Love and Learn (Voretti Family Book 2) (3 page)

And they definitely skip the worst part. That you write back to him every single time. Because there’s this little part of you that still believes in the fairytale. That is certain, despite all logic, that one day your prince will wake up, remember that dance back in high school, and want to pick up where you left off.

“Annabelle? You okay?”

“I’m fine.” Her voice was thin and wavering and several octaves higher than its normal pitch.

Somehow, after all this time, Ty was
here
.

“Missed you, sweetheart.” He smiled, and it was like the sun had finally come out after seven years of winter—it was too stinking bright and she wasn’t prepared.

He took blatant advantage of her confusion, pulling her out of her seat.
 

His strong arms maneuvered her gawky limbs to the perfect angle, so that they fit together as easily as the prince and princess dancing their way to happily-ever-after on the last page of a fairytale.

Panic blazed through her skull, incinerating those foolish daydreams. She couldn’t do this. Not again.
 

She shoved Ty back. “What are you doing here?”

T
Y
HAD
PICTURED
this reunion roughly two hundred and thirty-nine times in the past two months. He’d imagined it while he was boxing all his possessions for the cross-country move. He’d gone through it on the long drive in the U-Haul. And he’d definitely thought about it when he’d emailed Annabelle his weekly update, conveniently forgetting to mention his location so he wouldn’t ruin the surprise.
 

He’d known she wasn’t going to jump into his arms and promise to love him forever. Not after the jackass way he’d taken off back in high school. But never once in his imagination had she asked why he’d come to see her.
 

Good thing the SEAL teams had taught him to think on his feet. “I enrolled at SDU starting with this summer’s session. Figured I might as well use that GI Bill. I would’ve told you, but I wanted it to be a surprise. Only, you know—the happy kind.”

“I…you…” Those delicate blue eyes widened. “Wait a minute. You’re in this class?”

“In your section, too.”

“You’re
in my section
?”

“Is that weird? I can switch.”

“No. That’s okay.” She crossed her arms over her chest.

Was she cold? He started to take off his jacket to give to her, except—damn the always-perfect San Diego weather—he wasn’t wearing one.
 

He fought the urge to wrap her in his arms again. To demand to know why she was frowning so he could kill the asshole responsible.

The asshole is you, asshole.

No, that didn’t make sense. They’d written or emailed every week for the past seven years. They were friends.

Yeah. As long as you’re a minimum of two-thousand miles away.

He shoved the voice deep into his subconscious.
 

He was finally back with Annabelle, where he belonged. She’d been his lifeline through his injury even though she’d been thousands of miles away. Now she was right in front of him, so close he could touch her. Except, that cold glare was telling him in no uncertain terms to keep his hands to himself.
 

He should’ve known she didn’t like surprises. Why hadn’t he known that? “Sorry. I shouldn’t have sprung this on you all at once. I didn’t want to say anything until I knew it was going to work out, and then—”

“No.” She took a deep breath, and now she looked more like he’d imagined. “I’m sorry. I’m always nervous on the first day of class. And I wasn’t expecting to see you.”
 

“No reason to be nervous. You’ll do great.”

“I don’t know. I’m not really up on the material. Diamon didn’t give me the syllabus until last week.” Her forehead was all wrinkled, like it used to get back in Chem lab, when she was trying to measure exactly five milliliters of hydrochloric acid. She’d never liked his suggestion that they guestimate.
 

He grinned. “You’re over-thinking this. You’ll be lucky if anyone has opened the textbook yet.”

“Just because you faked your way through every class doesn’t mean everyone else does too.” Her exasperated expression was so comfortingly familiar that he wanted to kiss every inch of those pursed lips.

She didn’t think he was broken. And, when she looked at him like that, he wasn’t. He was the same Tyler MacKinnon who’d convinced the principal to set a staff in-service day for his birthday because he wanted to go to the beach. “You’ll be fine, sweetheart. If you could ace lab with me dragging you down, you can help a few hung-over undergrads with their homework.”

“It’s just this class. I’ve been stressing about it for the last month.”

He hadn’t gotten a hint of that in her emails. She’d described every detail of Professor Massey’s chicken walk when he tramped out of the monthly Evolutionary Biology Department seminar because the guest speaker’s research contradicted his own findings. She’d given him a play-by-play of her parents’ blowup when her little sister Liv had shown up for family dinner drunk. But she hadn’t even mentioned she was TAing Evolution of Human Sexuality. He’d gotten that bit of intelligence from the online course catalog.

At the time, he hadn’t thought much of it, but now it seemed like a huge, blinking neon sign he’d walked right past. “So what’s the deal with this class?”

“No deal. It’s…” She pulled out her cell phone, glanced at the screen, and cut herself off.
 
“I don’t want to go into it now.
 
Class is about to start.”

“Lunch after? We can catch up.”

She waited a beat to respond, turning away from him to face the front. “I can’t. I have my first section tonight, and I need to prepare.”

“Come on—I know you. You had that textbook highlighted from cover to cover weeks ago.”

Though she wasn’t looking at him, he could see the tension straining her shoulders. What the ever loving fuck was going on?
 

“Maybe you don’t know me as well as you think you do.”

The perfect joking follow-up that would diffuse this tension he couldn’t explain was on the tip of his tongue, but he couldn’t get it out. Because he
didn’t
know her. That was obvious now. He had no idea why she was sweating this class. She hadn’t even wanted him to know she was teaching it. She might have written to him every week, but she hadn’t given him more than a superficial glimpse into her life.
 

And he hadn’t even noticed.

Well, now that he was here, that was going to change. He was in her life now, and he was planning on staying.

“I’ll see you tonight,” he said. “We can talk more then.”

“Tonight?”

“I’m in your section, remember?”

“Oh. Of course.”

His leg was starting to bother him, so he sat next to her. The hinges in the old chair creaked in protest, but Annabelle didn’t even glance his way. Instead, she rummaged through her bag, pulling out more notebooks, folders, and highlighters than should be able to fit into the slim leather satchel. When she’d completely emptied the bag and had yet to turn his way, he finally got it.

She was trying not to look at him.

His muscles twitched with the urge to bridge the distance, but he finally got what the universe was telling him. Annabelle needed some time and space to get used to the idea that he was back in her life.

Okay—he could back off for now. He’d give her the five hours until section to adjust. Then he was going in.

No way was he walking away. Not when being with Annabelle felt so right.

*

“Where have you been? I’ve been calling for hours.”

Ty grinned at the sound of his sister’s frantic voice coming over the line. Whether Keri was calling to see if he wanted to catch a movie or to make sure he’d survived a terrorist bombing, it was always an emergency. “I was in class. You want me to get busted for using my cell phone on my very first day?”

“I forgot today was your first day. How did it go? Wait—don’t tell me yet. First, we have a bit of a…situation to deal with.”

Ty leaned back against the stucco wall next to the San Diego University sign, enjoying the sun. “Trap it under a glass and then move it outside. Most spiders can’t hurt you.”

“For goodness sake, Ty, I’m not talking about a spider. It’s Sean.”

The gentle light transformed into the harsh glare of the desert sun. Ty’s heart slammed into his ribcage. He was surrounded by smoke and dust and deafening noise. Blood and burnt flesh.
 

He had to find Sean. He had to—

The I-spent-all-night-partying rasp of a passing student startled him out of his waking nightmare.

“…so I told her to buy her own drink,” the guy was saying to his buddy. “If she’s not down to fuck, I’m not interested.”

Ty focused on the fraternity insignia on Asshole One’s shirt. He was in San Diego, not the Middle East. Sean was here too. Whatever his drama-queen sister was freaking out about, it wasn’t an IED blast or a firefight.

“Ty? Are you still there?”

He took a deep breath, and his chest finally loosened up enough that he could reply. “What about Sean?”

“Did you see his leg? Contusions.
Severe
lacerations. And, of course, there’s always the possibility of an infection.”

It took Ty a second to translate Keri’s medical-school terminology into English. “So, a few scrapes and bruises?”

“Did you know he went kiteboarding?”

“Lots of people kiteboard.”

“Do they also cave dive and heli ski?”

“He’s a SEAL, Ker Bear. He likes the adrenaline rush.”

“An adrenaline rush is one thing. This seems more like a death wish.”

“He had one little accident. Don’t make it into more than it is.”

“Did something happen out there? In Iraq? Ever since he got back, he’s been different.”

She asked the question so casually, like he could point to the single incident that had messed with Sean’s head, and then she could fix it. But there hadn’t been one thing, there had been a thousand. The friends who had died. The missions that had gone wrong. The burden of carrying weapons that could harm so many. “He seems normal to me.”

“Says the emotionally stunted caveman who calls his broken engagement ‘no big deal.’ Will you at least talk to him?”

“And say what? ‘Hey, buddy—do you have some deep psychological wound that’s making you consider suicide by extreme sport?’ ”
 

“That’s not exactly how I would put it, but—”

“You know what I think? You’re out of med school for the summer, and you’re bored.”

“So, what?” Keri’s voice hit a dangerously high note. “I’m making this up?”

“No. I just meant you might be…you know. Misinterpreting certain things.”

“He’s your
best friend
, Ty. Are you really going to sit there and watch him self destruct?”

“I’ll talk to him. Okay?”
 

“
Thank
you.”

He rushed on, before Keri noticed that he hadn’t promised exactly what he’d talk to Sean
about
. “But right now, I’ve gotta get to section. I don’t want to be late.”

“You don’t want to be
late
? Who are you, and what have you done with my brother?”

“I’m not seventeen anymore. I wouldn’t have gone back to school if I didn’t want to learn. Plus, there’s this woman…”

“What’s her name? How old is she? It’d be kind of weird if you were dating someone younger than me, but I’d adjust. As long as you’re happy.”

He chuckled.
Problem solved
. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I haven’t even asked her out.”

“But you’re going to, right?”

“Oh yeah. Getting some alone time with her is my number one priority.”

*

In contrast to the 300-seat hall that housed the Evolution of Human Sexuality lectures, the small classroom where Annabelle’s first section would be held had only twenty-five desks. Which should have been reassuring.
 

But she was still recovering from a phone call with her mother, who’d supposedly called about family brunch on Saturday, but really because her maternal radar had alerted her that Annabelle was thinking inappropriate thoughts. Things like the satisfying crack her fist would make when it connected with Ty’s perfect jaw. Or the soft brush of his hair against her fingers as she pulled his head down for a kiss.

And now she was thinking them again.

She took a scouring pad and bleach to her subconscious. She was more mature than this. She’d gotten over Ty years ago—moved him firmly into the friend zone.

But when she saw him sitting in the middle desk in the front row, the only student present, since there were still twenty minutes until class started, her heart rate shot up.

“Hey, sweetheart.” Just the smooth, easy sound of Ty’s voice, and everything about him went from fuzzy background scenery to high-definition clarity. The dark stubble forming along his jaw. His throat muscles working as he swallowed. Those vivid green eyes tracking her as she crossed the room.
 

He was here. He’d come early to see her because he missed her. Because he wanted her to know that he’d never stopped thinking about her. That he’d only left her because—

No
.
 

She was not going to cast Ty in the role of fairytale prince because he got to class a few minutes early. She would treat him like the platonic friend he was.

She set her satchel on the metal teacher’s desk. “I never thought I’d see the day when you were the first one in class.”
 

“Maybe I’m turning over a new leaf.” His smile took its time, spreading over his face by slow degrees. “Or maybe I never had an incentive as good as I do now.”
 

She felt that smile like a caress. Her skin went ultra-sensitive. She took an involuntary step toward him.

No, darn it!
He had no right to act like it had been seven hours since their fairy-tale prom date instead of seven years. “Don’t you dare flirt with me!”

“I didn’t… I only meant…” His mouth stayed open, but no more words came out.