Sage: Take the Risk (F&L Story #3)

Sage: Parts 33 & 34

Part Thirty-three

Friday, August 27, 2010.

On Friday, Carey came home with a big-ass grin on his face and a thick manila envelope in his hands.  “Get dolled up, Red,” he said, “We’re going out to celebrate.”

“Celebrate what?” she asked warily. 

“This,” he said, chucking the envelope into her lap where she sat on the couch, surfing the web on her laptop.  She opened it and poured out the contents on the coffee table.  The words Enrollment Form and college caught her eye.

“What is it?”

“Your ticket to freedom,” he said happily.  From the joy in his voice, it was more like her ticket out of his hair.

“I don’t understand.”

“I got you a tutoring job at the high school.  It doesn’t pay anything, but you’ll get a grant to finance your college education.  So, come on.  Get up.  I’m thinking we'll go to that sushi place downtown.”

Sage felt the fury bubble up, and she couldn’t contain it.  “Don’t you ever listen to a word I say?” she hissed, shoving the papers off the table and standing up to face him.  He went shock-still.

“You said you wanted to teach.  This is what you wanted, isn’t it?”

“But I wanted to do this!  I wanted to find a way for me to go to college!”

He jerked his fingers through his hair.  “Jesus Christ, Sage!  What is so goddamn wrong with me helping you with this?”

“Because you’ll want something in return!” she screamed back at him.  “They always want something in return.  I’ll not exchange my freedom for my independence!”

He threw his hands up in the air.  “Do you have any idea how retarded that sounded?  I was trying to be nice and helpful and give you something you wanted.  And no, I don’t want anything in return.  What is it with you?  Is it the time of the month?”

Sage glared at him through the film of tears in her eyes.  How did she ever fall in love with him?  Instead of answering him – and possibly ripping his throat out with her claws – she left him to seal herself in her room.  But that didn’t stop him.  He followed her.  The door bounced off the wall as he shoved it open.

“Don’t you dare walk away from me this time,” he growled.  “I want to know why this is such a big deal.  I’m telling you that I don’t want to have sex with you!”

She whipped around.  “Oh, that’s just what I wanted to hear!  I’m so freaking unappealing that you’re doing good deeds so you can get rid of me and back to screwing other women.”

“Goddammit, Sage!  I didn’t mean it that way, and you damn well know that.”

“No, I don’t know that,” she countered, jabbing a finger into his chest.  “What about all the smoldering looks and the hard-on’s in the past few weeks?  Now, you’re telling me that you don’t want to sleep with me.  Are you such a sex junkie that any old woman will do in a pinch?  All cats are gray in the dark, is that it?”

“You ain’t making a lick of sense, Red,” he snarled.  “And if you want to bring up being a sex junkie, maybe you can explain the addiction to your vibrator in the last week?”

She gasped at him.

“Yeah, that’s right,” he said.  “These walls are paper thin.  At night, I can hear you snore, I can hear your skin sliding over the sheets, and I can damn well hear your moans as you make yourself come.”