Cora Carmack: All Lined Up

And for all the promises I made her (and myself), I think about kissing her. I think about it, and I fist my hands against her back to keep from following through. Her tongue darts out to wet her lips, and they glisten, calling to me. I’m breathing heavy, and I hope she just chalks it up to having the air knocked out of me, not to the reemergence of the mental image of her legs wrapped around my waist that’s the true culprit.

“Dallas?” The voice is in the room directly above us, and we hear heavy footsteps stomp toward the balcony door.

I reach for her hips to shift her off of me, and I touch bare skin. We realize at the same time that when I’d grabbed her skirt as she fell, I’d tugged it up somewhere around her waist, leaving her bottom half mostly bare against me.

Panic flits through her eyes. In her haste to cover herself, she sits up, rushing to pull down her skirt, which leaves one knee on either side of my hips. My hands are still frozen against her warm skin, now hidden beneath her skirt. I stiffen and swallow a groan because I like her draped across me. Entirely too much. And if she doesn’t move off me quickly, she’s going to know it.

Her name comes again, from outside on the balcony this time. I let my hands fall away from her hips, and I don’t mean for my fingertips to brush against her thighs, but I’m certainly not sorry. Not when she lets out a breathy noise that I might have called a moan if she didn’t fix me with a glare half a second later. She pulls herself up, more gracefully than I would have thought possible. Her face drawn tight in anger, she steps over me, and I cover my eyes with a groan too late not to catch another brief forbidden glance of emerald green.

This girl is going to be the death of me.

As I pull myself up to a sitting position just below the balcony and out of sight, she turns around to square off against the guy above.

“Pretty girl, what are you doing down there?”

She doesn’t answer. Instead she crosses her arms over her chest and gives him a cold look. “Did your buddy ever give you that hint you were wanting? Because if not, I have one. Not in a million years, asshole.”

She doesn’t hesitate over the curse word, and I barely resist the urge to applaud her improvement.

“Don’t be mad, pretty girl.” The guy actually sounds a little worried. Hell, I’m a little worried, and her anger isn’t even directed at me. “That was just guy talk. We were being stupid. Nothing serious.”

Her expression morphs from cold to fiery, and I have a feeling that if she could get back up on that balcony, she would make that guy use his own small intestine as a straw.

“Stay away from me. I’ll keep my mouth shut about tonight, but bother me again, and I might just feel the need to unburden my worries. Got it?”

The dick doesn’t reply, and the balcony door opens and slams shut once more.

She’d more than held her own, but I can’t help being unsettled by what I heard. What had that dude done to her? And who was she threatening to tell that had him bailing without even a reply?

I climb to my feet slowly, my back complaining and my ass bitching like nobody’s business. Trying not to grimace, I ask, “You okay?”

She pulls her gaze away from the now-empty balcony and focuses on me.

“Better.”

Her eyes turn wary, and I’m pretty sure she’s thinking about the skirt mishap. Her hands confirm it when they slip into two hidden pockets at her hips and casually push down to make sure her skirt is as long as she can make it. Fortunately for me, that’s still not that long.

I mimic her, placing my own hands into my pockets. A cold front is just creeping into town, the first hint of fall, so it’s cold enough to keep everyone inside, but not so cold that it’s unbearable. Hell, I hadn’t been cold since the minute I’d laid eyes on Dallas.

For a few seconds, we just stare at each other, unsure how to proceed. She reaches up and gathers her thick red hair into her hands like she’s going to pull it up into a ponytail. Then she seems to think better of it, releasing it until it settles in crimson drifts across her shoulders. I fist my hands in my pockets, nearly overwhelmed with the urge to wrap that long hair around my fingers. She links her hands behind her back, and it draws my attention to her slim, tall frame.

And damn, I really need to get a handle on this.

When we do speak, it’s in a rush and at the same time.

“What were you doing out here alone?”

“So, you jump off balconies often?”

We apologize in sync, and then laugh together, too.

I leave the shadows of the balcony and cross to her. “I needed some space to think. I just transferred to Rusk from a junior college, and it’s not as easy to settle in as I thought it would be.”

“What junior college?”

I shove my hands deeper into my pockets. I hadn’t meant to tell her about that. Most people are weird when I mention junior college, like I am somehow lesser than because I went there first. But she is so open and honest, I didn’t even think about filtering myself before I spoke.

“Westfield.”

She smiles. “I have a few friends who went to Westfield and are planning to transfer here after a year or two. It’s pretty smart, really. So much cheaper to get the basics out of the way there first.”

Her smile is genuine, and I’ve not felt this at ease since I set foot on this campus a few weeks ago to officially try out for the team. “So what about you? Balcony jumping a habit? Favorite pastime?”

She tilts her head to the side and scrunches her nose up cutely before shaking her head. “Not so much. Probably not the smartest thing I’ve ever done either.”

I raise an eyebrow. “ Oh really? What happened to your whole Carson, you’re an idiot. It was only one floor bit?”

She bites back a smile before asking, “Carson?”

I hadn’t told her my name before? Oh, right. I was too busy getting my tailbone broken and accidentally undressing her.

“Well, Carson. Normally, I’m much more graceful than . . .” She laughs before adding, “All of that .” She circles her hand, gesturing toward the general vicinity where we’d ended up after my botched attempt at catching her.

I step up beside her, and I’m close enough to her now that I can see the way her eyelashes brush against her cheeks when she blinks. And I must be insane because just the simple act of her blinking has me staring, dumbstruck.

I can deny myself all I want, but one thing I cannot deny is just how fucking gorgeous this girl is. And exactly the kind of distraction I’m supposed to be staying away from.

I’m sure there are plenty of people who go to junior college because it’s cheaper or the smart thing to do. And yeah, the cheaper thing definitely helped. A lot.

But mostly I went because I didn’t get accepted into any state schools, and my high school team hadn’t been good enough to get the kind of exposure I needed to land a football scholarship. So Dad and I had made a plan. One year at Westfield—get my grades up, play football there, train every spare second, reach out to the coach at Rusk, and nab a walk-on spot. Eventually, the goal is to leverage that spot into something more permanent, something with a scholarship.

So far the plan is working perfectly. Right on track.

But the hardest part is standing right in front of me.

Don’t get distracted by a girl.

That’s Dad’s number one rule, and he’s probably right.

It’s going to take everything I have to keep my grades up here. And I don’t exactly have it easy on the field, considering I’m playing second string to Levi Abrams. The guy won two high school state championships, and still holds the high school state record for all-time leading passer. He was redshirted the year before last, his freshman year, and though he had decent numbers in his first season last year, the team as a whole had a disappointing year.