Chapter 57 Don't Stop Me
POV: Carly
She saw him the moment she ran onto the floor.
Hard to miss. All black in a gymnasium full of school colors. Leaning against the wall near the exit with his arms crossed and that expression that meant he was present but barely. His friends around him doing the actual attending while he did the minimum version of it.
He had come.
She knew why he had come and the knowing of it sat warm in her chest even through everything else that was sitting there.
She kept her face forward and her pom poms moving and did her job.
The routine went well. Better than the last practice had suggested it would. Sierra hit her split. Abigail stayed on count. The crowd responded at all the right moments and Carly moved through it clean and sharp and felt the familiar pride of something going right after a week of everything going wrong.
She did not look at the wall.
She looked at the wall exactly twice.
Both times he was already looking at her.
The second time his friends were laughing at something and someone had said something to him and he had smiled briefly and then retreated back to wherever he actually was which was clearly not this gymnasium.
Aurora was beside him the second time.
Carly looked at the scoreboard.
The routine ended. The crowd erupted. She held the final position and smiled wide and felt Niko's eyes on her from across the room even without looking and told herself to breathe.
She was scanning the bleachers for Whitney when she caught the movement by the exit door.
Niko pushed through it.
She was already moving before she fully decided to.
She gestured to Whitney that she would be back and crossed the floor and pushed through the same door and stepped into the quiet corridor.
Empty in both directions.
Her heart rate was doing something unreasonable.
"I didn't think you'd come after me." His voice came from behind her.
She turned.
He was leaning against the lockers a few feet away with the unlit cigarette between his fingers and that small smirk that was trying very hard to be casual and not quite landing there.
"I didn't think pep rallies were your scene." She said.
"They're not." He said.
"Then why." She said.
He looked at her steadily. "You really have to ask."
She felt it in her chest.
"Reba." He said after a moment. "She's been asking me to come to one for months. Two birds."
She almost smiled. "I helped her with the routine."
"I know." He said. "She told me approximately eleven times."
She looked at him properly.
He looked back.
He was still dressed in all black and his curls were slightly pushed back and the unlit cigarette was doing the thing where it just lived between his fingers without ever getting lit and she thought about asking him about that sometime. Why he carried them without lighting them. Whether it was habit or comfort or something else entirely.
She had a lot of things she still wanted to ask him.
She hoped she still got to.
"I got your text." She said.
"I got yours." He said.
They looked at each other.
He pushed off the lockers slowly and walked toward her and she stood completely still and let him come.
He stopped when they were close.
"I need to sleep on all of this." He said quietly. Not the version of this he had said in anger in the quad. The real version. "I understand you have a lot to figure out. I know being with me makes everything harder. I know that."
"Niko." She said.
He kept going. "But I still had hope. Even when I shouldn't have. And yesterday felt like the end of it." He looked at her face carefully. "So I need to know. Once and for all. Tell me you feel nothing. Tell me it was just a moment and you're over it and you want to move on."
She felt the lockers behind her without moving toward them.
"If you can say that." He said. "I'll leave you alone. I promise."
She looked at him.
At the blue eyes and the scruff and the curls and the necklaces and the expression underneath all the performance that she had learned to read over the past several weeks. The one that was not smug or controlled or deliberately unreadable.
The one that was just him.
She shook her head slowly. "You know I can't say that."
Something shifted in his face.
His hands came up on either side of her head against the lockers, not touching her, just there, and the cold of the metal at her back and the warmth of him in front of her and the quiet corridor and all of it together felt like every other moment they had been in that had been building toward something.
His face dropped toward hers.
"If you don't stop me." He said against her skin. "I'm going to kiss you."
She looked up at him.
She thought about the festival. The dance floor. The almost. The way she had pulled back and walked to the bus stop and said me too in the dark on the way home.
She was done pulling back.
She pushed up on her toes and kissed him first.
He went still for half a second.
Then his hands came down from the lockers and his arms went around her and he kissed her back with everything and she felt it from the top of her head to the floor and thought yes and finally and about time and nothing else because there was no room for anything else.
She pulled him closer.
He walked her back gently until the lockers were behind her and his hands found her face and the kiss deepened and she moaned softly into it and felt him respond and pulled him closer still.
His lips moved to her jaw. Her neck. She tilted her head and her fingers went into his curls and she felt his hands at her waist and everything was warm and real and completely certain.
"I feel something for you Niko." She said breathlessly when his lips found hers again. "Everything we did was real. I'm not over it. I don't want to move on." She looked up at him. "I want more with you."
He looked at her for one second.
Then he kissed her again and she kissed him back and the gym noise was muffled behind the doors and the corridor was empty and quiet and it was just the two of them against the lockers in the afternoon light and it was the most right anything had felt in as long as she could remember.
She did not hear the footsteps.
"Carly?"
The voice cut through everything like a blade.
She pulled back.
Turned her head.
Whitney was standing in the corridor ten feet away with her hands on her hips and her face doing something Carly had never seen it do before.
Her eyes moved between Carly and Niko. Took in the position. The disheveled ponytail. His hands still at her waist.
"What is going on." Whitney said. "Why are you with him."
Carly stepped slightly away from Niko.
Her mouth was dry.
"Whit." She said. "Just let me explain."