11. CHAPTER ELEVEN #2
Fifteen minutes later, Percy gets up and disappears into the downstairs bathroom. I just finished drinking my second water bottle. I look at the hallway. Then at the stairs. Then at the hallway again. This is a terrible idea, but I have to pee.
I stand.
Benson glances over. “What?”
“I need the bathroom.”
“Percy’s in there.” He points upstairs. “Use ours.”
“Okay.”
Lucy looks at me. I look at Lucy. Something passes over her face. Not knowledge. Suspicion, maybe. I lift my eyebrows like what?
She slowly smiles.
I immediately turn away. Traitor.
I take the stairs normally for the first four steps, then faster for the rest.
The upstairs bathroom door is open. Rowan’s room is down the hall.
I stand there and calculate.
A normal bathroom trip is four minutes. Six if you’re taking your time. Anything beyond eight is questionable, and in a house where everybody knows everybody else’s digestive habits against their will, nine minutes is enough for somebody to ask a question.
Eight minutes.
That is what I have.
I walk past the bathroom. Rowan’s door is shut. For about three seconds, I stand outside it, wondering if I have lost my mind. Then I knock. There’s movement inside before the door opens.
Rowan is in grey sweats and a T-shirt, his hair wet and pushed back from his forehead. He looks surprised to see me.
“G.”
“Hi.”
He glances toward the bathroom and then back at me. “What are you doing?”
I step past him. “Nothing.”
He turns as I enter his room. “You’re in my bedroom.”
“Excellent observation.”
The confidence lasts until he closes the door. Then I become acutely aware that I am in Rowan Laurens’s bedroom on purpose.
I have only been in here once before. His bed is under the window.
There are hockey sticks against one wall, two water bottles on the desk, a pile of clean clothes on a chair, and a wet towel hanging over the footboard.
The room smells like detergent and whatever he uses after he showers, and that is more information than I needed while trapped inside a room containing his bed.
Rowan stays by the door. He’s watching me look around. “What are you doing up here, G?”
“You asked if I’d be at Hawthorne.”
“Yeah.”
“So I’m here.”
His mouth moves. “Yeah.”
I point at him immediately. “Don’t.”
He laughs. The sound loosens something in me.
This is still Rowan.
That’s the strange part. I expected kissing him to transform something fundamental, but he’s standing in front of me looking exactly like the man I was arguing with about the word okay a week ago. I just know what he tastes like now.
“Were you going to kiss me again?” I ask.
His answer comes immediately. “Yeah.”
My stomach flips. “When?”
He shrugs against the door. “Eventually.”
“Eventually?”
“We’ve been surrounded by people since you got here.”
“So?”
He gives me the flat look. I know exactly what it means.
“Your brother is downstairs,” he says.
Heat runs up my neck, because there’s something about Rowan saying that while standing between me and a closed bedroom door that is considerably hotter than the sentence deserves to be.
I point behind him. “Lock it.”
His eyebrows rise. “Why?”
I stare at him.
Rowan reaches back without taking his eyes off me and turns the lock. That little click goes straight through me. I cross the room before I can think too hard about what I’m doing and grab the back of his neck. He lets me pull him down.
Our mouths meet, and there is no nervous first-kiss hesitation this time. Rowan knows exactly what I want because we did this last night, and apparently a single night was enough for both of us to skip the careful part.
His hand finds my waist. Mine goes into his wet hair.
I kiss him harder.
He gives it back.
This is what I wanted all day. Not a conversation about it. Not a label. Not somebody telling me what Rowan might mean or might feel.
Just this. His mouth. His hands.
The fact that he is kissing me because he wants to, with nobody standing here asking him what we’re doing.
I smile against him.
He pulls back barely enough to ask, “What?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re laughing again.”
“I’m happy.”
He looks at me for a second. There is something about saying it that makes me suddenly shy, which is ridiculous considering we’re breathing each other’s air.
His expression softens. “Good.”
I kiss him before he can say anything else.
He backs me into the door. One of his hands lands flat beside my head while the other slides around my waist, and the kiss turns heavier so quickly that I lose track of whatever plan I came upstairs with.
Eight minutes.
Right.
I pull back enough to breathe. “I have like six minutes.”
Rowan laughs into my jaw. “You timed this?”
“I planned responsibly.”
“That’s new.”
“Shut up.”
His mouth moves beneath my ear. I stop caring about the joke. My head tips back against the door, and his lips move slowly along my neck. It’s nothing particularly obscene. It shouldn’t feel as good as it does. But it does. My fingers tighten in his hair.
He stops. I feel his smile against my skin.
“Don’t.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were going to.”
“No.”
“You absolutely were.”
He kisses the same spot again.
My knees become significantly less reliable.
“Rowan.”
“Yeah?”
I pull his face back to mine.
“Bed.”
That gets his attention. His eyes flick toward it and then return to me.
I immediately hear how that sounded. “I mean—”
“I know what you meant.”
“Do you?”
He pauses and the corner of his mouth lifts. “No.”
I laugh and shove him.
He catches my wrists, still laughing, and backs toward the bed until he sits on the edge. I end up between his knees.
For one second, I just stand there.
Rowan looks up at me. That does something entirely different. He’s usually above me. Taller. Bigger. Always making me tip my head backward when we talk too close.
Now he’s sitting and I’m standing between his legs, and the change in angle gives me a strange little rush of confidence. I put my hands on his shoulders.
He waits. Doesn’t pull. Doesn’t assume. So I climb onto his lap. His hands catch my waist immediately. My knees settle on either side of his thighs, and the position puts us almost eye level.
“Okay,” I say.
He smiles. “What?”
“I’m collecting information.”
“About?”
I shift slightly on his lap. His jaw tightens. That answers the question for me.
“Stuff.”
“G.”
I grin.
I found something.
For days, Rowan has been making me nervous because he knows I like him. He has smiled at me while I embarrassed myself and watched me walk into rooms with the calm confidence of someone who knows something I don’t.
This is better.
I move again, loving the way he feels under me. My body lights up. His hands tighten against my waist, and I love how firm he’s being.
“Are you nervous?” I tease.
“No.”
“Liar.”
“I’m not nervous.”
“You look nervous.”
“I don’t.”
I lean closer. “You feel nervous.”
That makes him laugh, but it comes out lower than usual.
My stomach drops pleasantly.
Oh.
There he is.
I kiss him again.
This time Rowan’s hands slip beneath the bottom of my shirt. Warm palms against bare skin. He stops there. Doesn’t move higher. Doesn’t try anything else. The restraint is somehow hotter than if he hadn’t stopped.
I pull my mouth from his. “You can touch me.”
His eyes meet mine. “I am.”
He kisses me again instead. His thumbs move slowly over the skin at my waist, and my whole body seems to concentrate itself into those two points of contact. I have hooked up with guys before. I’ve kissed people I barely knew because they were attractive and I was bored and the night was fun.
This does not feel like that.