64. MATTHEWS

MATTHEWS

O nce the game was over, the Hornets taking it by one single run scored by Dean in the last inning, Cael dragged me by the hand down the packed corridors. Bobbi and Momma huddled near where Ryan Cody hovered, protecting them from the rush of players and parents pushing around in the small hall.

“Honeybug.” Momma reached out to Cael, pressing her palm to his cheek and smiling at him. “You’ve gotten so big.” She looked him over with tears in her eyes. “Rainey would be so proud of you,” she whispered to keep from a full-on waterfall.

“I missed you too, Mrs. Matthews.” Cael leaned into her touch and closed his eyes for a brief moment, like he could feel something the rest of us couldn’t. “You’ll come find me before you go home?” He asked her and she smiled at him with a small nose scrunch.

“Cael this is—” I went to introduce him to Bobbi.

“Bobbi.” She held out her hand to him, which he gave her after he untangled his fingers from mine with a scowl. Bobbi stared him down for a long moment., “I’m the best friend who picked up the pieces you broke her into the first time so if you do it again…”

Cael put his hands in the air. “I promise.”

Bobbi took that as enough, but I turned to look at him. Cael Cody had never made a promise he didn’t keep. Even fighting against outside forces, he kept his promises. That was when he made them. His eyes caught mine for a moment, and I could see how serious he was, the feeling catching in my throat like a cotton ball .

“No one is going to object if I steal Clementine for a little while?” He asked, his hands wrapping around my waist and pulling me against him. No one said anything, and Cael took that as leave to move me along, only stopping to scold Ella for meddling but pulling her into the most weighted, caring hug I’d ever seen.

Cael kissed my temple as he spun me away from her before I could say anything and continued to take us further away from all the noise and celebrations.

“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” Ella called to us as Cael led me away from all the noise.

“That leaves so much room for activity, Peachy!” He yelled over his shoulder at her, and his grip tightened on my hand as he weaved through bodies unapologetically until he broke out of the pack of bodies into an empty hallway.

“Where are we going?” A burst of tiny nervous laughter left me but the answer was quick to come as he led us into his Dad's office and locked the door behind me.

His arms trapped me against the door, and his lips found mine for the second time. I curled my fingers into the band of his ball pants and tugged him flat against my body as his lips parted to allow room for my tongue. Cael smelled like sweat, sand, and gummy bears; it filled my nose and made me dizzy. A tiny vibration of pleasure left my throat as his teeth grazed my lip and my back arched into his touch. He groaned against my mouth as he lowered himself further into the kiss and wrapped an arm underneath me.

“Come closer,” he grumbled as the kisses became sloppy as our noses brushed and tongues tangled together. I shook my head at his request when I was already melting against him, with no space to move.

“Cael.” I kissed him again, trying to get him to come down from the clouds.

“Clem,” he groaned back in protest.

My body lifted into his arms and I wrapped my leg around his waist as he walked through the office to the couch. Lowering carefully so I was in his lap, he pulled back and stared up at me with messy hair and kiss-bitten lips. Only a sliver of the sky was visible in his lusty blown pupils and his brows pinched together softly as he properly looked at me in private, just the two of us again .

“You came back,” he said with a small voice as his hand brushed a piece of my hair behind my ear.

“I’m sorry it took me so long,” I whispered and kissed his jaw tenderly, reveling in the way his body tensed under my delicate touches.

“No,” Cael ran his hands over my hands. “No, no.” His eyebrows scrunched together. “I’m glad you took your time, Clem, I would have waited forever. I told you once I would die loving you, I meant it.”

“I would certainly hope not.” I pouted, and he surged forward to take my bottom lip between his teeth. “I hated that I made you sad.” It came out in a whisper as his eyes traced mine. “And for the stupidest reason. I never should have gone back to Texas. My home isn’t there. It never has been.”

I pressed my hand against his chest to feel his heart racing beneath my palm.

“It’s right here. Wild as ever.” I kissed him again.

“What about Julien?” He asked, his shoulders tense as he broke the kiss.

”He wasn’t impressed but—“ I laughed under my breath, pressing our foreheads together as his hands raked up my back and gripped me close to him. “There wasn’t a single time when his kiss erased the memories of you. It wasn’t fair to him, it wasn’t fair to us.”

He gave me a sweet, sympathetic smile. “Good to know my declaration left a lasting impression.”

“Stop.” I gripped his chin playfully. “I wasn’t sure if you’d even want to see me again… It was so easy to crawl into bed and pretend like the world didn’t exist. I was scared, Cael. I’ve never been so scared of anything in my entire life. I thought I would have time to adjust, and see you from a distance or something. But in true Cael fashion, you barrelled through that door and back into my life. I never stood a chance against you. Not then or now.”

He watched me with those big blue eyes and listened so intently my heart wanted to claw its way out of my chest just to be closer to him.

“Loving you before felt like being in a tidal wave and no one could hear me screaming for help. Seeing you here, happy… It was a shock to the system and suddenly I was just that little girl again, wandering around in your shadow. I couldn’t breathe around you but I figured out pretty quickly that I couldn’t breathe without you either. Julien had been easy, comfortable—” I swallowed. “ But he never gave me that feeling of running in the grass barefoot under the sun, with the blades tickling my feet and fresh air burning my nose. He lacked the shock that tumbling down the hill into the frigid creek water provided. Cael… Julien never made me feel alive, he just kept me numb enough to not feel the absence of you.”

Cael watched me as I spoke, never taking his eyes off me as I explained my feelings. He made me feel like the entire world even at my most vulnerable. He brushed his nose against my jaw, a permanent smile on his lips.

“I thought I was doing right by you leaving. Your Dad came to see me, and the argument was sound.” I tilted my head back to stop the tears that threatened the corners of my eyes, and Cael pressed an encouraging and delicate kiss to the base of my throat. I hummed and collected myself. “He had been taking the letters, Cael.”

I had expected surprise, perhaps outrage or anger even from him but instead, he nodded softly and said, “I know.”

“You knew he wasn’t sending them?” I asked him, confused by the confession.

“Well I had a suspicion…It didn’t matter if you got them or not, it wouldn’t have changed anything. They would have just made you sad; he would have lied about keeping them but they kept me sane even sitting in my Dad’s desk drawer for the last seven years,” Cael explained with a light smile.

“I read them,” I told him. “All of them, and you’re right. They did make me sad, heartbroken and angry. I didn’t know how to fix it, Cael, how to make up for seven years of silence.” I chewed on my lip, but he brushed his thumb over it to stop me. “But then Ella called.”

“Of course she did.” Cael pushed into my grip and stole a kiss like he couldn’t resist the urge any longer.

“She understands you,” I said, and he nodded. “When she said you were sad, I—it triggered a memory of that day. How determined you were to make sure that I wasn’t sad anymore, even though it wasn’t your fault I was. I couldn’t let us go until you knew that I loved you back. I’m just sorry I couldn’t figure out how to love myself and you at the same time. ”

Cael covered the guilt I felt in quick little kisses that peppered my throat and jaw in fireworks that fizzled beneath my skin and lit a fire in my belly. His fingers trailed over my body, wrapping around my wrist and bringing it to his lips as his eyes burned the brightest shade of blue.

It made my heart ache.

“Don’t apologize, Clem,” he whispered against my skin. “I’m grateful for the time you took to become–” He filled his chest with air and a proud smirk formed on his lips as he looked me over. “ You. Beautiful, brilliant, confident you. I should be the one groveling, I was so determined to hold true to the past out of fear of losing someone else the way I lost Mama, but you aren’t her and I shouldn’t want to live in the past. I should want a future, for myself, for us.”

I smiled and took his face in my hands. “I like the sound of that.”

“Yeah?” Cael let out a relieved sigh and wrapped himself around me in a tight hug that weighed down all my worries and fears. “But what about your job?”

“I quit and got fired I guess…” I laughed and leaned my head back. “One of the interns got a hold of the tape.” I raised my eyebrows at him and smirked.

“Like the tape? ” His eyes went wide when I nodded.

“Probably the most embarrassing conversation I’ve ever had. I swear he was barely eighteen and had never even used the word sex in his entire life.” I laughed, turning beet red.

“Well I hope he had fun with it.” Cael snapped his teeth at me, tugging on the collar of my shirt, exposing the skin so he could kiss a fuzzy line across my shoulder. “How did he get his hands on it?” Cael stopped and looked up at me.

“I might have left it in the box on purpose…” I shrugged, my confession turning into giggles as his fingers found my ribs and stomach.

“That’s my girl,” he praised as his hands roamed up my shirt, but I pushed him away. “Clementine,” he purred my name.

“Not in your Dad’s office.” I licked my lips. “I’m not that wild.”

“It was worth a shot.” He kissed me with a smile.

I brushed back some of his messy blond hair, taking in the features of his face I had committed to memory. His short sloping nose, his hardened jaw, and his high cheekbones. And also the new ones that I never had the time to appreciate. The tiny scar above his cupid bow upper lip and the one that dug into the tail end of his right eyebrow. The lines around his eyes and the more recently sun-stained freckles that kissed the bridge of his nose.

He was even more beautiful than I had remembered.

“I do love you, you know that right?” He said in the silence as if he was uneasy by it. “Every form of you, no matter how many times you change, you’ll always be my Clementine.”

“For better or worse?”

“I do,” Cael teased with a Cheshire grin, his chin tipped to me and throat exposed.

“Save it, Loverboy.” I kissed him and ignored how the words ‘I do’ gave me butterflies. “Oh, and one more thing.” I cupped his face and stared down at those big blue eyes. A wish had come true that day on my thirteenth birthday, I was as happy as I could ever be.

“ Happy Birthday. ”