Page 29 of Choosing Her

saylor

“I probably didn’t pass,” Crossy said. I glanced away from the window, where I’d been watching the riding lessons below, to look at him.

He was sitting on the couch and doing an assignment for one of the classes we didn’t have together, and every once in a while, would suddenly say something like that.

He had a few lines he was cycling through— math isn’t that important anyway.

I could do summer school, it’s no biggie.

The guidance counsellor said I could drop the course without it going on my record.

All of them had the same general sentiment—he was sure he hadn’t passed the test and he was trying to come up with every reason why he didn’t care, even though we both knew he did.

I bit my lip and tapped my finger against the window sill, thinking of what I could do to help him.

With this being my first tutoring job, I had no idea how I was supposed to approach helping someone in this position.

I wished I had some list of talking points or reassurances I could give someone that didn’t sound dorky or totally unbelievable.

I tried to think of what I did whenever I got overwhelmed. I’d never struggled with math, but other subjects did give me trouble. Biology, for one. And history. What did I do when I got annoyed?

There was one obvious answer, but I wasn’t sure it was something I was willing to admit to Caleb Cross—because when I got stressed, I followed the motto of dance it out.

I’d out my music on shuffle and dance along to whatever songs came on, until I’d forgotten all about my stress.

It was a good strategy for me, but it was definitely not meant to be shared.

The only person I’d ever done it with was Poppy, who was such a ray of sunshine that I knew she would never judge me for anything. Crossy on the other hand…

He dropped his pencil on the table and threw his hands over his face, letting out a yell of frustration.

In an ideal world, I would never tell Crossy about my secret dance parties. But the world wasn’t ideal and he looked like he needed this more than I needed my dignity right now, so I pulled out my phone and opened Spotify.

“Get up,” I said. It took him a good twenty seconds to drag his hands down his face so he could look at me.

“What are you doing?”

I inwardly sighed, wishing a fond farewell to past me who swore I would never tell anyone about my secret routine.

It wasn’t that I thought dancing was all that embarrassing—it was that I was worried other people might.

And if anyone made fun of me for this, it would ruin it for me.

I hated that I let the opinions of others affect me so much, but they did and I wasn’t sure how to stop it.

“We’re gonna dance,” I said. I gestured for him to stand. “Come on, get to your feet.”

Crossy looked at me like I had two heads, but he stood up anyway, and I pulled him toward me, away from the coffee table.

“Why are we doing this?” He asked.

I shrugged. “Why not?”

I was unorganized with my music, so instead of making playlists on Spotify, I just shuffled all my liked songs.

Sometimes, the method worked well and made sure that I didn’t get into a rut with the songs I listened to.

But sometimes, it worked less well—like now, when I was looking for a fast song to dane to and instead got a slow classical song that I sometimes liked to study to.

“Oh,” I said, staring at it. My rule for the dance parties I did alone was that I couldn’t change the song, so I wouldn’t spend ages trying to pick one out. But it was different with someone else here, wasn’t it? I couldn’t make him dance to a classical song.

Crossy took the phone from me and put it down on the table. I frowned as I watched him.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“You can’t dance with a phone in your hand he said. And then he did the last thing I ever would have expected from him: he grabbed my hand and put his other hand on my waist, and started to dance.

It was that moment that moment I remembered what he’d told me at New Year’s Eve.

“You from a country club family?”

“How’d you know?”

“Takes one to know one.”

It wasn’t like every wealthy family in the world forced their kids into dance lessons, where they learned how waltz and foxtrot.

But as Crossy and I moved around the room so seamlessly, both of us falling into the natural rhythm that was built into our muscle memory, it made perfect sense to me that he came from a family just like mine.

“In another life,” I told him, “I think this is how we would have met.”

The upstairs viewing area of the stable was about the last place I ever would have expected to slow dance, but if I closed my eyes, it was easy to picture we were somewhere else.

At some lavish party thrown by my parents’ friends, with me in a long dress and him in a tux.

We would watch each other from across the way, both clearly interested but knowing there was a proper procedure of how a young lady and a young man were meant to meet—one so far from how it had actually happened.

He would wait a couple songs before he asked me to dance, not wanting to seem too eager, and I would pretend to hesitate before accepting.

Crossy let go of my waist so that he could spin me with one hand, and I giggled as he did, imagining the swish around my legs of a dress I wasn’t wearing. When I spun back to face him, he caught my waist and pulled me into him, our chests pressing together.

“Where would this dance have taken place?” He whispered in my ear.

“Some event,” I murmured. My eyes fluttered shut again and I breathed in deeply, trying to place myself back in the fantasy. I grinned to myself as I imagined it. “Maybe our parents would introduce us so you could be my escort to the debutante ball.”

I could feel the chuckle in his chest. “You were a debutante.”

“No, but I probably would have been if I wasn’t in boarding school, though. You?”

“I hope you’re asking if I was an escort and not that you thought I’d be walking down a staircase in a white gown.”

I giggled. “I don’t know. I think you could look really good in a white gown. Really show off your broad shoulders.”

He laughed. “No. No debutante balls for me. I think Peyton and Emerson are considering it, though.”

“I hope I can meet your sisters one day,” I sighed. Thus far, I’d only met Aspen, but I was curious about the rest of them. Did they look as much like him as Aspen did or not at all? What were they like? I already knew he got along with them better than I did Naomi, but how much? Were they friends?

“Can I tell you something, Saylor?” he whispered.

“Anything,” I breathed back.

He was silent for a long time, so long that I thought he forgot what he was gonna say. But then he whispered, “I never loved Naomi.”

If he didn’t keep us moving, I think I would have frozen from shock. As it was, I seemed to be moving on autopilot, following his lead the way that I was taught in every dance class, but my mind a million miles away.

“What…” I breathed out. I thought I was trying to ask a question but I lost it after one word.

His mouth was next to my ear now, his breath tickling me. “I lied when I told you I loved her.”

Just like that, we weren’t standing in some stable room anymore.

We were standing beside my pool in my backyard, with Crossy’s hard expression in front of me—more serious than I’d ever seen.

He’d always been such a goofy, fun-loving guy around me, but Naomi seemed to bring out a different part of him, from what I saw. I hated it.

And I had never felt more justified in shoving someone into a pool.

“Then why’d you say it?” I asked now. My hand slid across his back, running along his hard muscles until they came to a clasp behind his neck. We weren’t even dancing anymore. We were just swaying like two middle schoolers at a school dance.

“Because…” He took a deep shuddering breath that I swore I could feel through my whole body. I waited for his next words, the ones I’d wanted to hear all this time but had never allowed myself to hope for. “Because I didn’t want to admit that I was still in love with you.”

I wasn’t supposed to care about Caleb Cross anymore.

He should have been ancient history in my mind by now, but as I looked up at his deep, caring eyes now, I knew that as much as I wanted to hate him, that spark of what could have been had remained alive and well in my heart.

I wanted him, more than I’d ever wanted anyone else.

He was my first and only kiss. My first and only love. If I didn’t have him, I wanted nobody.

“Crossy—”

“Don’t. Don’t say anything. Don’t tell me you don’t love me.

Don’t tell me you don’t want me to love you.

I just needed you to know the truth.” He put two fingers under my chin, tilting it up and forcing me to hold his gaze.

His touch was soft but it still sent shivers down my spine.

How could he still have so much control over me?

“I loved you, Saylor. Not her.” He leaned in, his mouth mere millimetres from mine. “It was always you.”