Forbidden Seduction [ Forbidden Obsession]

But in the back yard there’s nowhere to go. I’m not going into the tree house where all I’ll be able to think about is how many orgasms Trevor gave me. With a sigh, I sit on the steps of my back porch, pulling my coat closer around me to keep out the cold. But the silence feels good. I focus on my breathing, trying not to think. I look down at the snow, flurries gathering and filling in our foot prints from the other day.

The door slides open behind me, and I close my eyes. If it’s one of my siblings, I really don’t want to talk to them at the moment. I feel the air shift as someone sits down on the steps with me. I peek out to find Trevor sitting with me. He’s not touching me, but close enough that he could. His expression is bordering on angry, and he’s looking at the snow. “Are you all right?” he asks. His voice is soft, not angry. I realize that he’s frustrated. For me.

“No,” I say, looking back at the ground.

That deep sadness is still welling in my chest, and I feel like I should be crying. But I can’t. There’s too much there to even cry.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“For what?”

He reaches a hand for me, and changes his mind. “For what they said in there. For not saying anything about it. For not helping you throw Leigh out of your house.”

I give him a grim smile. “It’s okay, Trevor. None of those things are your fault.” We’re silent for a moment. “I’m just not sure what to do. I can’t seem to convince anyone that I’m okay. That my life is really fine. And then I see Leigh, and I wonder if it’s not. If I somehow taught him that being with someone like that is okay.”

“She wasn’t like that in the beginning,” Trevor says.

“They never are.”

Another silence. I look up at the flat white sky and let the flurries collect on my lashes.

“So,” he says, overly cheerful, “I finally thought of an embarrassing Christmas story for you. It’s definitely on par with the tree and the broken arm.”

“Oh?”

“It’s about how I got grounded for a month on Christmas day.” He ducks his face down, trying to make me meet his eyes. I do, and he makes a silly face at me. In spite of myself, I crack a smile.

“Okay, what happened?” I ask. “It better be good.”

“I was twelve,” he says, clearing his throat, “and my parents had invited some important person from the local government to Christmas dinner. I’ve been wracking my brain trying to think of who it was, but I don’t remember. It might have been the mayor.”

“The mayor of Boston?”

“Yeah.” He ignores my shock completely. “Anyway, I was bored, and this isn’t just a one course meal. We’re talking three or four courses. I’m twelve-the last thing I want to do is sit at a table for hours when I could be off with my presents.”

I nod, trying to dismiss the fact that my sadness is easing. I don’t want to think about what it means that he’s been the one to do it more than once.

“So I decided that I would experiment at the table. Small at first, just my own plate. I wanted to see what sort of things I could catapult off a fork.”

“You didn’t.”

“Yes, I did.” He’s smiling, and so am I. “I tried a couple of beans, a pad of butter, piece of chicken. They all flew well, and I figured I could really make something fly. By the time I came to this conclusion, I had basically forgotten that I was at an important dinner. So I decided to go for it.”Belonging © NôvelDram/a.Org.

“Food of choice?” I ask.

“Meatball.”

I groan. “I can already see what’s going to happen.”

“I put the meatball on the handle of my fork, and I just smash the living hell out of that catapult. The meatball flew, landed right in the middle of the guest of honor’s plate. Sauce splattered everywhere.”

I start to laugh, a deep belly laugh that chases all the lingering anger and sadness from my chest. “I would have loved to have seen that.”

“It was a great sight. And I was grounded for a month.”

“But I hope you learned your lesson,” I say, nudging him with my elbow.

“Never.”

The silence this time is easier. I find myself wanting to lean into him. I can’t think of anyone else, not even Brad, who would have been able to pull me back so quickly. Make me smile and laugh. That kind of easy freedom that I felt with him at the tree farm slips inside me again, and I feel…happy. Not just fine. Happy. Better than I’ve felt in a long time. I like my life, my life is good, but he’s made it better. I realize that I’ve been staring at him for a couple of minutes, and he’s been staring back. He sees when I realize it.

“Where’d you go?”

“Just thinking,” I say, not sure I’m ready to confess my own realization.

He nods. “I just have to say, that you’re amazing, Stella. You’re a great person and a great mom. Nothing that happened today is because of you. Your family loves you, even if they are misguided in the way they show it, and Leigh is a terrible person-that’s not your imagination.”

I laugh softly. “Thank you. And for what it’s worth, I think you’re an amazing person too. I think if Brad’s dad had been more like you, my life-our lives-would be very different.”

“So you’re saying you wish you’d had a guy like me?” He smiles.

“Yeah. I guess that is what I’m saying.”

He reaches over and takes my hand. “When I go back to school,” he says, and my heart flutters, “I don’t want this to stop.”

I swallow, my mouth going dry. “Are you sure?”