A little while later Joss and Ellie got up to make coffee and tea and I ignored Marco’s gaze, as I shot out of the sitting room after them into the kitchen. “What the hell are you all playing at?” I asked quietly. “What happened to Braden’s and Adam’s overprotectiveness? What happened to all of your overprotectiveness?”
Joss shrugged. “We like Marco. He seems like a solid guy.”
I didn’t even know what to say to that.
I looked at my sister. Ellie frowned at my expression of disbelief. “Hannah, we all just appreciate how much effort he’s putting in with you. We want you to be happy. It’s obvious to everyone you two are more than friends. I mean, we’ve hardly seen you for three weeks and when we do all you talk about is what you and Marco have been up to.”
“Friends, my ass,” Joss grunted, stirring sugar into someone’s coffee. “The sexual tension between you two is off the charts.” Her grin turned smug. “Reminds me of me and Mr. Carmichael.”
“No details.” Ellie held up a hand, her eyes pleading.
“I wasn’t going to,” Joss assured her, but we knew where her mind had wandered by the still smug smile curling her mouth and by the heat in her eyes.
I sighed, leaning back against my mother’s kitchen counter. “I thought I could at least rely on my family to help keep things platonic between me and Marco. But you’re practically spoon-feeding me to him.”
Ellie snorted, a long, drawn-out, sarcastic snort. “Be serious, Hannah. You spend nearly every waking moment with him. If anyone is helping him with you, sweetheart, it’s you.”
Gazing at him sleeping on my couch, I was overwhelmed with my feelings for him. Feelings deep in my gut, throbbing in my chest, and tingling at the ends of my fingertips. The past week, after Sunday lunch, I’d seen Marco once for dinner, but work had kept us busy and at the weekend he once again had a mysterious family commitment. I came to the not-very-hard-to-deduce conclusion that this family thing occurred on alternate weekends.
It was difficult not to push him on that subject.
But I didn’t. Mostly because of the aforementioned hypocrisy.
So… we hadn’t seen each other for a few days. The whole missing-him thing had gotten worse. That’s why when I opened my door that night and saw him there I was flooded by my emotions. Whatever the mysterious disappearance was about at the weekend, Marco proved to me that he missed me as much as I missed him, because there he was on my doorstep the night after. He couldn’t even wait a day to see me.
I told him I had essays to mark but that didn’t deter him. We ate dinner and then Marco camped out on my couch and let me get on with my work.
My resolve had weakened.
I could feel it.
He just had to push me and…
I dropped my gaze from his handsome, sleeping face and resolutely attempted to concentrate on my work. The next essay I picked up was Jarrod’s, which made ignoring Marco even harder. But I did it, because Jarrod deserved my focus.
His revised personal essay moved me. For all Jarrod’s seeming laziness with the other teachers and obvious issues with the father who had abandoned him, he had found strength that not many boys his age had by looking after his little brother, Harvey, and helping to raise him. For Jarrod, the aim of his essay was to show his growth in getting over childish fears and becoming a young adult. But the reader easily discerned from the multitude of situations he posed to us that Jarrod overcame his own fears in order to make Harvey feel safe, in order to help Harvey not be afraid.
It wasn’t easy for someone with Jarrod’s pride to put all that on paper, and he’d made me promise that only I and the examiner would read the essay.
It was a shame that I’d made that promise. I wanted to shove the paper in Rutherford’s face and demand that he see that the boy he thought so little of wasn’t a boy at all. He was a boy in age, but he’d been forced to become a man in spirit in order to give his brother the emotional support he himself had never had.
I sighed heavily, wishing there was more I could do to help Jarrod see his self-worth.
“What’s wrong?”
I lifted my head from my work at Marco’s rough voice and question. His eyes were open, his low-lidded gaze affecting me emotionally as well as physically.
That rush of tenderness I felt clearly translated in my returning gaze because Marco suddenly grew more alert.
Resolve weakened further. Just one push…
My heart was pounding hard, but I tried for nonchalance, tapping my pen casually against the papers in my hand. “I’ve got this kid in my fourth-year class. Jarrod.” I set the essay aside with the others. “He reminds me of you.”
“Yeah?” Marco slowly sat up, his elbows resting on his knees as he leaned toward me. “You must have a soft spot for him then.”
I laughed. “So sure of yourself these days.”