Chapter 9 – Trace #2
Lena leaned against the railing, arms crossed tight against the cold, and tipped her head back with her eyes closed.
She breathed in deep and her throat went long and exposed and I forgot how to blink for a second, just stood there holding two water bottles like a complete idiot while muffled laughter and the thump of bass leaked through the walls behind us.
“You survived,” I said, handing her one.
“Barely.” She took it without opening her eyes, cracked the cap, and took a long pull, the water catching the blue light as she swallowed. “Your teammates are intense.”
“They’re hockey players. Everything’s intense.” I leaned against the railing next to her, close enough that our arms touched and I could feel the cold prickling her skin against my forearm. I didn’t move away. “You were good in there, though.”
“I know how to work a room, Trace. My mother raised me right.”
“I remember.”
She opened her eyes and looked at me, and the blue-silver light did something to her skin — made the brown go warm and deep, like honey held up to firelight, made her eyes darker — and my hand had the water bottle in a death grip, the glass groaning under my fingers.
Stop staring at her mouth. Stop staring at her mouth. You are staring at her mouth.
“You miss me, Hartwell?”
It came out before I could stop it — half-joking, except I wasn’t joking at all and she probably knew it. Her scent hit me again from this close, coconut and shea butter and something warm underneath that made me think of her mama’s kitchen and Sunday afternoons I had no business remembering.
She didn’t roll her eyes or laugh it off. She just looked at me — really looked — and her expression changed in a way that made me grip the railing with my free hand.
“I miss the boy who used to study with me,” she said quietly. “The one who’d sit at my kitchen table for three hours pretending he didn’t understand derivatives just so he could stay longer.” Her fingers tightened on the water bottle, the plastic crinkling. “I don’t know who this guy is.”
Jesus.
She remembered. Of course she remembered. Lena filed everything away in that terrifying brain of hers and never deleted a single file.
Junior year, her kitchen table, her mom playing Sade on the Bluetooth speaker and making us jerk chicken sandwiches with the scotch bonnet sauce that made my eyes water while I pretended to struggle with chain rule so I could sit close enough to smell her shampoo.
I’d understood derivatives fine. What I hadn’t understood was how to tell my brother’s girlfriend that I was in love with her.
“That guy’s still here,” I said, and my voice came out rougher than I wanted. I cleared my throat and looked out at the quad because looking at her right now was a bad idea on a long list of bad ideas. “He’s just been… hiding. For a while.”
“Why?”
Because you were Trevor’s.
Because I made a promise.
Because every time I looked at you I wanted something I couldn’t have.
Selfish prick.
“Because he was scared.” I ran a hand through my hair, the night air cold on the back of my neck where the sweat from the house hadn’t dried yet. “And stupid. Mostly stupid.”
“Only mostly?”
“Okay, entirely stupid. Happy?”
The corner of her mouth pulled up and I watched it happen — not a real smile, more like muscle memory from when she used to smile at me all the time, back when I was just Trace and she was just Lena and my brother hadn’t ruined everything yet.
She pushed off the railing and dropped into one of the Adirondack chairs, pulling her knees up and tucking her boots under her, and I wanted to sit at her kitchen table again and pretend I didn’t know what a derivative was.
But I knew Lena. I’d known her since she was fourteen and too smart for every room she walked into. This girl didn’t change her mind because someone asked nicely. She didn’t melt because a guy said the right thing at the right time on a pretty porch.
She took thigs slowly, carefully, on her own terms, and if you pushed before she was ready she’d have shut the door so fast you’d lose fingers.
Which was fine. Because she’d agreed to this arrangement, and that gave me the only thing that actually mattered.
Time.
“So…” She said, drawing out the word. “Friday.”
“What about Friday?”
“The kiss. At the game.” She unfolded herself from the chair and stood, leaning one hip against the railing with her arms crossed again, every trace of vulnerability packed away. The cold had raised goosebumps along her forearms but she didn’t seem to notice or didn’t care.
“Aaron said there needs to be a moment. Something for the cameras.”
“Fine. But we need ground rules.”
Of course we do. “I’m listening.”
“It’s a closed-mouth situation, Coulter.” She held up a finger like she was laying down case law. “No tongue. It has to look believable, not desperate.”
I let that sit for a second and then laughed — couldn’t help it — because this woman was standing on my porch in the blue light laying out the terms and conditions of kissing me like it was a contract negotiation, and she had absolutely no idea what she’d just signed up for.
“What’s funny?” Her chin came up and her eyes narrowed, daring me to make it a joke.
“Nothing. Just — Lena.” I turned toward her, closing the distance until I could see the LED light reflecting in her pupils. “You’re not doing it right if there’s no tongue.”
“Excuse me?”
“If we’re selling this, we’re selling it all the way. Nobody in that arena is gonna believe I just won a game and kissed my girlfriend like I’m her fucking uncle at Thanksgiving.”
Her jaw tightened and color rose up her neck — not embarrassment, hotter than that, and she was working real hard to pretend it wasn’t there.
I watched her swallow, watched the pulse at the base of her throat kick up a notch, and my own pulse answered like they were having a conversation my brain wasn’t invited to. “There have to be limits.”
“Why? You think you won’t be able to handle it?”
“I think you won’t be able to handle it.”
She’s not wrong, and you know it. One kiss and you’re going to forget every line you’ve drawn. Every single one.
“Tell you what.” I leaned against the railing, arms crossed, mirroring her pose. “Closed mouth to start. If the moment calls for more, we let it happen. No forcing it, but no holding back either. If we’re gonna do this, it has to look real.”
“It has to look real,” she repeated, like she was testing the words for cracks.
“That’s what I said.”
“Fine.” She pushed off the railing and straightened up. “Closed mouth unless the moment calls for it. But if you shove your tongue down my throat in front of ten thousand people, I will end you.”
“You keep talking about my tongue, Hartwell, and I’m going to start thinking you’ve been thinking about it.”
Her nostrils flared. “I have not been — that is not —” She clamped her mouth shut and her chin came up, and the flush that had been creeping up her neck went nuclear. “You are insufferable.”
“Noted.”
She walked past me toward the door, and as she did her shoulder brushed my chest and she paused — just for a heartbeat, close enough that I caught her coconut-and-shea scent again and felt the heat coming off her skin through that cropped sweater.
Every nerve ending in my body lit up like a switchboard, and my hands, those treacherous bastards, twitched at my sides with the effort of not reaching for her — before she kept walking.
“Lena.”
She stopped with her hand on the door but didn’t turn around.
“For the record? The guy at your kitchen table? The one who pretended he couldn’t do derivatives?” I waited until she glanced over her shoulder, one braid sliding forward. “He wasn’t pretending because he was bad at math.”
She held my gaze for two seconds, her lips parted, and I watched her throat work around a swallow she didn’t want me to see. Then she pulled the door open and the noise from inside swallowed her up.