Under the Same Stars(87)
“Because I’m only twenty, Mads.” He sighed. “I’m a dickhead who doesn’t know anything.”
“No,” I said. “That’s not a good enough answer.”
“What would make it better?”
“The truth. Tell me the truth.”
Silence. Silence for one, two, three, four, five minutes. His voice actually made my heart leap a little in surprise when he spoke. “I suspected something was going to happen between you and Connor, and I was jealous—really jealous—because I could tell how badly you wanted it to happen. Shelly begged to get back together in Stone Harbor, so I said yes.”
I folded my arms across my chest. “You couldn’t have turned her down?”
Marco shook his head, at a loss for words. He raised his hands in surrender. “I was…” He trailed off in thought. “I was scared of how hard I was falling for you, Mads. I have always been drawn to you—ever since high school—but it felt like treading water in the ocean this year.” He took a deep breath. “And just when I found out you felt something too, you and Connor decided to give things a shot—which I feel like you guys needed to do. Shelly was there, and I knew where I stood with her.” He grimaced. “What I did was terrible. Playing cat and mouse with you was wrong, and I’m sorry. You overwhelm me. You overwhelm me in the most amazing way, but I wasn’t ready to embrace that—it would’ve been dangerous to embrace that, because I was keeping an eye on you for Katie.”
“Why?” I said over my pounding pulse. “Why did you agree to spy?”
Marco mimed zipping his lips.
“It’s my third question,” I said. “Answer, please.”
“Because she knew you weren’t comfortable with Ready-Set-Date. She knew you were game, and that it would be good for you in a sense, but she knew you weren’t fully comfortable.”
She is so supportive of her friends and everything important in their lives, I remembered Meredith saying. She keeps us safe and makes us better.
“She called me that night you were at Princeton,” Marco said gently. “It wasn’t a coincidence that we ran into each other at Wawa. After you told Austin you were all alone, she called me and told me to get my ass over there to make sure you were okay. She didn’t want anything or anyone to hurt you.”
My heart ached. Oh, Katie—freaking Katie. “Holy crap,” I murmured. “She cares. She did it because she cares about me.”
“Yeah.” Marco nodded. “She cares a hell of a lot, Mads.”
We slipped into silence again. I noticed that during this intimate interrogation, Marco had migrated across the brick patio, and was now kneeling by the couch. “May I ask one more question?”
“No,” Marco replied. “You said only three questions, and you’ve asked three questions.”
“Marco…”
Marco moved to rest his elbows on the edge of the couch cushion. “Sorry, but you made the rules.”
“Which means I can amend them!” I said. “One bonus question, okay?”
He agreed.
“Do you miss me?” I asked.
“Every second,” he answered, then asked his own question. “Do you forgive me?”
I put a finger to my mouth, to dramatically contemplate.
Did I forgive him?
Marco leaned in close, nose brushing mine. Golden cords tightened around my heart. “I love you, Mads,” he whispered. “For whatever it’s worth.”
“It’s worth quite a lot,” I whispered back. “Because I love you too, Marco.”
Then, heart hammering, I pressed my lips to his.
Marco’s response was instant, both hands coming up to cup my face before he teasingly tugged my braid. Some type of spellbinding magic shot through my veins when he gently tilted my head to deepen our kiss. My body hummed, and he laughed after I moved to tangle my fingers in his soft sweater and pulled him closer. The sound reverberated against my chest.
This is it, I thought, heart about to burst. This is a kiss.
One that left me wonderstruck.
Marco left me wonderstruck.
Twenty-Five
I was on crutches when I returned to school, so every day, one of my field hockey teammates was assigned to help me to class. “Out of the way!” my co-captain shamelessly shouted in the congested hallways. “Mads is on the move!”
It would’ve been nice if the building’s elevator wasn’t in an entirely different wing, and it was harder than I thought it’d be watching my games from the sidelines. “Stop bouncing your knee,” Da instructed. My right knee, which was part of my right leg, which was attached to my right ankle—my bad ankle. “Keep still.”
“I want to be out there,” I whispered.
“You will be out there,” he whispered back, knowing we were actually talking about Penn next year. He leaned over to kiss the top of my head. “It’s just going to take time, patience, and physical therapy.”
My orthopedic surgeon inspected my ankle two weeks post-op. “Very nice,” Dr. Lambert said, impressed enough to promote me from my splint to a boot. I still wasn’t allowed to put any weight on my ankle, so Da ordered a scooter off Amazon. It looked like a tricycle, complete with handlebars and brakes, but instead of me sitting on the padded seat, my knee rested on it.