She’s smiling.
“It’s crazy, alright,” Caitlin says once she’s recovered. “It’s the craziest freaking thing I ever heard. But look at the two of you. I’ve never seen two people, well, crazier about each other in all my life. I know Tessa better than anyone, Trent, and I’ve never seen her like this before. I’ve never seen her so… so free.”
“Free?” Tessa mutters.
“All those nerves, all that self-consciousness, all that anxiety—it went away the second Trent put his hand on your shoulder. If you’re both happy, I don’t care how unconventional this is. I don’t care about the age gap.
“I wish you the best. Because all that matters to me is your happiness, Teepee, and there’s no way I can deny that. I can’t even try to deny it.”
Tessa rushes over to her mother, wrapping her arms around her. I clear my throat as budding emotions try to escape me, gripping my hands behind my back to stop myself from punching the air.
Caitlin hugs her daughter and peers at me over the top of her head, giving me a silent message with her eyes.
Take care of her, she tells me.
I always will, I roar back silently.
Chapter Seventeen
Tessa
I drive to Trent’s early, relieved that he got my car fixed. It’s running smoothly now, no longer making those cranking and jerking noises I had become so accustomed to.
The past three days with Trent have been like a dream – kissing, making love, fucking and holding each other, and talking about how bright our future will be – but now it’s time to wake up.
Angie is getting home soon and we have to tell her.
It could shatter everything we’ve built.
Shock rioted through me when mom burst out into laughter.
I thought she was laughing at us for a moment, but then I saw the kindness in her eyes, the support glimmering there, and I knew she wanted the best for us.
I pull up outside Trent’s house—outside Angie’s house.
The sun shines brightly over their well-tended lawn.
Trent sits on the porch with one leg laid across the other, his cellphone held to his ear. He doesn’t see me and for long moments I watch him, studying the way his lips shape into a smile, or as close to a smile as Trent Tanner can get.
He’s talking to Angie. I just know it.
I climb from the car and he stands when he sees me approaching, laying his cellphone on the table. He’s wearing a sports T-shirt and jogging bottoms that hug closely to his body, highlighting the gargantuan muscles that drive me wild, that will never stop driving me wild.
We stop bare inches from each other on his lawn, close enough for me to scent the sweat from his workout. It reminds me of the way he smelled when we devoured each other in the cabin, and then after in his bedroom back here.
It was better than I ever could’ve dreamed it would be, the way we collapsed into each other and consumed each other like nobody else existed, like the rest of the world was just a lie.
“I’ve missed you, Snapshot,” he growls.
“I’ve missed you too,” I murmur. “Which is crazy, right? It makes no freaking sense. It’s only been a few hours.”
I was at his place late last night, lying in his arms after we made love and watched a movie as his fingers moved through my hair, sending tingling sensations to every part of me.
“Was that Angie?” I ask.
He sighs and nods.
I can read all the emotion stowed up in that sigh, the uncertainty and the need butting heads, his conviction that we’re going to be together forever clashing horns with the knowledge that Angie’s reaction may shatter it all.
“Come inside,” he says firmly. “I need to kiss you. It’s killing me not being able to touch you in public. It’s not right. You’re my woman.”
We’ve agreed to keep our relationship quiet until Angie knows, just in case…
Just in case what? the sizzling in my womb screams. You’re pregnant, Tessa. There’s no going back now.
I try to force the voice away because it’s too messy to think about what we’ll do if I’m pregnant and Angie disapproves. But I don’t even feel as though there is an if.
It feels like a fact that there’s a baby growing inside of me, already changing me.
I nod and make to walk up the steps, and then laughter cuts across the lawn, a peal of laughter I recognize very well.
It’s the throaty mean harg-harg-harg of Derrick Wilson, one of the biggest douchebags my high school ever graduated… and he only managed that feat by copying off anybody who was smaller than him. Which, being a frontline player on the football team, was pretty much everyone.
A chord of anxiety quivers through me and I turn.
Derrick stands at the head of a group of four, all of them in their lettermen jackets, as though they can’t quite let high school go. He’s even bigger than I remember like he’s been using steroids since the last time I saw him. His hair is black and cut spiky, his eyes narrowed, his smile sarcastic and cold.