Fuck.
The second our tongues touch, want tears through me so hard it almost hurts.
I want Connor. I want him naked. I want him on top of me. I want him inside me, and I don’t even care that wanting him like this is exactly how I get my heart broken all over again.
A sound slips out of me, low and helpless.
And that’s when my stupid, lagging brain finally catches up.
When he said a kiss, he meant on the cheek.
That’s why he tilted his head like that.
Oh my God.
I jerk back, dragging in air, my head spinning.
Connor looks at me with glassy eyes and parted lips, and I say, “You meant on the cheek, didn’t you?”
He nods, and my whole face goes up in flames.
“Well,” I say quickly, already backing away, “I think I got the pictures. We should probably head back.”
I don’t wait for him to answer. I just turn and head for the trail, down into the trees.
Connor catches up with me almost immediately, and for the first few minutes we walk in silence. It’s awkward, and the whole time I’m burning with humiliation over that kiss—over the fact that I completely misunderstood him and kissed him on the mouth.
He kissed you back, my brain offers unhelpfully, but he probably just felt sorry for me. Especially after I basically cried on his chest over my ex.
“We should’ve put sunscreen on,” Connor says, breaking the silence.
I glance at him, caught off guard by how casually he says it.
“Yeah,” I say quickly. “Sorry about that. I was so desperate to get out of our room, I didn’t even dry my hair.” I run a hand through it to prove the point.
Connor gives me a quick smirk.
We keep walking, our shoes scuffing against the dirt, the woods quiet around us except for the wind moving through the branches. The panic in my chest doesn’t disappear, but it loosens enough that I can breathe without feeling like I’m about to choke on it.
As we step around the thick roots of an old pine, Connor says suddenly, “I’ve been there too, you know. With someone who couldn’t admit what we were to each other.”
I blink at him, thrown by the confession. “You have?”
He nods, his gaze on the path ahead. “Years ago. Back in Ireland, before I moved to the States.”
“What happened?” I ask, more eager than I mean to sound.
Connor stays quiet for a few moments before he answers. “We lived in the same village, Quinn and I. Grew up together. Started as friends, then became something more in our late teens.”
My ears prick up at the name—Quinn. It could be a man or a woman, and Connor doesn’t offer a pronoun to clear it up.
“Quinn’s family was very traditional. Very Catholic,” he says. “We’d meet in secret—back rooms at the pub, empty fishing boats, anywhere we could get a minute alone. But in public, Quinn would barely look at me.”
I stop short.
Even without the pronoun, my heart starts hammering. Catholic. Traditional. Wait.
Connor can’t be—
