Untouchable (Untouchables, 1)

God, what an annoying immediate thought to have.

I turn off my car with a sigh and grab my purse from the passenger seat. I wanted to buy a pack of condoms before I found myself alone with Carter again, just in case, but I don’t want to buy them in town. I’d rather buy them one day when I go to work, so I can stop at Wal-mart and be an anonymous condom-buyer, as opposed to the local drugstore where it would be further advertised that I’m sleeping with Carter Mahoney.

I’m sleeping with Carter Mahoney. Wow, that’s a weird thing to wrap my head around.

Carter slips his phone into his pocket as I approach and flashes me a smile. Wordlessly, we make our way up the stairs to his front door. He catches my hand in his once he gets the door unlocked and then we make our way inside.

While he’s locking up and setting the security alarm, I ask, “Were your parents at the game tonight?”

“Yeah, they come to most of the games. If my dad’s out of town on business he might miss one, but then my big sister usually comes to keep Mom company.”

“Are you close to your mom?” I ask, since he hasn’t told me much about her.

“We have a touchy relationship. We’re family, but we’re polar opposite people with polar opposite views of the world. I love her because she’s my mother, but I don’t always like her, if that makes sense.”

“That does make sense,” I murmur, following him up the stairs. “I always felt like my mom had more potential, but she was limited by her own upbringing, and she never pushed past that to grow into her own. I wondered what she might have been like if she had taken a different path, made different choices. It’s the same with anyone though, you know? Our paths curve, and who we become isn’t always who we thought we would be.”

Glancing back at me as he leads me up the stairs, he asks, “Who do you want to be?”

Good question. “Still trying to figure it out, I guess. I have a few different destinations in mind, but I’m trying to be realistic. I know my ultimate destination depends on a lot of different things, so I’m making a few different plans that I could be happy with.”

His tone amused, he remarks, “You’re always prepared, aren’t you, Ellis?”

“No one can be prepared for every eventuality, but I do my best.”

“Throw out the conditions. If you could be anything, if the world would just open up and let you have anything—what do you want?”

I ponder that as I follow him to his room, trying on different lives, sifting through all the daydreams I’ve had about my future to see where they lead. “Well, I want to live somewhere with a cool, colorful fall, as we discussed before. Snow at Christmas. The whole nine yards.”

Nodding briefly, he says, “That’s a given.”

“I’ll probably want to get married and have a child or two. To play in the fall leaf piles,” I add.

“A solid reason for procreation, if I ever heard one.”

I crack a smile as he turns on the light in his bedroom, then I go over and climb on his bed. “I want a job in a field I’m interested in, something I can continue to study so I’ll never get bored, but I also want to make a positive difference in other people’s lives. Ideally, I would like to be either a professor or maybe a psychologist. Then I could study what interests me, and also apply what I learn to help others, either by teaching them or actively counseling them. The mind is a complex beast, and I’m fascinated by it.”

“Never would have guessed,” he remarks, smirking faintly. “Am I your first experiment, future Dr. Ellis?”

I crack a smile. “Maybe someday I’ll write a paper about you. We’ll have a dinner party to celebrate its publication, and my like-minded colleagues will be intrigued rather than scandalized.”

Pushing me back on the bed and climbing on top of me, he says, “Might want to change my name to protect my identity. Otherwise it will be pretty awkward when I’m sitting at the dinner table next to you.”

My heart kicks up as he prowls over me, but not in the bad way. “Why are you sitting next to me in this scenario? Are you stalking me? Do we have a bad break-up and you just can’t let go? I cheat on you with Erika, don’t I?”

Cocking his head, he says, “I’d watch that.”

I roll my eyes and shove him in the shoulder. “Ew.”

“Anyway, no, I’m not stalking you. We’re married.”

Laughter bubbles up and I can’t quite keep it in. “We are?”

Offering a confident nod only he could pull off when saying something so crazy, one single day into our relationship, he says, “Yep. You’re the one who stalked me, remember? Followed me to Columbia so you could chase off all my potential wives.”