27. Competitive Kissing
CHAPTER 27
COMPETITIVE KISSING
LEDGER
Z oe and I are leaning against the railing of the deck at my mom’s house after everyone else left. It’s dark, the stars are out, crickets are chirping, and it’s the perfect temperature outside. I point toward a tall maple in the backyard. “ See that tree? When I was about ten, Charlie got a Frisbee stuck in it. So , she did what any self-respecting kid would do and took off her shoe and threw it up to knock the Frisbee free.”
“ Let me guess. Then the shoe was stuck, too.”
“ Yep . And then her other shoe. And then a soccer ball, a water bottle, a tennis racket, and a stuffed pig with wings. I tell you, nothing was falling down from that tree. So I figured I’d climb up and rescue all the items.” I chuckle. “ It turned out that something could fall down from that tree. Broke my leg right here.”
“ Did you get a boot as cool as this one?” Zoe asks, holding up her booted foot like she’s modeling footwear .
“ Cooler . Mine was pink, and I put Ben Ten stickers all over it.”
Zoe laughs, and I soak in the sound. I soak in just being with her. “ I remember that show.” She glances over at me, then looks at the back yard again. “ You all seem pretty protective of Charlie . Is that an older brother thing? Since she’s the youngest?”
“ Yeah ,” I say. “ It probably is. But it’s probably also because she was kidnapped as a kid.”
“ What ?” Zoe says. “ When ?”
“ She was three. My dad was director of the CSA , our personal information was leaked, and some bozo thought it would be smart to kidnap Charlie to use as leverage to get their demands met.” I swear, I can almost feel Zoe’s confirmation that having people you care about makes you vulnerable. I continue so she’ll understand why it doesn’t. “ But what it really did was made every intelligence and law enforcement agency in the US band together to go after them.”
“ I can’t believe I don’t know anything about this. How did it happen?” She pauses for a second, then asks, “ Are you okay to talk about it?”
“ Of course,” I tell her. “ It was a long time ago— I mean, I was five at the time. Charlie was three, and Blake was eight. We were at a park, and the three of us were kind of off to the side of the playground equipment, playing with tractors in the wood chips. Our nanny was there, too, and she was by where Miles , Emerson , and Jace were climbing on the equipment.
“ So , me, Charlie , and Blake were all scooping up wood chips and making big piles with them when a woman walked by with a dog on a leash, headed toward a walking path by some trees. Blake was obsessed with dogs back then, so he got up to ask the woman if he could pet the dog, and Charlie went with him. The woman was already near the trees, and there were a lot of bushes around there, too, so I couldn’t really see them.
“ And then after a moment, something made me get up to go see the dog, too. So I left the tractors behind and walked over there. As soon as I rounded the bushes, I could see the woman and the dog and Blake petting it. Charlie was maybe twenty feet away, looking at something on the ground by a shrub. Probably a bug.
“ Then I noticed two men step out from the trees nearby. The taller guy reached down, wrapped one arm around Charlie’s middle, put the other hand over her mouth, and just picked her up.
“ He just picked her up . I remember the shock and horror I felt. That anyone could just come and lift her up and she had no choice in the matter. I was stunned and frozen for a moment. The road wasn’t too far away on that side, and the men were running with her right toward a van. I started screaming and chasing after them.”
I shake my head just remembering it again. “ But they were so fast. And my legs were so short. I ran with all my energy, but they were so much quicker.
“ And then they were gone. I remember whirling around and saw that Blake was right on my heels, and the nanny and my other brothers weren’t far behind. No one else was at the park that day. I didn’t even see the woman with the dog again. But we all saw the van pull away, taking Charlie away with it.”
My arms are on the railing of the deck, and Zoe places a hand on my forearm. The comfort from that touch might be the only thing that makes me continue. “ I had nightmares every night for months after and less frequently for a lot more years. Every time, the bad guys were there, so easily picking Charlie up. Or sometimes it was me. Or one of my brothers. The location sometimes changed, but always, someone was picked up just as easily as I could pick up one of the little toy tractors I’d been playing with.”
I’m surprised that all the emotions of the moment came flooding back. I haven’t told this story often, and it’s been a good long while since I last did. And I’ve definitely never shared the part about the nightmares or how it made me feel.
It hits me how comfortable I am talking to Zoe about stuff I normally wouldn’t talk to anyone about. In the past year and a half, I wouldn’t have guessed that would ever be the case, but things have changed between us. We’ll likely always be competitive, but only about stupid things. Not about the things that matter.
I clear my throat. “ Anyway , spoiler alert, we got her back and she was unharmed. But she’d been gone for a full twenty-four hours, and we had all felt pretty helpless during that entire day. I’m pretty sure we’ll be overprotective of Charlie until the day we die.”
“ That’s beautiful.”
I turn toward her, leaning my side against the railing. “ Beautiful ? That isn’t a word I’ve heard used before in relation to Charlie’s kidnapping.”
She turns to face me. “ Well , not the shared family trauma, obviously. But how bonded you all are. You all know without a doubt that your family has your back and that a lot of other people do, too. It’s beautiful.”
I gaze at Zoe for a long moment, knowing that she has maybe never experienced that. It’s hard to imagine what it would be like to grow up in a world where that wasn’t a given. Yet , that is her reality, and it sends every protective instinct I have in me into overdrive. I want to be that for her. The person who she knows, without a doubt, has her back no matter the situation. The person who will always be there for her.
“ Plus ,” she says, “it explains a lot.”
I cock my head. “ Like what?”
She lifts a shoulder in a shrug. “ Like your need to be strong.”
“ No , it doesn’t.”
“ Ledger , she was kidnapped when you were at an age where you could’ve been picked up and carted off, too. You can’t tell me that didn’t affect the choices you’ve made. For one thing, I mean, look at you. You’re the least pick-me-up-and-cart-me-off person I’ve ever met.”
My biceps flex involuntarily.
“ It’s probably also why you try so hard to never be in a situation where someone could take advantage of you. Why you make sure you’re always strong enough to fight back. Maybe it’s also what drives you to be competitive. Why you like being the one to save the day, not the one who needs saving.”
“ Is that such a bad thing?”
She shakes her head slowly. “ I think that is also a very beautiful thing.”
Her eyes rove over the muscles in my arms and then my shoulders. When they get to my chest, my pecs are now the muscles flexing involuntarily. She is standing so close. The moon and the stars bathe her in a silvery light, her eyelashes casting a shadow on her smooth cheekbones. She is so beautifully perfect.
The rise and fall of her chest tells me that her breathing has picked up. She reaches up and runs her fingers along the side of my neck, across my shoulder, and comes to a rest on my chest. The slight touch is making all my nerve endings fire, sending a cascade of electricity and heat through me. She is intoxicating. When we left for Dublin , I thought I was an impenetrable vault. It turns out that she is the safecracker.
Her eyes come back up to meet mine, flick to my lips for a moment, and then are back on my eyes, searching. One side of her lips pulls up in a sly smile. “ Speaking of competitiveness, why haven’t you kissed me already? I’d think you’d want to claim the win for being the first to initiate.”
I shake my head and reach out to brush a lock of hair off her cheek with my fingertips, then skim my knuckles from the base of her ear down, along her jaw, feeling her smooth skin beneath mine. “ That’s a win I’ve wanted you to claim. No matter how long it takes. No matter how many days we spend together without you making a move. No matter how much I’m dying to kiss you every second I’m around you. This one is your—”
My sentence is cut off by her lips pressing against mine. A slight moan escapes me at how good it feels to finally have her kissing me. She had blown my mind with the kiss she gave me in the hall of Savovi?’s mansion when we were trying to not get caught by security. That kiss had felt like it was a need we’d had for ages. She had brushed that one off as being fake, just borne of necessity, but I had felt then that her emotions had been mirroring mine.
This one has that same need, that urgency behind it. But it is so much more because we have become so much more. This kiss is filling a well inside me that I hadn’t realized had been so empty since that first day in Moldova . Her lips are moving against mine in a rhythm that feels like it’s matching our heartbeats.
There is so much longing and passion and connection and bliss being poured into this kiss, and I can’t tell how much of it is coming from me and how much is coming from Zoe . All I know is that everything feels so perfect and so right.
I wrap my arms around her, holding her close as we’re kissing and she’s tickling the hair at the back of my neck, sending the best kind of shivers up my back. My lips leave hers long enough to place a soft kiss just below her ear before I plant a trail of kisses down her neck.
Then my lips are back on hers. I don’t want this to ever end.