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“It’s okay,” I said. We’d been through enough. I wasn’t sure if it was my tired mind, or my eagerness to want to get to sleep, but I felt dismissive of some modesty for the moment, especially since he was in a towel and I’d just been blow drying his underwear.
North blinked at me for a moment and I stood frozen, unsure what to do next. North surprised me by coming into the room toward me. “Turn around,” he said.
Maybe it was because I was used to Gabriel ordering me about when it came to my hair and clothes, but I turned my back to North as if he were Gabriel. North stood behind me. I could feel the ripples of heat from him, fresh from a hot shower.
He caught the edges of the bra straps and straightened them before hooking the back into place. His fingers slipped over my skin, crossing over my ribs. I forced back the urge to tremble.
“Thank you,” I said softly, starting to turn.
“Keep facing the wall.”
I turned back, staring blankly at the window curtains. I ran my fingers through my hair, twisting it slightly to ring out the last bit of water.
From the noises, I could tell North was removing the towel and putting the boxer briefs on. “Okay,” he finally said.
I turned slowly. He’d seen me in underwear before, but it’d been a while and it wasn’t exactly the best of circumstances then, either. I kept my eyes focused on his chest and up, but it was hard not to catch glimpses of his frame below the waistline. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted lines from his hips that curved down toward his underwear, making almost a V. I tried not to pay attention to his crotch, but my eyes kept wanting to dart there. I mean, I knew the differences between boys and girls, of course, but I’d had a limited viewing from encyclopedia pictures and nothing from real life.
North didn’t hide the fact that he was scanning my body, his face intense, frowning. His fingers drifted out, and he touched a spot at my collar bone. “Where’d you get that?”
I flinched and felt the area with my finger, finding a bruise. “I don’t remember,” I said. “I think maybe when Gabriel accidentally knocked the brush into me.”
“And that one?” he asked, pointing to a small one on my left side by my ribs.
I shrugged. “Nathan.” I didn’t want to mention it was probably during the tickle fight. It looked fresh.
“And that?” He pointed to one on my forearm.
“I don’t know.” I really couldn’t remember. I hadn’t noticed them before. When I saw certain ones, it just triggered a memory of one of a number of times the boys bumped into me for one reason or another.
He grunted. “We’re too rough with you.”
“I’m not a China doll,” I said. “I can handle a few bruises.”
North rolled his eyes and turned toward the large bed. He yanked off the top blanket, dropping it to the floor and kicking it out of the way. Underneath was a thinner blanket. He pulled it back, and the sheet below it before turning back to me. “Ready to sleep?”
I tiptoed forward, crossing my arms over my stomach. I’d slept in the same bed with him before. I’d slept in his bed. This was someone else’s bed and we were so many miles away from anyone we both knew.
And we were both in our underwear.
I climbed in quickly, tugging the sheet and blanket up around my shoulders.
North collected our phones to put on the night stand. He climbed into the bed next to me and clicked the light off.
In the darkness, I felt myself sinking into the bed. Suddenly I was overwhelmed by the fact that I was in an unfamiliar bed in a place where other people slept. I inched over closer to North, wanting to feel him there since I couldn’t see him. I didn’t want to be alone.
My fingers brushed his arm. It seemed to be all he needed. His arms encircled me, dragging me over until he had his bicep tucked under my head. He pulled our pillows closer together. He drew me up until I was close enough that he could dip his face into my hair.
What caught me off guard was when our stomachs touched together. A hunger ignited inside me. Sensations swept through my body. I was desperate for some sort of distraction so I didn’t have to think about it. “North?”
“Yeah, Baby.”
“Did you let Kota know we were here?”
He blew a sigh against my head. “Yeah. I told him.”
“Are we in trouble?”
He smirked against my head. “Probably. But you don’t have to worry about it tonight.”
“Are they going to be okay?”
“Last I heard, they managed to clear everyone out without the cops getting called in. The house is a wreck, though. I’ll have some work to do tomorrow. You’re going to have to have a chat with little miss Danielle and that sister when we get back.”
I let my lungs fill up, a mix of the bleached sheets and his faded musk, the soap we’d used. “I’m sorry,” I said in a small voice.
“For what?”
“For letting Rocky get that close. I didn’t know what he wanted and I knew you all were trying to get along with him.”
“It’s not your fault and it doesn’t matter,” he said. He wrapped his arm over my waist, with his hand splayed out across my back, tugging me close. “To be honest, I kind of like the way things turned out.”
“Oh?”
His head dipped down slightly, until his lips were against my forehead. “It made a perfect excuse to come out here with you. Next time I might get into a fight with Silas. Maybe we were wrong about how to handle this. Maybe I should pretend to be your boyfriend.”
My heart tripped over itself. The darkness gave me some courage and my mouth spit out the words, “We’ll be only pretending?”
The silence that followed felt like a lifetime. His chest shifted and his fingers against my back tightened, pulling at me. My own heart stopped, terrified at what I’d just said and the implications of what it meant. The other half of me wanted desperately for something to make sense to me, something that everyone else at school seemed to understand better than I did. Maybe instead of faking, if it became real, maybe the Academy rules could change, too. The ones I wasn’t sure about, but felt existed.
North pulled back, moving to hover over me. My eyes had adjusted enough that I caught the outline of his face. While I couldn’t see his eyes, I felt the intensity of him looking at me. My hands drifted up, catching his shoulders. My skin tingled from head to toe, electrified.
“Sang,” he said in a low tone, nearly a whisper. “You want to be mine?”
My tongue danced behind my lips. I don’t know what I’d been thinking before, but now I was desperate for just the right words. What did it mean? Was he asking me to be his girlfriend? What did it mean for Nathan? Or Kota? Or Victor? My heart trembled with the thought of d
isappointing any of them again. I’d taken North’s advice. I’d let them worry about who did what with me, dating or otherwise. North’s question felt like something more decisive. And I had no way of knowing the full implications of my answer.
Maybe it was because he was right in front of me, or because of the moonlight and the sea, and the magic of the North Shore still lingering in the back of my mind. Maybe it was my curiosity and my own need to feel closer to them, any of them, when I often felt like I was on the outside looking in.
And I was embarrassed to answer, as if saying a flat out yes would draw out some form of rejection from North. Would he say no? Did he think it was silly? “If you want me,” I said when I managed to find my voice again.
North’s fingers clasped at my hand, pulling my palm to his lips. He kissed, his lips spreading across my skin as he puckered. “Baby, we’re a bad match,” he spoke into my hand. He kissed it again. “We’re night and day. You’re so fucking cute, and sweet.” He kissed my fingertips. “And soft. And then you’ve got me, and I’m...”
Was he trying to be nice to tell me why we shouldn’t? I yanked my hand from his grasp, hurt that it sounded like he was rejecting me and just trying to be nice about it. “Are you saying you don’t want to?”
North jerked his head back, easing up higher as he propped himself up on his hands in like a push up over me. “I didn’t say that.”
“Why did you ask me if you didn’t want to?”
“That’s not what I fucking said, Sang. Don’t put words in my mouth.”
The panic I’d been fighting all evening bubbled to the surface, consuming me. “You just said we were a bad match.”
North grunted, he pulled back until he was sitting up, pulling the blanket away. He sat back on his heels, kneeling on the bed. “I was trying to warn you that we’re different.”
“So you don’t want to.”
North shoved a palm against his face, rubbing. “Sang, I didn’t fucking say that.”
