Love You More

Chapter 13: Callie

Without thinking, I press my palm to his chest to get him to stop talking so fast, and I want to tell him I am doing this because it's making me shake with anxiety, and not because I don't appreciate how warm he's been to me. He truly doesn't need to be, and it half confuses me, half scares me, if only because we know each other so little.

My blood is already reverberating in my ears, I can't even begin to process what happened to me. We hear about sexual assaults on campus all the time. In school, we learned that we're never supposed to be without a group at a party and to never leave a drink unattended. I mean my mom even bought me a rape whistle...but I did nothing wrong, and this person just crashed his lips against me and touched my body without even knowing anything about me.

I shudder and realize Beckett's arms are around me, which is sending alarm bells to my brain for a multitude of reasons. For one, I was just pressing my hand against his chest, so how all of me got pulled to his chest is beyond me. Also, I realize that he's both right and wrong. He's right because I shouldn't want anything with boy parts near me, but he's wrong because his touch has stopped me from shaking.

I know people say this cliché line all the time, but I feel like I've known him for my entire life. Beckett brings a sense of calm to me that I've never felt in my entire life. Maybe it's the copious amounts of liquor, but I really don't think so. He makes me forget everything - my name, my morals, my boyfriend.

"Why did you help me?" I blurt out into his chest, unable to make eye contact. "I mean, you don't even know me, is there some sort of clause in the contract between our dads that says you have to keep me in one piece while I'm at college? Because that is the only thing that even remotely makes sense to me."

My breath catches in my throat, and right as he goes to speak, the door swings open.