Page 32 of Always: A Legacy Novel

No talking about the family business.

It was a rule he followed.

“No, but my game is tonight,” he said instead. Catherine was the one to make a face that time. “Yeah, I know football isn’t your thing, but would you come anyway?”

He never asked for shit from Catherine.

She gave—he took.

He liked it that way.

Catherine grinned at him. “I’ll call home and get a ride for a while after the game. Don’t you have a party or something to celebrate if you win?”

“They might. I don’t.”

He didn’t play for that stuff.

“About my birthday …” he trailed off, glancing over his shoulder to see where the supervising teachers happened to be.

She didn’t want another write-up, after all.

Both supervising teachers’ backs were turned away from their direction.

“What?” Catherine asked.

Cross closed the gap between them the same way he had earlier, but instead of a quick kiss that was over before anyone knew what was happening, this one wasn’t the same. He took his time—kissed her hard.

He liked the way Catherine’s lips curved into a happy smile, and how her pupils blew wide when her gaze found his. Her mouth was always sweet against his, and then hot, too.

Cross waited to feel Catherine’s lips part, a small sigh beating against his mouth. Then he deepened the kiss, already finding her tongue waiting to war with his. He made himself pull away before someone did turn around and write them up.

Catherine bit her bottom lip and muttered, “You’re going to get me in shit.”

“I had to thank you, though.”

“Good excuse.”

The bell rang echoing through the cafeteria.

“Okay, Catherine, let’s go before your boyfriend gets us in trouble again,” one of the girls said. “I mean, if that’s what you’re calling him this week.”

Catherine shot him a small smile, but he could tell the comment bothered her. Maybe because it was true, but maybe because he didn’t know what they were. She probably didn’t, either. Everybody always asked them questions. People never shut up. He hated their nosiness. His friends never asked; they didn’t care.

Cross didn’t even care to know which one of Catherine’s friends said it.

It wasn’t anyone else’s business what he called Catherine, or what she called him. They were clearly something, and he liked that just fine. They had been something for two months, so he figured it was obvious without making a scene like everybody else did.

It was everyone else who seemed to have a problem.

Quickly, he grabbed one of Catherine’s Sharpies—a black one—and popped the cap off. She laughed when he grabbed her wrist and flipped it over, doodling two fast stripes of black on her soft skin. One line long, the other, crossways and shorter.

“There,” Cross said, dropping Catherine’s wrist and handing back her marker. The table cleared of the girls. He still wasn’t paying them any attention. When Catherine was there, it was just him and her. “So you know, now.”

She looked down and smiled; he’d marked a black cross on her inner wrist.

“So I know what?”

“I’m yours.”