His Naughty Lessons

** Eli **

Harper was supposed to be the inexperienced one. Or so she claimed. But as Eli followed her gaze to their interlaced fingers, he had a feeling that she understood their current situation way better than him ... and certainly knew how to handle it way better than him.

"I want you to know two things." She brushed her thumb softly against his. "First, I never judged you for what you told me on Saturday, and I never will. We made it a clear rule at the beginning that our weekend meetings didn’t count as dating, so having dinner with Vanessa doesn’t make you the same as your father. In fact, if there’s anyone you feel like you might have ’cheated on’, it should probably be her instead of me, since she appears to be under the impression that you were officially seeing each other."

Eli flinched so hard at her words that his fingers twitched.

"Whatever it is between you two, I trust you to figure it out, and you don’t owe me any explanations. At least not at this point." She squeezed his hand. "Which leads to the second and more important point I need to make — I want to drop those rules we set at the beginning. All of them. I want to try something different ... something new."

... She was serious about this, then. Did she realize the gravity of what she was saying?

And did this mean that she ... actually shared the same kind of feelings for him as he had for her?

Out of all the possible outcomes Eli had imagined for this conversation, this wasn’t one of them. And surprisingly, after weeks of fantasizing such a moment, ecstatic excitement was not on the forefront of his mind either. Instead, he felt a foreign mix of emotions swelling inside him. It was surreal to believe that this was even happening. Humbling, to see that anyone could still have so much faith and trust in him despite all the shitshow he made for himself in the past few days. And ... terrifying, to think about the weight of that misplaced trust.

He stared at her, dazed, just as she looked back at him and silently waited for his answer. The slanted light from the setting sun fell softly over her slender figure, casting a golden halo over her wet hair and bare shoulders. She looked like an angel, one who gave him so much blessing that he didn’t deserve.

It was a long moment before Eli finally managed to pull his thoughts together. "Do you know what you’re asking for, Harper?" He reminded himself one more time of the right thing to say, even though it wasn’t what he wanted. "I can’t make any promises ... And you shouldn’t believe me even if I do. Someday, you might just turn out to be the next person to want to slap me in the face in front of a whole stadium audience."