Page 24 of All I Ask
I would. I would tear the door off the hinges if I wasn’t worried about her rejecting me. Instead of taking the chance, I stay where it’s safe.
Teagan twists, pulling the blanket over her shoulders, and faces me.
“Tea!” It’s fucking freezing. “Share the blanket!”
“Tell me something real,” she says as she stares at me.
Not this game. Not now.
I can’t do it.
“Tea.” I say her name as a warning.
“I’ll give you the blanket back, but I want something real.”
I’m freezing and my head is fucked-up with thoughts of her eyes and her lips are close. “I can’t think…I’m frozen.”
She grins. “Try.”
I love you.
There, that’s my something real. I love her and I know it’s crazy and stupid, but I do. I dream about kissing her. I think about the way her lips would fit with mine. How she would feel in my arms as I held her tight. My nights are filled with fantasies of making love to her until we both can’t take any more. I love her and I will never tell her.
Because she’s not mine. She’s someone else’s.
My teeth start to chatter when the cold air hits me. “Ireallywant that blanket back,” I say as my something real.
“No way, buddy! You can’t cheat!”
“Then you give me something real and I’ll give you one, if I don’t die of hypothermia.”
“Fine,” Teagan tosses back with a hint of anger. “I really don’t ever want to know what life is like without you in it.”
I’m stunned. I literally can’t move or speak. I have so much I want to say back to her because it’s as though she and I might actually be on the same wavelength. A few years ago, it wasn’t anything more than friendship for me.
Sure, she was gorgeous, but we were always just friends. All I wanted was for her to see that she was more than her popularity.
The joke was on me, though.Isaw it. I saw how special she was. I saw her donate her time to helping others during the food drive and then again with a fisherman who needed help with his boat. She didn’t know how to fix an engine, but Teagan read every manual she could. I saw how much she wanted others to see her for who she really was but was too afraid of the way it would change her world.
Then, I saw her stop caring about her fears and embrace the woman she was, making it impossible not to fall for her.
“Derek?” Teagan says my name slowly. “You okay?”
“Yeah, sorry.”
“I was worried maybe you froze to death…like Jack and Rose.”
I roll my eyes. Only she would make that stupid movie reference at a time like this. “That fucking movie.”
“You love it. I know you cried.”
“I cried because it was three hours of my life I’ll never get back.”
Teagan steps forward andwraps the blanket around me, hugging me at the same time. “More like sixty hours, since I made you watch it every day.”
The things we do for the girl we want but can never have.
“You make me smile,” I say without thinking.
