Rather, they asked for more.

“One top of a building?” Maria asked. “Wasn’t it cold?”

Ellen couldn’t stop her cheeks from heating, but she could keep the rest of her reaction tempered, her tone heavy with insinuation. “I didn’t notice. He kept me plenty warm.”

The only parts of the week she did censor were the ones about his refusal to tell her where he went to school. His continued silence on that subject still rubbed her the wrong way, but the more she thought about it, the more it gave her reason to hope.

He was coming back “soon”. In a few days, he’d said, even. But he had classes starting on Monday, he’d told her.

And there were still things that didn’t quite sit right. Who kept their childhood bedroom so…
lived in
when they were seniors in college? Who came home for spring break and then didn’t spend any actual time with their parents?

Carly was the one to broach the elephant in the room. “So, when are you going to see him again?”

“I’m not sure exactly.” Ellen’s voice shook just a little, her uncertainty warring with her growing hope. “He’s on some camping trip with his father this weekend, but we’re supposed to talk when he gets back.”

“But he knows you want more? And he said he does, too?”

Ellen nodded, her chest tight. She wanted so much more. So much. Talking about it just made that all the more clear.

Nicole broke in. “So let’s see this hottie. You have a picture, right?”

“Yeah.” Reaching for her phone, she felt a little nervous bubble rise through her chest. She unlocked the screen and opened up the gallery, scrolling until those bright green eyes were staring back at her. “Here you go.”

Nicole whistled and murmured, “Nice,” before passing it along. Carly made a similar noise of approval. Maria, on the other hand, stopped cold.

Ellen watched her expression warily. “What?”

Darting her gaze up, Maria frowned. “You could have just told us you were dating Josh Markley.”

For a second, Ellen couldn’t breathe. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, that looks like him, right?” She passed the phone around to the others.

Nicole squinted. “Oh yeah. Though…there’s something different about him.” She snapped her fingers. “His glasses! He’s not wearing his glasses.”

“Wait wait wait.” Ellen rubbed her temples. “You guys know Josh?”

Carly alone looked unsure. “He looks familiar, maybe?”

“I’m not sure you’ve had any classes with him. But he’s in our year. Pre-med. Hangs out with the guys.” Maria rattled off some other names. “Sort of quiet, but really intense looking. I’m pretty sure he’s in our anatomy lecture, Ellen.” Her frown deepened. “Are you trying to say you didn’t recognize him?”

Ellen still wasn’t quite pulling in the air she needed. Her head swam.

Josh went to school
with her
. He was even in the same class.

Oh, God. Josh probably knew her. That’s how he knew her secret.

“Ellen? Earth to Ellen.” Nicole was waving her hand in front of Ellen’s face.

“What? Huh?” Ellen shook her head to clear it. She met the confused gazes of each of her friends. Then that of the man in the picture.

“I never meant to lie to you,
” he’d echoed back to her.

And she’d told him it didn’t matter.

Did it?

With her mind still reeling, Ellen forced a smile. “No, I guess I didn’t realize that was him.”

“Oh, wow.” Nicole settled deeper into the couch, chuckling to herself. “Leave it to you, Ellen.”

Carly looked at Ellen with concern. “Are you all right?”

Was she?

Ellen fought for calm as she sucked in a few deep breaths.

She’d been
so
all right earlier in the day. Hell, she should be even better now. Josh was coming back to her. He wasn’t leaving for some distant college somewhere else. This was exactly what she’d been hoping for earlier.

But he’d hid it from her.

Should she feel betrayed? Upset?

Or just…relieved?

Ellen gave Carly a reassuring smile, trying to tell her she was fine, even though in that moment she had no idea if she was or not. As the conversation flowed around her, she leaned back and stared off into space, trying to think. To react.

But it was all just a jumble.

Just then, her phone vibrated, skittering across the tabletop. Ellen reached for it and slid her thumb across the screen.

Josh’s picture stared back at her. Underneath it was a message:

Just got back. Survived the woods. :) Can I see you tomorrow?

Ellen’s heart stuttered in her chest. She stared at the message, reading it again and again and again.

She still didn’t quite know how she felt. But she knew she certainly wasn’t going to let him go. Not like this.

With shaking hands, she replied with a simple,

Yes.

Then she thought again. Slowly, she typed out,

And I know, too.

Chapter Ten

Monday

Josh didn’t know when he’d ever been so nervous.

Actually, that was a lie. He did. The day before, when he’d told his dad about his plans for after graduation, he’d had the same sweaty-shaky feeling, borne from putting himself out there and not knowing what would happen. The stakes had been different then, though. Sure, his father could have screamed or been disappointed. He could have cut him off financially or even kicked him out of the house. But they were family. He wasn’t going to have to give up on his dreams or have to lose his parents as part of his life. Not permanently.

He wished he could be so sure about Ellen.

He parked his bike in the same place as always, in one of the motorcycle-only spaces across from the lecture halls. As he dismounted, he readjusted his backpack on his shoulders and gazed across the road. From here, he could see the little square and the fountain. His gaze homed in on the lone figure sitting there, perched on top of the brick ledge surrounding it, waiting for him.

God, she looked good. Even from a distance, though, she looked different—more like the Ellen of the previous week than the one he’d watched from afar for so long.

She wasn’t the only one blending personas today. Josh reached up and pushed his glasses higher on his nose, rifled his fingers through his hair. His date clothes were gone, traded in for his typical jeans and a sweater. Well, maybe a little nicer of a sweater than usual.

When she’d replied to his message the night before, telling him she
knew
, he’d gone cold all over. Unable to read her tone, he’d been left adrift, uncertain what she could possibly be thinking. He hadn’t had any doubt about her meaning, though. The charade was over.

Honestly, it was a miracle it had lasted as long as it had. She’d never told him her last name, but he’d given her his. She could have looked him up online, or even offhandedly mentioned him to a mutual acquaintance from one of their classes. However it had gone down, the jig was up.

Heart in his throat, he’d typed back, simply,

And…?

She’d given him a time and a place to meet her. This time. This place. And then he’d sat in restless anxiety for the rest of the night.

As he crossed the road to her, he reflected on the irony of her picking this fountain as their meeting spot. How many times had he fantasized about walking up to her and sitting down? Introducing himself. Maybe even flirting.

Now he was going there to hear his sentence—to find out if she’d really meant what she’d said about the truth not mattering. If the way she felt about him was anything like how he felt for her.

For a second, he wondered what it would have been like if they had started like that. If instead of games and half-truths, he’d just gone up to her, ages ago, and gone for what he wanted. He wondered if it was too late.

His gait faltered. At just that moment, she lifted her gaze from the book in her lap and met his full-on, her expression full of resolve, lit from within with something that made his chest fill with hope. He was still a few dozen yards away from her, but he was close enough now that he could see her in crisp focus. She was even more beautiful than usual, just as poised as she had been all week, but
more
somehow.

And it struck him: she’d never hesitated to take what she wanted from him.

The speech he’d been rehearsing since they’d agreed to meet disappeared, and walking faster now, he closed the distance between them. Buzzing with nerves, still energized by the victory with his father from the day before and inspired by the woman waiting for him, he stopped just a foot away.

His voice was rough as he said, simply, “Hi.”

The corners of her mouth quirked up into a smile. There were words on her lips, but before she could speak a single one of them, he held out his hand.

Take what you want.

“Hi,” he said again. And then everything was falling out of him in a rush. “My name is Josh Markley. I’m a student. Here.” He gestured at the buildings around them. “I’m a senior, with a 3.89 GPA. Up until yesterday afternoon, I was pre-med. I’m going to MIT in the fall to study chemistry, with my father’s blessing. I live with my parents. I drive a motorcycle and a pre-owned Corolla. My drink of choice is Sam Adams. I don’t know how to cook anything except grilled cheese and French toast, but I’m damn good at both.”

He swallowed deep, but kept talking, speaking right over her stunned, halfhearted attempts to interject. “The first time I noticed you was in the spring of my freshman year. You were sitting right here. You were wearing a black sweater, and you had your lip between your teeth and a book in your lap. I thought you were beautiful and fascinating, and I would have come up to you and talked to you and asked you out, but I was scared. After that, I started noticing you everywhere. How you always sat in the back and only talked to a couple of friends. You always knew the answers, and you looked so damn cute in an apron and mask in anatomy lab. And I should have asked you out. I should have. But you held yourself apart. I thought if you were interested at all, maybe you’d give me a sign. Hell, that you’d look at me, even.

“And then, last Saturday, you did more than that.” His lungs felt like they were squeezing in, and there was an ache skittering across his ribs. He wanted this to work out. So much. “It was one of the best nights of my life, with just one problem.”

“Josh—”

“The problem being that I didn’t tell you who I really was or what I really wanted.”

He paused for breath, sucking down air like he’d been running a marathon instead of just baring his soul. In the silence that remained, she looked up at him with wide eyes that spoke of a vulnerability that made him want nothing more than to hold her.

“What did you want?”

He felt like his face was cracking just to hold itself together. “To be with you, get to know you. To take you out on dates and take you home with me to meet my parents. To kiss you. Everywhere.” He lowered his voice and stared into her eyes, gaze smoldering. “To be inside you. To…” The words burned in his throat as he forced them out. “To love you.