Holding Read online

  Why didn’t she say something to me? Ella, my sweet innocent, beautiful tutor, who I can’t help but fall slowly for every day is the girl. How could she keep this from me? She even went as far as to mention the masked girl to me. Was it to gauge my response? Was she testing me? Did she want me to give up and move on with another girl on campus? I’m so confused by her reaction. She got up and walked away so fast I hadn’t had the time to stop her from leaving.

  Unsure of where to find the American Bar Association Model Rules of Professional Conduct, I ask the librarian, who tells me to check the reference section on the third floor. I should wait for Ella to come back because chasing after her once again might cause her to go into hiding. Why else would she withhold her identity? She did not give me enough credit and had disregarded how serious I am about her.

  Once I reach the third floor, I stop at the top of the steps and look around, the stacks going back as far as I can see. I consider yelling to find Ella faster, but then, I remember the rules of the library and think better of it. Glancing at the titles on the ends of each shelf, I walk between the tall mahogany bookcases, weaving in and out of each aisle, in search of Ella. I was always chasing after Ella, only this time things are different between us.

  The girl I was so desperate to find has become more to me than I had ever imagined. When I had set out on this quest, I was certain I would never find her, though I had hoped my efforts had a purpose.

  Clutching the chain around my neck, I lift it over my head and hold Ella’s charm in my palm. Obviously, this means something to her. After a solid minute or two of combing through the stacks, I find Ella with her back against the shelf, staring down at the book she has open in her hand. I come to a halt in front of her. She bites down on her bottom lip, nervous. Not until I hold up the gold chain and dangle the charm in front of her face does she peek up from the pages.

  Her eyes are watery and red as if she was up here crying. “Are you mad at me? I can take it if you are…” Her words die off in her throat from the sobs that escape her lips.

  I lower the chain to my side and stroke her jaw with my other hand. She leans into me, allowing me to caress her face. “Why didn’t you say something, Ella? I have been looking for you for weeks.”

  “I’m sorry,” she mutters, her voice soft and low. “I didn’t want you to be disappointed.”

  “Why would I be disappointed?”

  “Because I’m not the kind of girl you would normally date. I like spending time with you, and I didn’t want to ruin what we had between us. I was afraid if you knew the truth you would switch tutors or start acting weird, and well, I couldn’t handle that. I cannot lose you. I have lost too many things in my life.”

  Her words fill me with so many emotions, but sadness is the one I feel most. “You had me from the start. There is nothing you could say or do that would make me change my mind about you.” I open up my palm and hold out the charm. “I think this belongs to you.”

  She takes the charm from me and unhooks the clasp, sliding the metal into her palm so that she can hand over the chain. My mom had given it to me years ago for Christmas. I hadn’t had much use for jewelry until Ella dropped her charm in the hallway at my house. I find myself doing tons of things I wouldn’t have done before I met Ella. Whether she realizes or not, Ella makes me an all around better man.

  “You have no idea how much I’d wanted to say something once I had realized you had the other half of my charm,” she says, her eyes focused on the floor. “This is one of the few things I was able to keep from Clarissa’s fire sale. She sold everything but the house and bought all new things with the money she’d made. But this…this is mine. It’s the most valuable thing I own. My dad gave it to me.”

  “I wish I had known,” I say, feeling her soft skin beneath my fingers.

  “I should have said something,” she stammers. “You could have called off your search party weeks ago if I had spoken up. But I wanted to get to know you better. I wanted to see if you were the same person I had built up in my mind.”

  Shocked by her declaration, I take a second to consider everything that has happened between us. She knew who I was that night, baited me into her trap, though I doubt she had known the hallway would lead her to the exit door. “You were alone at the party. Did you come there for me?”

  Ella sucks in a deep breath, her blue eyes so wide and bright they glisten under the dim lights overhead. She nods in answer.

  “I have liked you since that night, and my feelings for you have only grown stronger with each day we spend together,” I confess.

  She smiles. “I bet I’ve liked you a lot longer. Do you remember how you felt the first time you saw me? Because I remember where you were, what you were wearing, and exactly what ran through my mind that day.”

  “I bet I have given it much more thought.”

  “I doubt that.” She brushes her lips against my hand that is still cupping the side of her face.

  Her gentle touch sends chills up my arm and down my spine. The feeling I get when I’m around Ella has been there from the start, and it has yet to fade. In fact, the overwhelming emotions that rush through me when I think of Ella grow stronger each day.

  “Do you want to play a game? My mom used to do this with me when I was little. She still does.” She says yes with her eyes, a simple gesture that tells me to keep going. “You said you remember everything about the first time you saw me, right?”

  She smiles up at me. “As if it were yesterday.”

  The corners of my mouth turn up into a grin that I find impossible to wipe from my face. Being around Ella makes me happy, so fucking happy I never thought this kind of joy was possible.

  “Okay, the rules are simple. I get to ask you five questions, and then you get to ask me whatever you want.”

  Why am I going about it this way? Wow, I’m acting like such a dork right now. Whatever. I don’t give a shit. When I’m around Ella, I lower my guard like I never have before, and it’s refreshing to be so open with someone. She has never judged me once, only tried to build me up.

  “If you remember the day so well, then when was the first time you saw me?”

  Without hesitation, she says, “On the lawn at the Quad our freshman year. You were with Bash and Clay, throwing around a football.”

  “Were you joking about knowing what I had on that day?”

  She shakes her head. “Nope, I never joke when it comes to you. Plus, you made it hard for me to forget.” I chuckle, and she keeps going. “For starters, you weren’t wearing a shirt, and as I said, you are hard to forget. You’re—”

  “Charming,” I add with a cheesy grin.

  “Sexy. Hot. Take your pick,” Ella says. “But I don’t think of you that way anymore.” Pretending as though she hurt my feelings, I hold my hand up to my heart, and she covers my hand with hers. “You know what I mean, Shawn.”

  “No, I don’t. Do tell.”

  Ella lets out an exaggerated sigh, turning her head to face the opposite direction before she refocuses her attention on me. “Are you going to make me say it?”

  I bob my head.

  She grunts, annoyed with me but not defeated. “For the record, I still think you are hot, and you were wearing navy basketball shorts and no shirt that day. I almost tripped over my feet to get a second look at you.”

  “I wish we had met back then,” I say, stroking her cheek with my fingers.

  “We were different people back then. I doubt things would have worked out between us.”

  “I don’t,” I say, meaning every word. “I had this gut feeling about you that would not quit, and I still have it.”

  “I know what you mean,” she whispers. “But I know you differently than I did before. Before, you were just another hotshot football player. Well, you are still that but…different. Like everyone else at this school, I had only heard things about Finch. But I know Shawn now. There are sides to you that other people haven’t seen. You opened up to me in ways
that have shocked me, and I did the same with you. Around you, I feel safe, something I hadn’t felt since my father was alive until I met you.”

  “True or false?” I ask her, and she scrunches her eyebrows in confusion, waiting for me to continue. “You like me as more than a friend?”

  Because of how nervous and shy she can be at times, I thought this would be the best way to put Ella at ease without forcing her to do much talking. I didn’t speak much when I was a kid, especially after my dad left, and my mom played this game with me to get me to come out of my shell.

  Ella bites the inside of her cheek. “True.”

  “True or false? You think about me when we’re apart.”

  Her cheeks redden from my question. “True.”

  “One last question,” I say, palming her back with my hand to bring her closer.

  “I think you ran out of questions,” she says with sarcasm in her tone.

  “No, I didn’t. The last one, I promise. This one is the most important.”

  “Ask away.”

  “True or false? You want me to kiss you.” Our lips are so close they almost touch, and when she nods and says, “True,” I don’t hesitate.

  With one hand on her back and the other grasping her face, I brush my lips along hers, taking her bottom lip in my mouth to suck on, before I slip my tongue inside. If she hadn’t confessed, I would have known she was the masked girl from this kiss alone.

  I don’t care that we’re in the library or that she’s my tutor. I’m not about to lose my Cinderella all over again. Ella has always been mine, and now I’m claiming her up against the bookshelf, unable to stop myself from devouring her in public. My hands move at a feverish pace, as our tongues work in harmony together, making it impossible to stop myself from exploring every inch of her gorgeous body.

  Sliding my hand further down her back, I grab her tight ass, and my cock grows harder with each groan of pleasure from Ella. She moans my name into my mouth without breaking the kiss, threading her fingers through my hair. I let it grow the last few weeks, giving her more to grab hold of, as we deepen the kiss.

  The book that was in her other hand falls to the floor with a loud bang, but that doesn’t stop us. Nothing could deter me from making up for all the lost times with Ella. She hooks her leg around me, digging her heel into my ass. I grab her by the hips, lift her up, and shake a few books that crash onto the floor in the aisle behind us.

  Ella peels her lips from mine to laugh. “Shawn, we will be in so much trouble if someone finds us up here.”

  “Are you saying you want to stop? Because I think your mind and body are in disagreement.”

  I wink, and she smiles.

  “Why did I wait this long?”

  “Because you are stubborn.”

  She rolls her eyes at me and sighs. “You sure know how to make a girl feel special, huh?”

  “And smart,” I add. “Too smart for your own good. You overthink everything. For once, why don’t you do something without thinking about it.”

  “I just made out with you in the library,” she counters. “I’d say that qualifies as not thinking things through. I could get into a lot of trouble if one of the librarians finds us.”

  “There you go again,” I tell her, clutching her face in my hand. “Don’t think, just feel. Live in the moment with me.” And then I brush my lips against her, forcing her eyes closed and a soft whimper escapes her lips. Planting soft kisses along her mouth and jaw, I take my time and mutter things to her between breaths. I whisper that she’s beautiful, kind, smart, strong, and everything that makes up Ella. My Ella. My dream girl. My masked beauty.

  It’s not until I feel something wet on my cheek that I stop kissing her. When I look at Ella, a few tears streak her cheeks. She turns her head to the side and wipes them away with the back of her hand.

  “Hey, what’s wrong?” I stare into her bright blue eyes and force her to maintain my gaze. “Talk to me.”

  “Nothing,” she chokes out, sucking down her tears. “This is perfect. You are perfect. I can’t help but think this situation is temporary, and I don’t want to lose you, Shawn.”

  “What would make you think that? I’m here because I like you, Ella, and not because of something you have to offer me. You’re not some fling or a booty call for me. I want you to be mine.”

  “As in your girlfriend?”

  “What else is there? Of course, my girlfriend.”

  She sniffs and blinks the last few tears away. “But what about the NFL and everything you have going on? I don’t want to get in the way.”

  “Stop thinking, my beautiful girl,” I say, stroking her cheek with my fingers. “Just let things happen, okay?”

  Ella nods. “Okay, I will try, but I can’t promise my brain will turn off.”

  “And I’ll be here every day to remind you to stop worrying so much. I’m here, living in this moment with you. I’m not letting you go again, Ella. Please believe me when I say that because I mean every word. I am not going to leave you.”

  “People always leave. It’s just human nature,” she mutters.

  “No, it’s just bad luck. Your parents didn’t leave you by choice, remember that. My dad did. There’s a difference. I care about you too much to break your heart. So, as I said, let’s take this one day at a time and let things happen on their own.”

  She flashes a closed mouth smile. We stand there for a few seconds in complete silence, holding onto one another, until she says, “True or false? You knew I was the girl from the party since the day we met.”

  “I had my suspicions. I never told you that I had a picture of you from the party on my cell phone. All through our first tutoring session, I kept checking my phone to see if you looked like the picture. You were a dead ringer, but I wasn’t one hundred percent sure because a large portion of the masked had covered your face, making it harder to tell.”

  “Why didn’t you force it out of me?”

  “Because, once I’d gotten to know you, I couldn’t see you hanging out at a frat party on a Saturday night.”

  She frowns. “And why is that? Am I not cool enough for your friends?”

  “No, of course not. The kind of girls who come to our parties are the ones who are there to get drunk and hook up. You’re not that kind of girl, and that’s a good thing.”

  “I guess I need to be more spontaneous,” she says. “The masquerade party was the first party I’d gone to in almost four years of going to Strick U.”

  “We can fix that, you know. Make up for lost times before you graduate.”

  “How do you expect me to do that?”

  “Come to the Spring Formal with me?”

  She cocks an eyebrow at me, confused. “Spring Formal for the school? I didn’t know we had dances.”

  I laugh at how clueless she is about how this school works. “No, we don’t have a dance, silly. My fraternity has them twice a year.”

  “And you want me to come? Um…okay. What do I wear?”

  “It’s not a dance, Ella. We go away for the weekend with all the guys in my house and their dates.”

  “Oh,” she whispers and bites down on her bottom lip. “I’m still grounded, and there is no way Clarissa will let me go anywhere for the weekend.”

  “No pressure. I wasn’t planning to go until I found you, but I completely understand if you can’t go. We can do something else. I’ll stay behind and come rescue you from Hell House.”

  “So, it’s for the entire weekend, as in we would have to sleep in the same room as your fraternity brothers.”

  I laugh. “No, we each get a room.”

  “So, we would have to share a room.”

  “We don’t have to. You can sleep in a room by yourself if you want.”

  She shakes her head. “Out of the question, Shawn.”

  “I don’t want you to feel pressured into going with me. After what you said about not having any fun, I thought maybe you would want to go. The formals are fun, maybe
even a little too wild. We have another month before the trip, so take your time and think it over. I’m good no matter what you decide.”

  “I can’t believe we are doing this. The frat boy jock and the nerd. How cliché are we?”

  “Hey, there is more to me than football and frat life, I will have you know.”

  Ella brings her hand up to my face and brushes her fingers along my jaw. “So much more. You are so much more than what you lead people to believe, and I’m glad you share that part of yourself with me.”

  I lean in to kiss her and whisper against her lips, “Me, too.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Ella

  After another day of tutoring, Shawn left the library to meet one of his fraternity brothers, and I went about my usual routine until it was time to grab my road soda.

  Tori flags me down on my way to the SAC and jogs over to me with an irritated look on her face. “Girl, you need to stop that power walking through campus,” Tori says, out of breath. “I was calling your name from the time you rounded the corner, and you kept hauling ass.”

  I laugh. “Shawn always says that about me. I guess I walk faster than I realize.”

  “Speaking of him, Finch told me he asked you to go with him to his Spring Formal. That is a big deal for him.” She squeals the last part.

  I nod, smiling so much that my face hurts. Because of Shawn, I do that a lot now. “Yeah, I know. Can you believe it? I had no idea what to say when he asked me.”

  Tori adjusts the strap of the bag on her shoulder and gives me a weird look. “What I can’t believe is that you are the girl from the masquerade party and you did not tell me. I thought we had a girl code between us.”

  I let out a puff of air. “You said you weren’t mad.”

  “I’m not just a little offended that you didn’t confide in me. But don’t worry, I will get over it.” She flashes a grin at me, and then focuses back on the building in front of us. “I haven’t seen Finch this happy since…ever. He talks about you all the time now that he’s allowed to mention you to everyone.”

  “I feel the same way about him. I lucked out with Shawn, you know.”