Chapter 17 #2
My throat goes dry. “Admit it, West. Sometimes I was fun.”
He leans so close I feel the scrape of whiskers against my jaw.
“You were more than fun, Mars.” He moves slowly, pauses.
His hands tighten on my thighs—a question.
I tilt my head, and he presses a kiss under my ear, right where he knows I like it.
Fire licks down my spine. “You were the best fucking thing about this town,” he whispers, scattering goose bumps across my skin.
I skim my shaking hands up his arms and take a deep breath. If I turn to the side, even an inch, he’ll kiss me.
He’s in my head again. Your move, Darling. It’s shocking that after all this time, I still know him so well. Like fluency in a dead language.
I bite my bottom lip and consider my options, thinking about what could be waiting for me on the other side of a kiss. But then he exhales a hot breath against my ear, the sound misting through me, and I’m adrift, swept up in his tide; it no longer feels like a choice.
My nose brushes against his whiskered jaw as I turn and press my lips to his. Something deep in my chest shifts and unlocks. We’re both unmoving; it’s hardly even a kiss yet. It feels more like a return.
There you are, I think.
What took us so long? his mouth says in return.
We’re still motionless, but his lips are warm and soft, and his kiss is resolved. Like kissing me is a decision he made once and never looked back from.
Stunned by the implication, I gasp. His tongue presses against mine, his mouth pulling oxygen from between my teeth.
His hand leaves my thigh, and once again, the absence of him is physical, but then it threads through my hair and tilts my jaw up to give him a better angle.
His hair tickles my forehead, and I want to brush it back, want to grab it between my fingers, want to touch him in so many places, but he is everywhere, crowding me, surrounding me, taking control of this kiss, which I hadn’t planned to want but am desperate to continue.
He’s broader and stronger than the last time we were this close.
I can’t think. Can hardly breathe as his lips work over mine.
Kissing the man in front of me contains shades of our history but is also completely different and infinitely better than it once was.
Heat rushes to my core, pulsing painfully.
A tangled frisson of pleasure and desire weaves under my skin, remaking me into a new version of myself. Building me a different set of bones.
The sensation of his tongue on my lips and my teeth and my neck is the most catastrophic thing I’ve ever felt. If I had the capacity to think, I’d realize that I’m careening toward ruin.
There’s a buzz against metal, sending my thoughts ricocheting in every direction. I wrench away from him, and we both look down, our breaths jagged and desperate. The noise is coming from his phone, in his front pocket, pressed against the edge of the counter.
“Answer it,” I say. I need a minute to catch my breath. To think.
West adjusts himself with a wince and reads the text. As he’s reading, his phone buzzes again. He looks at the caller and I catch a glimpse of the ID photo—she’s smiling, she’s gorgeous.
My new bones crumble to dust, carried away with the breeze.
He grimaces. “Sorry, I have to take this. I’m really sorry.”
“It’s fine.” I barely choke the words out as I scoot back and cross my legs. My dress slides up. I tug it down, mortified.
“Everything okay?” West says into the phone.
I hear a woman’s voice on the other end of the line, but it’s too faint for me to decipher what she’s saying.
I tilt my head closer, shameless. I hear a string of swear words, but the voice doesn’t sound upset.
If this is West’s girlfriend, she probably doesn’t know that I just felt his erection against my leg.
That I could look at it now, if I wanted to. (I don’t want to!)
“Yeah. Mm-hmm. Call if you need anything. Don’t forget to send a pic.” He ends the call and slides his phone in his back pocket. Whatever pic she’s sending, he’s saving it for later.
“That was my sister,” he says quickly, and I delete the sarcastic remark about nudes from the tip of my tongue.
“Gabbi? Little foul-mouthed Gabbi?” I reach my hand into his back pocket and grab his phone. West watches with amusement. “How old is she? I want to see a picture!” He unlocks it and swipes through recent photos, showing me a stunning young woman with dark skin and curly hair.
I snatch the phone out of his hands to inspect it closely. “Wow. She’s gorgeous!” I place his phone on the counter. “It sounds like you two are close now?”
He nods. “We got closer when we were both on the East Coast; I talked so much about this place that she decided to come.”
I shake my head in awe. He really did it. He became the man he didn’t think he could be. “It’s a good thing you came back, isn’t it?” I ask quietly.
His face is full of feelings, but this time, I’m not sure which ones. He dips his chin in silent confirmation. “I have regrets. That’s not one of them.”
He opens his mouth to speak again, and I panic about the potential destination of this conversation.
“What’s Gabbi up to these days?”
“She’s an undergrad. Engineering major. So smart. She gives me shit constantly—”
“I bet you deserve it,” I cut in.
His mouth quirks up fondly. “I’m sure I do. She has a date tonight. Some guy from an app. She called to tell me where they’re meeting, what they plan to do for the evening. She’ll send me a picture of his ID and let him know that her older brother will hunt him down if necessary.”
I knew he looked like a hit man. “What better way to scare off creeps than to threaten them with her six-foot-four, problematically jacked older brother?”
I’ve never been so thankful for the full moon shining through the window, because it means I get to see West blush. “What’s problematic about the way I look?”
“You look like you belong on an oil rig, not behind a typewriter.”
“You know I don’t use a typewriter, right?” He’s gorgeously indignant, his eyebrows a dark slash, his curls a work of art. I should have written them into my book. They deserve to be memorialized.
“I know when you’re lying, Virginia.”
“Virginia?”
“You changed my nickname,” I challenge.
“That one’s just bad, though.”
“What about West Nile Virus?”
“What about no.”
“WestJet? North West?”
He cocks an eyebrow. “Wild Wild West.”
I pretend to gag.
He rolls his eyes. “I used to own a typewriter, but I left it in New York when I escaped Dimes Square.”
I put my hand on his forearm. “Oh my gosh, can we talk about that whole situation?”
He recoils at the thought. “Too soon.”
“The Doc Martens–to-typewriter pipeline is undeniable. It’s your Tumblr culture.”
West barks a surprised laugh, and my mood soars. I retreat from the touchy subject of our past and return to safer ground. “Gabbi does sound smart. Taking pictures of their IDs and all,” I say.
“Don’t tell me you date without doing that.” His tone is full of disapproval.
“Dating in New York is…” I trail off, unsure how to describe the hellish, postapocalyptic landscape of NYC dating apps, where no one ever gets together, because the promise of someone hotter, smarter, and richer is only a swipe away.
“Let’s just say I’ve been off the apps for a while.
I prefer to meet men the old-fashioned way. ”
“Such as?”
Falling in love with him at nineteen, letting that relationship ruin your life, and never getting over it.
“To be determined.”
“Well, if you ever get back on the apps, you can send me pictures of your dates. I’ll threaten them, too.”
I huff a laugh. “Funny thing to say for a guy who just had his tongue in my mouth.”
West scrutinizes my face, but in a different way than he did earlier. Before, I knew he wanted me. Now he looks calculating. Assessing.
I shrug out of his jacket and shove it back into his hands, feeling stupidly transparent. I cross my arms over my chest. I’ve written enough love scenes to know when the moment has passed; if West wanted to kiss me again, he wouldn’t be mentally sending me on dates with random dudes.
I’m an idiot, and I should have known.
“Um, thanks for the ice cream, I guess. I’ll walk the rest of the way on my own.” I tuck my hair behind my ears and slide off the counter.
He steps closer, crowding me until my ass hits metal. “Don’t leave. We still need to talk.”
I roll my eyes. “I must have misunderstood what we’ve been doing all night.”
His grips the counter in frustration. His phone screen illuminates, the vibration rattling against steel.
I don’t mean to look, and I certainly don’t mean to read the notification on West’s lock screen, but it’s second nature: Hear a phone buzz, look toward the sound. When my eyes land on the name of the sender, the air seeps from my lungs.
In a blink, I digest the subject of the email. It’s only three words, but it snaps me back to reality. Like waking up from hypnosis.
Noon on Sunday?
A shock runs through me. “I’m an idiot.”
“Mars, no.”
I step around him, too stunned to speak. “You’re speaking with her this weekend? That’s not a coincidence. It can’t be.” I glare at him, daring him to contradict what I already know is true.
West hesitates, a wolf caught in a trap.
I let out a disbelieving laugh. “I can’t believe I thought you changed. I can’t believe I kissed you!” His expression flickers to one I recognize but can’t name. “Don’t follow me.” I turn on my heel to do the thing I should have done an hour ago—run.
West’s voice trails after me, but I don’t stop until I’m safely off campus and away from our memories.
For one shining, nostalgic hour, I tricked myself into thinking that West and I could outrun the things we did to each other, but I was wrong. It won’t happen, and I was a fool to believe it could.
It’s only later, while I’m staring at the ceiling of my hotel room, that I put a name to the emotion on West’s face as I fled.
Heartsick.
I could weep for the irony of it, but I don’t. Instead, I laugh as tears run sideways down my cheeks, mad as hell that I can’t tell the only other person who would understand the joke.