Chapter 21 Don’t Want To Miss This
DON’T WANT TO MISS THIS
“Faye Mabel Foster,” Mom calls sharply from the kitchen as soon as I enter the front door. “I expect your school-skipping-self in here promptly to explain.”
I can’t help my grin as I kick off my boots, sliding them onto the shelf in the closet.
If there’s one rule in this house, it’s that all outdoor wear is put in its place as soon as one enters. Mom doesn’t like a messy entrance and there’s no surer way to flip her over the edge than to leave a stray shoe somewhere she might trip over it.
“Hey, Mom.” I move straight for the kettle, flipping the switch.
Mom pauses her puzzle. This one will be a magical picture of faeries, if the box is anything to go by. She folds her arms over her chest and notches a single brow. “Want to tell me why you skipped school?”
“A friend needed me.”
“I already know this friend wasn’t Holt, because I called Elise. She didn’t get the call I got from the school.”
“Not Holt.” I pour hot water over a bag of peach tea, squeezing lemon into the cup. Then I take the cup to the table. “Shyanne.”
Mom’s brows inch up her forehead. “Shyanne?”
I nod and sip my tea. It’s scalding hot, but that’s how I like it. “Mmhmm.”
“The girl that’s been mean to you since we moved here?”
“Mmhmm.”
“Well.” Mom sighs. “Color me intrigued, Faye.”
“Her boyfriend cheated on her.” I pause for another sip. “With her best friend.”
An unladylike word slips from between Mom’s lips, and it’s my turn to raise my brows. Mom doesn’t cuss.
I continue explaining, “I was peeing when she came into the bathroom. She was sobbing, Mom. The kind of sobs—” I frown into my tea. “I thought someone died.”
“Someone kind of did die, honey,” Mom says softly. “She lost a best friend today.”
It has nothing to do with the guy. Not really.
Mom gets it.
“Yeah. She did.”
“So,” Mom instantly finds the piece she’s looking for in the sea of pieces. She pops it into place and asks, “What did you do?”
“Hugged her?” I shrug. I don’t know why I make it sound like a question. “Then I offered to go with her to Cherry’s.”
“That’s a good place for heartbreak.” Yeah, Mom gets it.
“That’s what I thought.”
Mom watches me for a long moment. “I’m proud of you, kiddo. But next time, call me and let me know you’re not going to be in class, okay?” She points a long finger at me and warns, “And don’t make a habit of skipping class.”
I sip my tea and promise, “I won’t.”
Maybe I can do something with biology one day. Holt wants to move us to the ocean, so perhaps marine biology?
From the corner of my eye, my bedroom door swings open to reveal Holt. Instantly, every thought of textbook biology disintegrates in favor of a much more intimate kind of biology. He steps inside my room and softly closes the door behind him.
My heart quickens in my chest. I’m not allowed to close the door and Holt knows it.
“She’s really into that puzzle.” Holt moves across the room to where I lay on my belly on my bed. His hand finds my hip as he claims the space beside me on his side, his head propped up on the pillow of his arm.
My bed is a single bed, and that means it’s narrow. That means that me and Holt are tucked in close. Really close.
Heat stirs in my belly. The flush of it spreads far too quickly to other parts of me.
I clear my throat. “How was practice?”
“Interesting.”
“Oh?”
“Elijah punched Kevin.” My eyes pop wide. Holt grins wickedly. “And I hear you and Shyanne skipped class today.”
“Yeah, uh, we did.”
“That’d be why I couldn’t find you after class. I thought you got sick and went home.”
I shrug. “Sorry I didn’t text you. She was really upset.”
“After the way she’s treated you, I’m just surprised you went anywhere with her.”
I push my textbook away with a groan, marking my page with my pen in the spine as I let it fall closed with a heavy thud. “Her best friend kissed her boyfriend. It’s not like she had anyone else to go to and I didn’t want her to be alone.”
“You’re way too nice.” His dark eyes search my face, only calling more heat from the deep of my belly to climb up the length of me.
“Is that why Elijah punched Kevin? Because he kissed Jenna?”
Holt shrugs. “Not sure what started it between them two. Coach split it up, but he was pissed.”
“I hope he wasn’t too pissed.”
“Pissed enough to make them sit out the next game, so…”
“Ouch.” I wince. It won’t matter so much to Kevin, whose life is a game. But Elijah takes everything seriously. It’s probably because his dad is the rep for cool, calm control. “How’d Elijah take that?”
Holt starts to move his thumb over my hip. The movement is absent, but it sets a fire ablaze inside me. Prickles of heat scatter across my flesh and it takes actual work to keep my breaths from turning sharp and uneven as they spill from between my lips.
A little grin pulls at his.
I think he knows what he’s doing to me.
“Holt?”
“You’re so pretty, Faye.”
Yeah, there’s no hope of keeping my cool now. That heat that’s been working its way into my face since he claimed the space beside me on my bed is now shining like a beacon. My blush is so hot it’s painful.
His name is a husky whisper as it falls from my tongue. “Holt.”
“Fuck,” he breathes. “I want to kiss you.”
“Then kiss me.” I can’t believe I said that.
The weight of his hand on my hip becomes heavy with pressure. I give into his silent request easily as I roll onto my back. Holt rolls into me, and my breath catches as his body hovers above mine. His hand is still on my hip, his touch burning me through the fabric of my jeans.
My heart is beating so hard, I can hear it between my ears.
Can he hear it?
“So pretty,” he breathes. And then his lips are on mine.
Like every time Holt kisses me, his lips are hot on mine. Searing.
He’s like fire.
He’s wild and hot and just like fire, he devours everything in his path. He set my heart and soul ablaze from the very first moment I looked into his dark brown eyes, and he’s been carving out pieces of me since.
He’s so bright, like flame in the dark—no, not flame. Holt is like a star, burning brightly in a black sky.
Everything about him draws the eye, just like the brightest star in the night sky. He’s popular and talented and it doesn’t matter who you are, fighting the pulling orbit of Holt is impossible. He draws you in and keeps you there. He doesn’t even have to try.
Some souls just possess that shine. The shine that burns bright, but not always for long. Like Uncle Luke…
We lost Uncle Luke a few years back. Now that I’m older, I think that loss fueled a lot of Dad’s desire to move and start fresh here in Rubble Ridge.
Uncle Luke was Dad’s younger brother, and I’ll always remember him as one of the best men I’ve ever known.
He had the best laugh. Full and rich and real.
It was so unlike anyone else’s; you couldn’t mistake it. Not ever.
Mom always said Uncle Luke was a bright star.
He was a busy man, busier than most. Not in the way some people are busy with work, stressed and overwhelmed with the tasks that litter their to-do list. He was busy with life.
He was always doing something, hiking, fishing, flying down the highway on his bike. He lived fast and free.
That’s why it was so devastating when he got the diagnosis. Advanced stage four lung cancer. He didn’t even smoke.
It took the wind out of his sails and then it took his life. In the span of months.
Dad said he ignored the signs. That he didn’t want to face the reality of his illness.
I think he was just too busy with life to feel the tug of death.
At his funeral, Mom said it was the ones who burned the brightest who God always called home too soon.
Holt burns bright like Uncle Luke.
My heart squeezes with painful fear in my chest, and my fingers curl into his hair to pull him to me. I need to feel him. All of him.
Holt deepens the kiss as he gives me his weight—and my body comes alive.
We’ve made out a few times. These forbidden moments of stolen pleasure the highlight of my teen years, I just know it.
Heck, everything with Holt—every moment—will highlight the happy, carefree time I’m living now.
I don’t want to grow up. I don’t want this to end.
And yet, I can’t wait to experience more with Holt. More of this. More of life.
“I love you.” Holt swallows the words in another deep kiss. He pushes his knee between my legs, giving me even more of his weight.
“I love you, Faye.” Holt rocks into me, just a little. But I feel so much. He’s hard behind his jeans. I swear the stitching around my heart comes undone, it’s beating so hard and fast.
I spread my legs wider for him, wanting to feel more of him.
He grinds into me again. My eyes roll back behind my closed lids.
Between my legs, my panties feel warm and wet and slippery. There is a pulse of hunger where, before Holt, I’d never felt it.
“I want to touch you.” The words stamp heat against my lips as longing spears into the core of me. I’m so turned on. Under my skin, I swear I feel the spread of fire.
“Touch me.”
Holt presses his mouth to mine again, his tongue slipping between my lips to taste and tangle with mine. His hand slips under my shirt. His skin is rough to my soft, the evidence of his hours working out, on the ice, and working for his dad stamped there on his palms. But I love the feel.
I think this could be my very first addiction. It’s even better than Cherry’s glazed croissants. Definitely better than her cinnamon buns.
His hand moves higher to cup my breast over my bra. A low groan breaks free from the trap of his throat, and it’s me who hurries to swallow the sound. I want to trap it forever in the depths of me. To carry something of him inside me forever.
I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever heard. Deep and rough and dripping with want for only me.
My hips rock into Holt’s grind, and I swear, my head spins with the sensations. I need more. I need him.