Page 221 of Darling Venom
“I have a feeling I already know.”
Of course, she did.
She was the only one who understood me.
Charlie slipped under my shoulder and flung my arm across her back, helping me up. I tried keeping as much weight off her as I could, which was none. We struggled with the twenty feet to the door.
The icy wind hit me like a tackle. I staggered back into Charlie, sending us both against the ribbed wall. I bracketed my hands on either side of her head, barely managing to hold myself. My body pinned hers.
Some asshole whistled. “Give us a show, baby!”
I stuck my middle finger up and waved it in his direction, gaze still fixed on her.
A different asshole shouted back, “Other side, dipshit!”
The rest of their friends dissolved into laughter, moving on from us. Charlie held her breath in, head tilted back, doing her damnedest not to lose the staring contest we found ourselves in.
She licked her lips. “It’s hard to breathe.”
I held my position for another second before I backed up. Didn’t go how I’d intended. I swayed. Might’ve started to fall.
Okay, definitely falling.
Charlie reached out before I stumbled to the pavement, steadying me. If this was how Terry felt ninety percent of the time, I’d never be able to understand why he did it.
“Come on, Tate.”
She nudged my forehead off her, holding me up as much as she could.
“My car.” I paused and brought her to a halt with me. “What about my car?”
She patted down her pockets, stopping when her hand connected with a square lump. “I have my driver’s license in my wallet.”
“What car-less New Yorker has a license?”
“It’s a long story.” The hazy double vision retreated just enough for me to catch her brows colliding. “Is that really important right now?”
“Yes.” I took a breather at the crosswalk, wrapping my arms around the base of a traffic light so she didn’t have to bear my weight. “Everything about you is important.”
Charlie turned away for a moment, patting her cheeks with the back of her hands before sighing. “I thought I’d need it for college. Princeton as the dream, and Yale as the safety school. I ended up at a cheap school in Kentucky.”
“That was three sentences,” I pointed out. “You said long. I was expecting a little speech.”
“When people say something is a long story, it means they don’t want to talk about it.”
“That makes no sense. Just say what you want to say. Then again, Yale as a safety and Princeton as a reach doesn’t make sense. Yale’s the better school.”
“Are we really doing this right now?”
“Yes.”
“Fine.” She stabbed the crosswalk button, even though there was an eighty percent chance it was non-functional. Probably pictured me as she did it, too. “Princeton’s acceptance rate is lower. Not that I should entertain this conversation with a man who betrayed his undergrad for its rival school.”
“I guess betrayal comes easy for me.”
We both knew what I meant.
Her fingers pried me off the pole. “Where’d you park your car?”
