Chapter 22
22
I blink. Twice. Before an unladylike snort comes unbidden from the back of my throat. “Okay, that’s over the top. You almost had me,” I say, rolling my eyes. I reach up and play at putting my hand over his mouth. His drama is unlike any other person I’ve ever met. And for a moment, for a moment , I was stupid enough to buy into his whole “secret society Romeo and Juliet” nonsense. Spell? Broken.
“Helena,” Kendall says from under my hand, “I’m serious. It’s the whole reason you’re here. Well, and you were stupid enough to apply.”
“Oh my God, Kendall, truly just shut up.” I go to push off of him, this time in earnest. It’s like pushing against steel bands. “Let me go.”
“No. You were stupid enough to let me do this too. Not so easily undone.” He’s looking down at me with a glint in his eye, I can only name as possession. It’s unnerving, and I bristle.
“You let me go, or I’ll bite you.”
He tilts his head down until we’re nose to nose, and now his possession is heightened by intent. And my heart is racing for altogether traitorous reasons. “Don’t make promises you don’t intend to keep.”
My mouth falls open a little, and his eyes slide down to my lips. “Helena, you undo me. Shocking you is the best part of every day. Has been for years. I daydream about all the ways I can make that beautiful mouth fall open, make your eyes flash. Do you know how hot it is to watch your cheeks get pink, or your neck? Or your chest, when you’re mad? To watch you squirm in a seat? Getting a rise out of you, well.” He pulls me in to him so I can make no mistake about his double entendre. “It’s sexy as hell. And to think. You never would have known if my father hadn’t figured it out.”
I feel like I’ve jetted off to some other planet. Like I’m whirling through the stars on an out of control rocket ship. “You…you made me mad on purpose in high school because you liked how I looked when I’m mad ? You got off on us hating each other. That is truly messed up.” I’m spluttering, trying to make sense of my universe.
His eyes have blown wide. I take his point. If he gets off on watching me lose my temper, I’m giving him exactly the show he wants. And it puts the last few years in a dangerously different light. I have to put my world back in its own order. Kendall is clearly messing with me to get me to drop out. I know the facts. I just have to clear my head, and get back to normal. I flop down on my back as far as I can go, and cover my eyes with my hands and groan. He’s screwed with my brain so much I can’t really tell which way is up anymore. “You should just leave.”
“I don’t.” His voice is quiet. Resolute. He’s staring first at the wall, and then at me. “Don’t hate you,” he clarifies. He pauses. “Quite the opposite, in fact.”
I lift a hand to see if he’s joking. He’s staring steadily at my face now.
I want to smack him. My anger rises in a flash, despite my attempts to keep it under wraps. “I was there in high school.” I tick off my fingers. “You ruined my fundraiser for the animal shelter. You took down all my signs when I ran for Studentbody President, and put up photos of me in a swimming suit instead. You convinced the debate team to send Tommy Masters in as captain instead of me. You always one-upped my fundraising for Student Council because your Dad is rich. You made sure I wasn’t invited to parties.”
“I wanted to keep someone else from having you.” The admission seems to cost him something from his core. “I’m not proud of it. But, I guess I assumed it was a means to the end, and that someday you’d forgive me for it.”
I’m not sure how to keep putting together the story I’ve told myself for so many years. Not after these confessions from him here in Oxford. I shake my head, trying to put my story back in place. It’s feeling more and more like a square peg and a round hole. “No. You…hated me. Ever since your friends played that stupid trick on you and you kissed me in that closet you?—”
“—realized that I never wanted to stop kissing you, and could not have you? It pissed me off . Like in a real existential crisis way.”
I gape at him.
I blink a few times.
“I’m the son of an absentee father who arrived back in town in middle school to inform me that if I wanted a free college education, millions of dollars, and a life of luxury? I could never do anything more than kiss a girl. I could definitely not fall in love. I had to keep myself pure, that I owed it to my lineage. It was my duty. My higher calling.”
“But you…Clara? You dated Clara. You didn’t even talk to me after the closet thing.” I scrub my hands over my face because…he doesn’t—he can’t —have actual feelings for me. He’s my nemesis, and a misogynistic bastard who claims ownership of me. Claims I tormented him in high school. Just by existing, his very own Bella Swan, to hear him tell it.
It’s hard to ignore the hunger in his gaze now. The wonder has he slowly pivots until he’s laying on his stomach, propped over me on an elbow. Gazing down at me as if seeing me for the first time. I could get away now if I wanted to. I can’t bring myself to move. I want answers, and his face says I’m about to get them.
“I dated Clara because I could keep myself in control at all times. I knew I could walk away from it, and that we’d both be okay. We’d get over each other. It was the quintessential high school romance, but one that doesn’t linger into college. I could keep myself sane and safe around her. That’s not how I felt about you. Never have. It’s never changed.”
I blink again, visions of our tryst in the library slamming into my brain. There wasn’t much control there, on either side. “I always thought you were horrified I wasn’t Clara in the closet. Embarrassed to have kissed someone so uncool.” I’m fourteen again, and re-living my moment of deepest shame. The moment he jumped away from me after realizing I wasn’t Clara. The way he bolted like he couldn’t get away from me fast enough.
“I knew you weren’t Clara the moment I smelled you.” He mimics his movements there in the closet, inching closer. “I kissed you automatically, assuming you were Clara but then…I could smell your shampoo. I knew exactly who you were.”
My heartbeat starts racing, as his face nears mine. He’s not menacing. I don’t even know if he’s aware he’s doing it. It’s like he’s re-living it too. “I’d had a crush on you for years , Helena. You were one of the only people who was kind to me in my chubby kid days. You picked me in seventh grade science to be your partner when no one else would. I was always in awe of how you wanted to help people and animals, how pretty you were. How sweet and nice. I was going to ask you out in seventh grade, but after my Dad told me I couldn’t have a serious girlfriend if I wanted a future, I just figured it would be easier to stay away. It made it even harder on me…because then I thought about you all the time, knowing that my feelings for you were why I couldn’t ask you out casually. Even in seventh grade, I had this inkling that you were it for me. When I got in that closet, I just thought to myself… what could one kiss hurt ? I half-convinced myself it would be terrible and that it would fix everything. Put me out of my misery. Free me from thinking about you all the time. But.”
I can’t breathe. I’m both that fourteen year old in a closet and this girl, laying on a bed in Oxford. Waiting with her heart in her throat. Mesmerized by the presence of this person. Because only Jaqueline knows that I had a huge crush on Kendall until that night. That I’d fantasized about kissing him. I went into that closet for Seven Minutes In Heaven, hoping that he would be the one chosen to join me. “But?” I ask it breathily, wanting him to finish.
“It didn’t fix anything, Helena.” He whispers my name, and brushes his lips over mine in the barest hint of a whisper of a kiss. Just the way he’d kissed me the very first time in the closet. I’m transfixed. I don’t know if I want him to kiss me, or leave. I have a roving, restless, relentless anxiety building in my core but I don’t know what to do with it.
“I screwed everything up that day, learning what it was like to kiss you. I’ve wanted to kiss you every single day since then. You don’t know how badly I want to kiss you right now, even knowing I shouldn’t.”
I open my mouth to tell him I need a minute to process but instead, I find myself staring at his lips, and wetting mine in anticipation.
His gaze sharpens. “Is that an invitation? We can’t. You know that.” But he doesn’t pull away. And instead of pushing him away, my hands find my way back up to his arms, his chest, and then his neck, re-writing our history. Contemplating what it would be like to have lived in an alternate reality where Kendall had said these things to be in high school. Letting it sink into my skin like diamond dust. There’s no sound as I feel my way along his arms to his jaw. I’m a gazelle who has suddenly lain down with the lion, not entirely sure it isn’t on the dinner menu.
“I hated you for giving me that kiss.” I never thought in a million years I’d admit this to him. Much less while he’s in my dorm room bed, late at night.
His chest heaves like he’s run a marathon, but he lets me drift my fingertips along it. We’re wrapped in a moment, in a dream, and I’m loathe to let it go. Because there is no way Kendall actually loves me. He’s lusted after me. And if I’m being entirely honest, I’ve lusted after him. The library and that stone wall show just how much I’ve pent up my desire for him, how it’s mixed toxically with my anger and his arrogance to create a sort of chemical bomb neither of us are immune to.
“Do you still hate me?”
“That kiss ruined my high school years. You ruined me for boyfriends. You ruined Oxford for me. It’s the bar I’ve measured every kiss against.”
He groans and drops his forehead to mine.
“This is pheromones, and dopamine. Lust and pressure. We’ve built this up, that’s all it is.”
He grunts, it’s a noise that tells me he doesn’t agree with my analysis.
“No, I’m serious. The only reason it feels like this is we’ve made it forbidden. All we have to do is prove we’ve made a mountain out of a molehill.” But the way he feel pressed against me? God, does it feel like a mountain.
“Is that an invitation?” His lips are a whisper from mine.
“Ye—,” I manage just before he lowers his mouth to mine.
Despite his speed in closing the distance, our kiss is surprisingly chaste. No tongue. No bruising pressure. Butterflies instead of molten lava. Maybe he’s proving my point. Granting access took the fire out. I should feel relieved. But my body doesn’t relax the way I expect it to. There’s a golden pool of warmth radiating from where his lips meet mine. A low pressure builds as he brushes his lips against mine again. It’s not quite teasing, though there’s an element of it there. It’s…reverent. Like he’s memorizing the feel of me. Like he has all the time in the world.
Frustration builds in me as he molds his lips to mine for a searing brief second before pulling back. I expect to have him delve into my mouth with the same punishing intensity as before. This sweet romance has thrown me for a loop. I’d gone in wishing and waiting for that iron-hot brand of lust to burst into my body. But what I’ve got is a man taking his time, giving me innocent exploratory kisses like we’ve never made each other come in a library.
How can I get him out of my system if he doesn’t burn himself through my veins? Sweet was enough for me with Dominic. Sweet was perfect. Sweet was fulfilling. With Kendall, sweet is just the entry—beyond that is a point of no return my body craves. For a moment, I’m back in that closet. He’d done the same thing. A hesitant brush of his lips first, and a much firmer second pass before he’d owned my mouth and tongue with his. The kiss that had turned my world upside down as a teen. The kiss that had gone from sweet to scorching in a mater of seconds, combustion on dry kindling. At the time, I thought it was simply because this is how he kissed Clara. How he kissed anyone. Now I know better. Now I know this is because I am the perfect kindling, meant for his flame. I’m done with sweet. I’m done waiting, and I’m done hoping to prove myself wrong.
He catches fire as I tangle my fingers in his hair and press him more firmly against my mouth. This kiss takes root in the way I crave, the way he hadn’t allowed it to. And unlike the angry kisses we’ve shared in the past, he’s there . The whole person. Fully behind it. And I feel a wave of emotion, a wave of caring, a wave of reverent craving that should take my breath away, if I had breath left.
My world narrows to a point and expands back out again into starlight. A yawning black hole where all of my sentience goes. And when he growls and leans his weight fully on my body, and my hands tangle in his hair to match his next, more fervent kiss? We tip over into the chasm together, and we’re falling.
I made a grave error in judgement, thinking this would fix everything. All thoughts of contracts go out the window, and I enter into a most dangerous game with relish.
We’ve made a terrible mistake.