Our Secret Moments (Drayton Hills Series)

OH FUCK.

Oh fuck.

Oh fuck.

I did not think this through. At all. Because Catherine Fables – apparently the only girl to ever exist to me – is walking me backwards onto the dance floor after I told her I wanted to dance with her. Not only does she look fucking stunning in that dress and her hair tied up in a bun, but the way she took control of me just then is fucking up my insides.

I needed a second away from the party and only in my wildest dreams did I imagine that I’d end up back on the dance floor wedged between sweaty bodies and the epitome of beauty as she stares up at me.

The noise coming from the party doesn’t seems to exist when she’s in my view. She’s all I see. All I feel. All I hear.

My Catherine.

She drops her hands from my chest finally when we’re deep enough into the crowd. She trails her hands down my arms, causing goosebumps to rise across them despite the scorching heat of the room. When her hands meet mine, she twists around, giving me her back instead and resting my hands on her hips.

“Just follow my lead, okay?”

I don’t think I could respond if I tried. Her body instantly fits so perfectly with mine, her ass nestled into my lap as my hands find each other around her stomach. Tonight, You Are Mine by The Technicolours blares through the speakers and that mixed with the darkness of the room instantly gives us both the confidence to completely lose ourselves within each other.

We both move to the music and each time we sway, she presses herself further into me and I lose my mind more and more. Is this supposed to be painful? Because I’m having a hard time forming words or even thoughts right now.

Her head tilts back, resting on my chest as her eyes flutter closed, her hands locking behind my neck. She wants this just as much as I do and I fucking love it. She’s not the bossy or wound-up Catherine that would smack me with a ruler if I said something mean to her. This is the Catherine that likes to party, the one that likes to dance like this whilst having no idea just what she’s doing to me.

“Is this what I get for my birthday, Catherine?” I murmur into her skin, loving how hot and flushed it feels against my mouth. My own heartbeat is hammering against my ribs so loud I’m sure she can hear it.

“Only because you’ve been good,” she says, her eyes opening slightly. Our gazes lock and burn, the world around us disappearing. My hands flex against her stomach at the lusty, hooded look her eyes give me.

“Yeah?” I tease. She nods, her teeth sinking into her bottom lip as she purposefully grinds herself against me and I hiss. “What if I was bad? What would you give me then?”

“A reasonable punishment,” she whispers.

“You sure? This already feels like torture.” I groan as her hands tighten around my neck, pulling at my hair. This woman is about to drive me fucking insane and I’m going to let her.

“Why?” she breathes out. There is no way she doesn’t know just how badly I’ve wanted to be this close to her.

I lean over her, pressing another kiss to the spot behind her ear, claiming it as mine. “Because I want to do more than just dance with you, Catherine,” I admit. She sucks in a breath, her hand tightening on me once again. “Knowing how good you feel, feeling how good you fit with me… I don’t know how much more of this torture I can take.”

“What are you talking about?” she asks, her voice thick.

I’m about to tell her just how badly I want her, explain it to her in every single language since words are her speciality, but I’m hit in the head with something. Hard. Cat’s arms drop from mine as I wince, rubbing the back of my head. I already feel empty without her touch.

I turn around to find the culprits.

Sam and Wes.

I swear I’m going to murder them both one day. Wes is baring all of his teeth, grimacing as if he feels bad for throwing a football at my head, but Sam is snickering like a child. I don’t know what invite Sam was given, but he’s the only person in this joint wearing a costume that isn’t from a Disney film as he casually rocks a Shrek cosplay outfit.

“Sorry,” Wes shouts. “Olaf is having a wardrobe malfunction, and we need your help.”

“You need three people to help?” I ask, annoyed.

“Yeah, well, it’s not like you’re busy,” Sam says, gesturing to me and Cat as she crosses her arms against her chest.

“I am busy,” I groan, remembering the position I was in less than two minutes ago.

“That was a rhetorical question,” Sam argues.

I roll my eyes at him, turning back to Cat. I look down at her and she doesn’t seem pissed like I thought she would. Instead, she looks somewhat relieved. She gives me a weak smile.

“Somebody needs to tell him that is not what a rhetorical question is,” she murmurs, trying and failing to hide her grin. I just want to kiss it off her, pester her face with my kisses until she’s hot all over.

“I’m sorry. I’ll come find you later, okay?” I whisper into the space between us. She nods, blinking up at me with her perfect eyes. “I want to finish what we started.”

“Well, don’t take too long because I can take care of myself, Connie.”

“This is why you interrupted me?” I ask, exasperated when I finally make it up the stairs. I’m staring at a half-naked Archer while Wes and Sam look at me like I’m a fucking fairy godmother who is supposed to somehow fix their problem.

“We tried to do some DIY, and as you can see, it did not go to plan,” Wes says, gesturing toward Archer’s discarded Olaf costume which lays on the floor of my childhood bedroom.

“Yeah, it should be called DNDIY: Do Not Do It Yourself. This shit is ridiculous,” Sam says, placing his hands on his hips as he looks down at the costume. Do I even want to ask? They must register the confusion on my face because more bullshit comes out of Sam’s mouth. “You didn’t tell us how hard it would be for him to take a leak in this thing. So, Archie Boy took it off and we had some fun with the scissors.”

Archer holds up the costume which now has a huge hole in the crotch area and two on both sides. What kind of idiot cuts things like that? “See what they’ve done?”

“Oh, it’s not that bad,” Wes says. Archer scowls at him before fitting the piece over his head which has also apparently lost a few inches because he doesn’t get the thing any further than his chest, his hands still in the air.

“You look like a deformed elephant,” I mutter, turning back around. I can’t believe he dragged me away from the best part of my night.

I meant what I said. I want to finish what we started.

By the time I get back to where I left Catherine, the party had grown tenfold. I don’t know how people get invited to these things without Nora and I saying, but knowing how she is, she probably invited everyone from her class, afraid of telling them no.

The music is still blaring in my ears, sweat trickling down my spine as people bump into me, drunkenly mumbling their happy birthdays as I try to find the one good part of my day.

When I finally find her, she’s not where I left her. Instead, she’s in the one room I never expected to find her.

My parents have a small office-like room with soft leather couches, a coffee table and a ton of board games which they’ve hoarded over the years. Catherine is sitting in one of the oversized chairs, curled up with her knees to her chest.

“Are you okay?” I ask into the room. It’s quieter in here which is why she flinches at the sound of my voice. She turns to look at me as she nods, but I don’t believe her. I kneel in front of her, tilting my head to the side as I rest my hand on her knee. This is not the Cat I had in my arms twenty minutes ago. “What’s wrong?”

She sighs, laughing a little at herself. “My social battery is hanging on by a thread.”

I nod in understanding. Cat’s a party girl. She goes out more than I do. But sometimes I wonder if she goes out just to say she’s been out, not because she actually cares about the stupid things that happen at parties.

“Do you want some water?” I ask and she nods. Luckily the room has a black mini fridge disguised as a cupboard, so I open it and pull out a crisp bottle of water, placing it into her hands. She smiles as she opens the cap, taking a sip.

“Thank you,” she murmurs. My eyebrows pull together. She’s thanking me? What did I do that needs a thank you from her? Does she not know that I’d lay at her feet all day if she asked me to? “No one’s ever done that for me before.”

“No one’s ever gotten you some water when you needed it?” I ask curiously.

She shakes her head. “Not when I’m like this.”

I run my hand against her knee again. “You can talk to me, Cat, you know that, right? You can tell me anything. You don’t have to hide from me.”

“It’s nothing,” she says, swallowing.

“I doubt it.”

She sighs, a little frustrated. “I just get these… moods.”

“Moods?” I repeat.

She nods slowly. “Sad moods. Like, very sad, dark, depressive moods.”

I wish I had more to offer her than, “Oh.”

She lets out a sharp laugh. “Yeah, oh.”

I rest my hand on her knee reassuringly, steading her. “That’s okay,” I finally say.

“Is it? It gets annoying and tiring, even for me,” she whispers. I don’t say anything and just wait for her voice to gain momentum again. “I don’t know… I just get stuck in my head sometimes and I don’t know how to come out of it. It’s happened a lot since my mom died. I just kinda stay there? It’s happening a lot at parties recently which sucks because I want to have a good time. Then I realise I’ve been there for too long and I’ve probably had this boring, passive look on my face all night and I hate feeling like I’m not there when I am, but sometimes–”

I almost knock her completely out as I wrap my arms around her, holding her close to me. Her body doesn’t know how to respond at first as she stays in my arms before she slowly finds her hands around my back and nestles her head into the crook of my neck.

God, I just want to breathe her in. Stay here with her forever. Do anything she asked me. Listen to her talk for hours.

“Just breathe, Cat,” I murmur. She nods against my neck, and I watch her back rise and fall. “It’s okay to feel like that. And whoever has told you that it’s not, is fucking stupid.”

She holds on tighter to the words of encouragement and I let her mould into me. Nothing could have prepared me for what it feels like to finally have her in my arms. I’ve wished on nearly every star, prayed nearly every night for her to let me in like this and get me to see her. Now that I’ve got her, I’m afraid I won’t ever be able to let go.

Still, after we’ve been attached to each other for a few minutes, I try to ease up off her. She doesn’t budge. Instead, she pulls me closer.

“No,” she whispers. “Don’t let go yet.”

I can’t place how long Cat and I stayed there like that. She needed to be held as much as I needed it. I never realised or even thought about just how exhausting her life must be with a shitty dad and her almost biological need to be good at school.

After she collected herself, the party was still in full swing, and it only took another round of shots for Elle to completely lose it and was dancing against and possibly with Archer before Cat dragged her away from him. Elle is one of the sweetest people I know, but she doesn’t go out much. When she does, it only takes a few drinks for her to get drunk, which is why I always take them back home after parties.

Nora disappeared at some point through the night and apparently Wes is with her. I know he’ll take care of her, and I know I’ll take care of them. Which is why I know to step out of Elle’s way when we get to their dorm, and she rushes in to go to the bathroom.

“You should probably go check on her,” I say to Catherine, nodding at the closed door of their dorm behind her. She glances back to the door and nods slowly before turning back to me. Her mouth twitches in a smile as a silent thank you for dropping her off, but when she’s about to turn, I clasp my hand over her arm, pulling her back into me.

I tower over her, pressing her into the door as those chestnut brown doe eyes blink up at me, her lips parting. “Uh, hi?”

“I just wanted to say thank you for telling me what you did earlier,” I whisper.

“You had to push me against the door to do that?” she teases, tilting her head to the side, that beautiful smile popping out. I shrug. “It’s not a big deal. I don’t know why I made it into a big thing.”

I sigh, shaking my head. I know that people can get into those dark moods sometimes. It happens to people around me all the time. But vocalising that and acknowledging it is a big deal.

“Look,” I start, scratching my neck nervously. “I don’t know what happened to make you feel like you don’t deserve to be cared for when you get like that, but you deserve someone who’s going to want to be with you all the time. In the dark when you don’t have anything to do. In the silence when you don’t have the words to speak. In the sad moments where you can’t figure out what’s wrong. Not just when you’re happy.”

I watch carefully as her eyes light up a little, a golden swirl glimmering in the dull lighting of the hallway. “Thank you, Connie. That means a lot,” she replies, dropping her gaze to the ground. She nudges her foot into mine. “And you do too, you know.”

“What?”

Her eyes settle on mine again. “You deserve all that, too. Even though I’ve never seen you date anyone since high school. Why is that?”

She’s right. Since I started college, I’ve not gone out with anyone past the first date without thinking about the girl right in front of me. I tried to date people, but no one made my chest hurt like it does when I look at Catherine. No one made me laugh as hard as I did when I was with her. Nobody made me want to make them smile as much as I did when I saw her.

“No one has ever interested me,” I say, shrugging.

“That’s a lie,” she laughs. “Girls throw themselves at you like you’re the last tamale in the tray. You have literal cheerleaders for your team.”

“Like I said, none of them interest me,” I press again. She’s never going to get it, is she?

She rolls her eyes. “But there’s got to be someone, right? Someone you’ve secretly had your eye on. Someone who you just have to get a second glance at in the hallway. We all have those crushes.”

“Yeah, there might be someone,” I murmur. I try to gauge her reaction, see if she’ll finally get what I’ve been hinting at for years, but I don’t want to push her.

My eyes drop to her lips – perfect, wet, plush. She inhales sharply, tilting her head up. My body is doing what it wants before consulting my brain as I lift my hand to her chin, finally touching her the way I’ve wanted to for fucking years. I run my thumb against her bottom lip, inwardly groaning, knowing I can’t do more than this. My heart roars in my ears, thrashing against my chest as I take one step away from her. “Goodnight, Catherine.”

She just blinks at me, not knowing what to do or say. “Goodnight. And, uh, happy birthday.”

I desperately need an ice-cold shower and a pint of ice cream so I can wallow in the post-birthday blues. I always feel this weird ache in my chest on my birthday. Not just because of everything to do with my parents and Nora, but the thought of getting older fucking terrifies me.

That’s why I’m grateful that I have my friends and family who will always make me feel young because when I opened the door to my dorm, the last thing I was expecting to see was right in front of me in the living room.

Let’s be honest, it’s very on brand for Wes and Nora.

Wes is sitting on the couch, his feet outstretched in front of him while my sister sits crossed legged on the floor as she paints his nails in a bright pink and blue colour.

He’s grinning down at her like this is what he prefers women to be doing when they’re on their knees in front of him.

My sister is also having a blast, humming along to whatever musical soundtrack she’s playing on his phone.

What makes this better is the fact that they’re both wearing face masks, he’s wearing one of her headbands to pull back his hair and they’re both wearing Drayton Titan’s jerseys – Nora with my number fourteen on and Wes with his number twelve.

“I don’t even want to ask,” I mumble, locking the door behind me. When I turn back to them, they’re both giggling like children.

Nora grins up at me, that green goo on her face making me roll my eyes. “Happy birthday, little bro.”

He wiggles his toes in her face and she starts giggling. “Happy birthday to you too, sis.”

When I get into my room, I completely ditch the idea of a shower and ice cream and face plant onto my bed.