Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
T onight was the night.
I was going to kiss Lily Jameson.
Sweat slicked my palms. I wiped them against my jeans so I wouldn’t drop my keys—again.
“Why do you look nervous?” Lily’s dad asked.
He technically worked for my family, and I’d heard her mom call him Alex once, but he’d made me call him Mr. Jameson since puberty, and insisted in a deep, gruff voice that scared the hell out of me.
It didn’t seem to matter to him that his family’s income depended on his work for my family and that I held the real power.
Not that I would take advantage of that.
My teenage body understood the threat in his voice, then and now.
I took a deep breath, swallowing past the lump in my throat.
“I’m—” I dropped my keys again. Stupid wet hands. “I’m not nervous.” My voice cracked a bit on the last word, and I knew he saw right through me. “I’m just excited for the party.”
Lily agreeing to go to David’s party surprised me.
She rarely enjoyed hanging out with my school friends.
I didn’t blame her. They were idiots sometimes.
It surprised me that not only did her parents let her go, they seemed to encourage her.
The look in Mr. Jameson’s eyes as he watched me fetch my keys from the floor, again, told me he regretted letting his seventeen-year-old daughter go to a party with the town fuck-up.
He would end all this if he knew the town fuck-up planned on kissing her tonight.
“Sure, kid. Excited.” He looked me up and down again before turning back to the plant he had been fussing over.
He stabbed the dirt with a sharp trowel a little harder than was strictly necessary and started digging.
I swallowed reflexively and looked anywhere but his expertly wielded shovel.
Message understood, no need to beat it into me.
Lily’s mom, Cathrine, moved around the kitchen. She had always been flighty, but she was kind and didn’t insist on being Mrs. Jameson after an entire life of just being Lily’s mom.
The clock on the mantel ticked away. Lily rarely fussed over her looks, and that made me even more nervous. I took a step to sit on the couch to wait just as I heard a door close and turned on the spot, ready to be done with this tense situation and be on my way to David’s party with Lily in tow.
She emerged from the short hallway. Her hair was piled messily on top of her head. A black-and-white striped skirt hugged her hips, with a matching scarf draped over her turquoise blouse. She looked amazing. She always looked amazing.
I walked over and grabbed her hand, eager to be on our way before her dad could threaten me again.
“I didn’t say bye,” she said as we stepped out onto her porch.
“No time,” I said, stepping over garden tools strewn about the wrap-around porch filled to the brim with lush plants of every kind. All the trappings of a comfortable home, brimming with the life I craved but never got in the polished and pristine houses I’d been raised in.
I rushed us to my orange Bronco. I’d inherited it from my mom.
She bought the car as a teenager and kept driving it until the end.
Now, it belonged to me. I couldn’t help but think of her every time I drove it.
Sure, grandpa would have given me any car I asked for, but this car was special.
Perfect for the night of our first kiss.
I held the door open for Lily. She rolled her eyes at me, but held back her usual lecture about how it was more efficient for her to open her own door since I still had to open mine. My heart rate picked up, thrilled that she let me have this little thing.
“Ready?” I asked as I started up the car.
“No, I’m never ready to party. Are you sure it will be fun?
” Lily fiddled with her little monkey ball keychain.
I hoped she never put me on the receiving end of that particular trinket.
Between that and her dad’s spade, I regretted every choice I’ve made in my life that led me here, but when I could finally drag my eyes away from the weapon, she looked determined.
“I’m hoping it will be one of the best days of our lives so far.” I mentally kicked myself for putting so much pressure on it. That was dumb. I was dumb.
“Let’s settle with me not having a breakdown in the middle of a party of my peers.
” Right, that’s what she was worried about.
I felt like an ass, but the wheels were in motion, and I desperately wanted to kiss her tonight.
I’d waited to kiss her for so long that I couldn’t go back now, not when it was so close.
My plan was perfect. Dark party, loud music, alcohol—all the ingredients for a good night. I would pull her into a dark corner and run my fingers through her hair before I leaned in and pressed my lips to hers. I wondered what she would taste like, what she would feel like.
My heart rate picked up and my sweaty hands stuck to the steering wheel when I turned into the drive for the party. One of my buddies from school hosted it. He was an alright guy, not great, but his parties were epic. I could already feel the excitement in the air.
I parked and ran around the car to grab Lily’s hand and pull her along behind me.
David had gotten a live band to play tonight, just a local one, but a good one.
I could already feel the vibrations of the intense bass throbbing through the ground beneath my feet.
Lily tripped along behind me, and I remembered to play it cool only a few steps before we crossed the hedge and merged with the crowd.
Lights danced around the large lawn, bodies swayed and bounced to the music, and the smell of alcohol and pot lingered in the air. Lily’s hand tightened around mine as I dragged us toward the drink station.
“Two,” I shouted at the guy pouring out of a keg propped on ice.
David’s family had almost as much money as mine, but he still had a basic drink set up.
If you were close with him, you could sneak into his house and raid his parents’ seemingly endless supply of liquor, but the stuff out here was whatever he could get enough of to keep people happy .
Lily took her drink and wrinkled her nose at the smell of it. She didn’t drink it and simply held it delicately, like it would bite her. I took a long swig of mine and inwardly cringed at the taste. They say it’s acquired, and I hoped to get used to it soon enough.
We wandered through the party and when I finished my drink, I took Lily’s and finished hers. She had been quiet and clung to me tightly. I enjoyed talking to her. She always had something unexpected to say. I shook off my discomfort at her silence. We were here to party.
Lily practically melted into my side when we stopped to talk to some guys from school. I smiled and wrapped my arms around her to pull her close.
I took a few swigs from the maroon and silver flask someone passed around, and my body felt all boneless as the world spun.
“Come dance with me,” I shouted at Lily, the music too loud for anything else.
She shook her head and said something I couldn’t quite understand.
She pulled me toward the house and my heart leaped at what I had planned.
Yes, now was the perfect time for a kiss.
She looked relieved when I nodded, and we wove our way through the crowd to the house.
“This way. I know a place that’s quiet and private where we can take a break.
” I led us through the house to a small sitting room no one used just off a back hall.
This place had twists and turns to rival any maze, but I used that to our advantage tonight.
No one could disturb us if they couldn’t find us.
“Thank you,” she said when we were away from the noise. Her words were soft and worn down, like the effort of existing at the party exhausted her, but that couldn’t be right. He’d only been talking to my friends .
I stumbled a bit, but righted myself on the wall so I could push through the door to the right into a small, red room.
A faint sheen of dust covered the lavish decor.
I wouldn’t be surprised to find out the residents had all but forgotten it.
A stuffed porcupine sat on the side table next to a small loveseat.
Perfect.
The loveseat, not the porcupine.
Lily let go of my hand and walked over to a wall covered in books. They were old and bound in real leather. The smell permeated the room. I wrinkled my nose, but Lily picked one up and took a long sniff from its pages. Her shoulders slumped, like the smell itself could relax her.
“I love the smell of books,” she said as she thumbed through it before carefully replacing it exactly where it had been before.
“I love the smell of you.”
Shit .
I sounded dopey.
Wait, no, I wasn’t supposed to say that at all.
Lily just looked at me like I’d grown a second head before going to the couch by the porcupine and sitting down.
I followed her over and sat as close to her as I could. This was it. This was when I should kiss her. She looked at me with a slightly confused and entirely adorable expression. I couldn’t stop what was coming, and more to the point, I didn’t want to stop it.
I leaned into her and closed my eyes, anticipation whirling in my belly. My palms were sweaty again, and I avoided touching her so she wouldn’t realize how nervous she made me. The alcohol took the edge off, but this was still Lily, and I was still about to kiss her .
Because I closed my eyes, I didn’t see it coming. The blow landed square on the left side of my jaw and held enough force to push my head back. The combined force of the hit and my drunken state sent me off balance, despite my seated position, and I fell back into the porcupine on the side table.
“Oh, my god! Sam!” I hadn’t even opened my eyes yet when I felt Lily’s hands on me, helping me sit up. When I finally opened them, the room spun, and Lily had tears running down her face. I still didn’t fully understand what happened. Weren’t we supposed to be kissing?
“I—” I couldn’t find the words to finish my sentence, as bile rose in the back of my throat. I swallowed it down. The last thing I needed was to further humiliate myself by vomiting on her. “Ouch.”
“I’m so sorry. It’s just—you were so close and were you going to kiss me? No, that’s insane. Maybe you just drank too much. Either way, I was overwhelmed, and I panicked.” She backed away from me once she saw I wasn’t bleeding anywhere. “I’m sorry. I have to… I have to go.”
Lily ran from the room, leaving me to pull quills from my shirt and wonder where the hell everything went so wrong.