Vulnerable by Allyson Young Read Free Book Online Page B

he couldn’t send her flowers there. He hadn’t sent a woman flowers since Mother’s Day, and his mom had taken him to task for wasting his money instead of calling.
    He had it bad, whatever it was, and this smiling off into the distance and remembering how she had tasted and how her eyes looked when she came, the sounds she made…Ross got a grip. He had to finish the quote he’d been working on, and then he would pick Elise up as arranged. They would go out to dinner and continue learning about one another outside of the bedroom. Elise had secrets, although she only alluded to them and avoided providing any information that would give him insight. Ross wanted to know what they were and if they would interfere with or affect their relationship. That word again. Well, he would help her and see where the relationship went. That settled, he focused and got it done.
     
    * * * *
     
    Elise pulled her classroom door shut and tested the lock. It had been the most bizarre day. For the first time ever, she had been distracted from her teaching, and a couple of the students had remarked on it, although thinking she was ill. She knew that her pale cheeks and the dark shadows under her eyes that makeup hadn’t concealed had lent credence to that belief, and while she hadn’t agreed with their assumption, hadn’t denied it either. The hours had dragged, and she had hidden several yawns and then forgotten to assign a reading project. She wasn’t certain how she had made it through the day and knew she had to pull herself together and do her job. She owed her students the best she could offer, because she knew how hard it was to get a high school diploma many years after adolescence, especially when the education was provided in such a concentrated format. She herself had taken her final year as a young adult before going on to get a teaching certificate.
    After Ross had driven her home, she’d puttered around her apartment, making ready for her classes the following day, choosing her clothes and packing her briefcase, putting together a lunch, when her mom called. Elise talked with her mother at least once a week, and was glad she had been home for the call, because she hadn’t given a thought to her family since Friday night, and her mom in particular was her anchor. She told her mom a little about Ross, omitting where they had met, but her mother picked up on something and provided a little lecture out of love and concern that succeeded in challenging everything Elise had come to believe about herself of late. It challenged everything she believed since she had met Ross. In the discerning focus of her mother’s worry, the impetuous weekend took on a whole new light. It totally brought back the past, and the unspoken questioning of her intelligence changed everything in her new perspective. History was repeating itself, and she hadn’t learned a damned thing. Her mother intimated it, and Elise believed it, falling back into the horrid memories of that time, asking herself how she could have been so stupid again.
    She laid awake much of the night, trying to hold onto the memory of Ross’s last fierce kiss that still felt branded on her mouth, but her mom’s advice and her past colored her thoughts and overtook her. She tentatively touched her lips now, and tried to focus. She had taken a warm bath and warmed up some milk, but neither had helped her sleep. The marks of passion Ross had left on her body showed up even clearer after the bath, silently mocking her attempts to put things into perspective.
    Elise had even tried making a physical list of pros and cons about their relationship. Fourteen years was a long time between this kind of thing, and while she had done her own kind of healing, she couldn’t help but accept that this was going in the wrong direction, just as her mother implied. Surely nothing this intense could be a good thing, just as her first marriage hadn’t been. She had married Terry at age seventeen, a