Chapter 22 #2
“It took me until dinner yesterday to realize it myself, but yeah. It’s just…
” She shifted closer, and I was suddenly reeling as she reached out and took the front of my shirt, two fingers slipping between the buttons, speaking quietly.
“I didn’t want you to be with Daniela… and it’s so selfish of me, but seeing you talking with her, I was just…
I wanted to pull you away and run away with you.
” Her voice came out just a breath at the end, thin and wispy, but I held onto every word like a lifeline.
“So you went and danced with another girl instead.”
“I liked the way it made you look at me.” She tugged on my shirt, and my heartrate spiked. She was dangerously testing my resolve, and I didn’t have a lot of willpower to fight it. “Can I tell you something else?”
“I… yeah.” I needed out. She bit her lip, looking at me with those damn blue eyes that made it impossible to think straight.
“I like the way you’re looking at me now, too,” she whispered.
“Alyssa…” I swallowed. “We really shouldn’t do this.”
“I know,” she said, but she didn’t take her hand off my shirt, moving her other to my knee. God, I couldn’t fight this. Not when I wanted her this badly. Pretty girls were the fucking worst.
“Neither of us is staying in town. And I’m not going to Boston.”
“I know.”
“You’ll only be sabotaging your other relationships in Vermont if you’re getting close to me like that. I’m still a pariah.”
“I know. We shouldn’t…” She shifted closer, and her voice dropped to a breath. “I just want you so much, Jade.”
“Oh, god.” I wasn’t any better, because I put a hand on her cheek, and she softened into it with a small, contented noise, batting her eyelashes. “Alyssa…”
“I can’t believe you want me too,” she said in a small laugh. “I’m literally so annoying.”
“I mean… we’ve established I’m a mean bitch.”
“Hey. We have established no such thing.”
“We’ve established it.”
“We have not.” She sighed blissfully, shifting closer, close enough I could smell that perfume still lingering faintly on her, and I bit down on a quiet breath. “You’re the most caring and compassionate person I know… you’re just not superficial with it. Ask Cat. Ask Daniela.”
“Well… you’re not annoying, either. I swear everybody in this town wants to be around you, be your friend, talk to you, like the stars come out at night just for you. I’m not going to lie, I get so jealous and possessive that it’s not pretty.”
“Aw.” She laughed, caressing my cheek, and I felt the cool metal of her ring reminding me that it was real, that this was Alyssa Taylor this close to me, touching me. “You should just kiss me and not worry about any of that, then…”
“You know we shouldn’t…” I trailed off, because I knew damn well I wasn’t holding back.
I leaned in towards her, and she fluttered her eyes closed—it took some doing to get myself to close my eyes, too, because dammit if she wasn’t the most beautiful person I’d ever seen, and I wished I could have sat here just looking at every part of her, but I shifted so our legs touched off the chairs between us, and I closed my eyes, and I leaned in, and I kissed her.
It had been the heat of the moment when I’d kissed her yesterday—hadn’t really been conscious of what I was doing, but this, now, I tasted her like she was the greatest thing I’d ever touched, soft and sweet and… spicy. And spicy.
I pushed away from her, wiping my lips as they tingled. “Alyssa—Christ, that’s spicy.”
“Spicy?” She fluttered her eyes open, laughing incredulously at me. “Is that the word we’re using about a kiss? Are you eighty years old?”
“No—literally, that’s—my lips are tingling.” I wiped them again, and it only did so much. “How hot is your soup that I can burn myself on your lips? Are you not dying?”
“Oh.” She blinked fast, and she looked back at her soup, and she held up a spoonful for me. “It’s not that bad.”
I had no self-regard, because I tasted it. I felt like I got punched in the face, and I clasped my hand over my mouth, eyes watering. “Holy shit,” I managed with my mouth full.
“It’s literally not that bad,” she laughed. I didn’t even hear it—I choked and spat the soup into my bowl, coughing.
“How are you eating that?”
“It’s tasty!”
“I feel like I just ate a mouthful of glass.”
She laughed, eyes sparkling. “Okay, softie. Do you have ice cream?”
“Thank god, I do.” I stood up before I clocked what I was doing, and it was one blur of mouth pain later that I found myself sitting out on the back deck with a bowl of ice cream on the wooden porch swing between me and Alyssa, the valley spilling out below us quiet at night.
The ice cream helped. Alyssa being the one feeding it to me also helped, a spoonful up to my lips as she gave me the most adoring look.
“There, there,” she said.
“I don’t know if the spice or the embarrassment hurts more,” I rasped, taking another mouthful of the ice cream. She laughed.
“Vermont isn’t the spice capital of the world, then, is it?”
“No. I guess not.” I sighed, handing the spoon back to her, and I leaned against the creaking wood of the swing back, looking up at the stars. “What are we doing right now?”
“I don’t know.” She kicked at the floor. “I mean… if I’m being honest… I’m not going to be able to behave myself around you if we don’t do something with this.”
I literally didn’t know how to wrap my head around her saying that about me. I felt like I was being pranked. “Maybe…” I was too embarrassed to finish the thought, and I looked away. I felt her eyes on me from behind.
“Maybe what?”
“It’s nothing.”
She touched my arm, soft and delicate. “Tell me.”
I folded like paper when it was her asking. “Maybe just… while we’re both here…” I shrugged hard, trying to play it off. “Nothing serious. I don’t know. Maybe we can call it an off-ramp for you from a shitty relationship.”
She let out a small sigh, soft and longing. Or I was probably just projecting. “Jade…”
“Yeah?” I winced as I looked back at her, and that anguished look on her face—heart pulled in two different directions—it made something tangle up inside me too.
I shouldn’t have been doing this. Should have minded my own business.
I was supposed to be helping Cat and then leaving.
Now that Cat was getting back into the community, I should have left earlier. Too late now.
She sighed again. “I don’t want to have to keep you… secret, or anything like that.”
“Well—” Did she have to? My chest ached like it pulled taut.
I desperately wanted people to see us together, to think of us as two parts of the same unit.
I’d been thinking a lot that Alyssa and Jade sounded really nice as a phrase.
I’d been thinking too much. But maybe I was just stupid and shallow and dazzled by a pretty face, and I wanted to parade her around on my arm.
Of course she didn’t want people to know anything we were doing.
She had friends in this town. Even before I’d pissed everyone off, I’d been the moody loner off in the woods.
If she didn’t want to risk her reputation with her people here, I felt a little rotten about it, but I understood.
And I really was a sucker for a pretty face, because I’d rather have her in secret than not have her at all.
“It’s fine,” I said, and I dared to slip a hand to her back, touching her between the shoulder blades. She leaned into me, and the touch was electric, the connection explosive and instantaneous. “If it’s just a temporary… casual thing anyway, I get it.”
“I really shouldn’t…” she whispered, caressing her hand over my front. This girl was going to break my fucking heart.
“Neither should I, but hey, here we are.”
She laughed, and my heart melted when she kissed my shoulder. “Tell me… you’re not planning on leaving too soon.”
I needed to get out as soon as possible.
But I couldn’t find it in myself to say that to Alyssa, not when she was curled up against me, touching me like I was the most precious thing she’d ever seen.
“I haven’t found any solid leads,” I said, which was strictly true. “Nothing pulling me away just yet.”
“Mm.” She kissed my cheek, letting her lips brush me softly, tenderly. “I need to get back home soon, but…”
“Are your lips less likely to burn me now?”
She laughed, resting her forehead against my temple. “You’re such a baby. It’s cute.”
“I’m not a baby, I’m just not trained on detonating thermonuclear warheads inside my mouth.”
“I think the spice is all gone now. It’s safe to kiss me.”
Like hell it was. Spice wasn’t the only way I was burning myself by kissing her.
But I kissed her anyway. Turned and melted into her lips, slipping my fingers into her hair, and from the blissful noise she made as she met me, I knew this was going to break me.