Page 3 of Holding On To Good

Or retreat.

Both smacked of weakness and poked her pride, but only one left her the option of returning to fight another day. And that’s what she needed. A reprieve. Just a few minutes to gather her thoughts and decide where to go from here.

Setting her geometry book aside, she untucked her legs, scooted to the edge of the bed, and stood.

And pretended not to notice how Urban stepped back, the move automatic after all this time.

It should be. It was the same song, same dance they’d been doing for the past year.

Every time one of them got too close, the other retreated.

Every time except Valentine’s Day when Urban hadn’t kept distance between them.

Heart racing at the memory, at how close they’d come to irrevocably changing everything between them forever, she ducked her head and mumbled about having to use the bathroom.

Then she fled.

No other way to describe it, the way she scurried out of his room, her hair hiding her face, her feet almost tripping over themselves.

In the hall she forced her steps to slow. Pressing against the opposite wall, she tiptoed past the closed door of Mr. and Mrs. Jennings’ bedroom, where Verity, Urban’s nineteen-month-old sister, was napping.

Woe came to those who woke Verity from a nap.

Big, major, endless woe in the form of Marybeth Jennings’s wrath.

Not that Willow blamed Urban’s mom. Even when she was well rested, Verity took the whole rotten toddler thing to a whole new level with copious amounts of tiny foot stomping, abundant whining and shouting no at any and all requests, questions and commands.

When she was tired? She was a little monster.

A really cute little monster, but a monster nonetheless.

It was a testament to the rest of the Jennings’ respect for—and, let’s be honest, fear of—Marybeth that the only sounds Willow heard as she ducked into the bathroom at the end of the hall were the quiet murmur of voices floating up from downstairs and the pitter patter of rain on the roof.

This too, shall pass.

You couldn’t keep the Jennings house this quiet, this still for long. There were too many people—Urban and his parents and his four younger brothers, ages nine to fourteen, with their burgeoning testosterone, overabundance of restless energy and cocky teen and preteen male attitudes.

The minute Verity woke up, the house would explode with laughter and shouts and running feet and wrestling matches. So many, many wrestling matches.

The minute Verity woke up, the boys would once again have free rein over the entire house and be allowed back upstairs.

Which meant Willow and Urban had approximately twenty minutes left of peace before his brothers invaded his bedroom like a small but mighty army, on a scouting mission to catch them in a compromising position.

They were sure Urban and Willow’s Just Friends thing was nothing more than a clever, eight-year-long ruse that gave them the golden opportunity to engage in stealthy sex acts right under their parents’ noses.

Willow’s parents thought so, too. When they were at her house, they had to be always in view of one of her parents. But Mr. and Mrs. Jennings had no problem letting them study or watch TV in Urban’s room as long as they kept the door open.

That didn’t mean they trusted them. It just meant they had more resources available for spying on them—namely nine-year-old Elijah and eleven-year-old Silas. But with the boys banned from the second floor during Verity’s nap time, and therefore unable to complete their given mission of making sure no sexy times were happening, Urban’s parents had taken turns checking in on them several times throughout the past hour and a half.

Adults. They thought teenagers were all rampaging hormones, baser instincts and zero self-control.

Okay, so they weren’t completely wrong. After all, two minutes ago, Willow had wanted to climb Urban like a tree, bite his bicep, then lick her way into his mouth.

Leaning back against the closed door, she heard Urban’s footsteps as he passed the bathroom and headed down the stairs. She counted silently to ten, giving him plenty of time to descend the stairs before slowly opening the door just far enough to make sure the hallway was empty.

She needed time and she needed space, and since she had neither, she’d have to make do with what she did have.

And she refused to make a possibly life-changing decision cowering behind a locked bathroom door.

---