“You almost died!”
My breath caught again as the horror of the moment threatened to swallow me.
Someone had tried to kill me.
“I know,” I mumbled against his chest.
Riley pulled back, and for a moment I was adrift. But then his lips crashed against mine, as demanding as the tide.
One of his hands trailed down my side before wrapping around my middle, pulling me closer. The other tangled itself in my hair, which was wild and loose from my fall.
I melted against him, soaking in his warmth, his scent, the taste of coffee on his lips. His kiss was a wild collision of longing and worry that had been bottled up too long and exploded at the slightest touch of his lips on mine.It was a silent plea, begging me not to go anywhere he couldn’t follow.
When we pulled apart, Riley leaned his forehead against mine. I exhaled shakily and curled my fingers against his warm back.
“I’ve been wanting to do that again since the moment we were interrupted at the party,” he said in a rough voice.
His words brought me back to reality, and I squeezed my eyes shut as if that would stop the way my chest tightened. How many times would I have to remind myself that this wasn’t real? But his words had stripped away the last of my pretenses until I could no longer unsee the second truth that had also been in front of me—one I’d refused to acknowledge.
Despite myself, I was falling in love with Riley.
I liked his sometimes baseless confidence and how he was unabashedly himself. I liked his weird obsession with hoarding pen caps. But most of all, I liked how he’d never once tried to tell me what to do. He always listened and supported me, and he was always exactly what I needed—someone to help me grow and let me make my own mistakes but be there to catch me when I fell. Literally.
And now there was no unfeeling what I felt, no unknowing what I knew. Which meant that once the potion wore off, I’d have to get Riley to love me for real. But first, it was only fair to remind him of the truth, even if he didn’t want to listen.
I pulled away, putting my back to Riley while I gathered my courage. It would be so easy to soak in this moment instead of facing reality. “None of this is real.”
“You falling off that cliff felt pretty real to me.”
I whirled to face him, swallowing past the tightness in my throat. “Not that. This”—I waved a hand between us—“isn’t real. Your feelings for me.”
He raised an eyebrow. “I must have lost my touch with kissing, because that’s definitely not what I was trying to convey just now.”
“You’re only saying and doing these things because of that love potion,” I said. “You don’t actually like me, but maybe you could if you gave me a shot. I’m nothing like Lizzy, but I—”
Riley laughed, which, all things considered, was a little insulting.
I put a hand on my hip. “What?”
“Why are you bringing up Lizzy?”
“Becauseyoualways bring her up,” I said, holding his gaze. “I thought you liked her.” I had until I talked to Lizzy, anyway.
“What are you talking about?”
I crossed my arms. “You constantly mention her when we’re together, like at the party when you asked if she was coming.”
“I wanted to make sure she didn’t get a jump on me for the story.”
“Oh.” I blinked at him. “And what about all the other times? When you called me Lizzy’s sister, compared our organizational skills, and brought up our shared caffeine intolerance?”
He winced and rubbed the back of his neck. “When you put it that way, I might have overdone it a bit.”
“But why bring her up at all?”
“Because Lizzy isn’t just a coworker; she’s a friend. I knew going in that if I flirted with her little sister, it couldn’t be casual. It was going to have to be all or nothing.”
“This doesn’t feel like nothing now.” My voice shook to match my pounding heart.
