“If that’s theonlyway you can think of to kill time…”
Ethan considers for a moment, then moves closer so his forehead bumps against the tip of my nose. “Message received. You only want to use me for my body.”
He pulls me into his chest, grounding me again and halting the buzzing anxiety in my brain. I’m so aware of the passage of time. The way each moment we’re not touching is a moment wasted. He presses his lips to my wrist. It’s so gentle. Warmth spreads up my arm like hot honey.
“To think I’d given up on this ever happening,” he says, his voice low and aching. “Now that I have you, this whole other part of me has finally come alive, like the best things only exist when you’re a part of my life.”
I press my ear to his thumping heart and stare down at our clasped hands. “I don’t want to run out the clock on this, you know?” My voice breaks on the last word. It catches us both by surprise.
“Hey.” He pushes my chin up to meet his gaze. “There’s noclock,” he assures me. “We can find a spot like this to park the van tomorrow night. And the night after.” His lips travel along my neck. I groan when he finds the space behind my ear. “Can’t sell this thing now. It’s sacred ground. We’ll keep driving forever if you want.”
“That’s nice,” I say, referring both to the sparks skittering down the column of my throat and to the fantasy that we could live on an eternal road trip when I have an office of angry colleagues and a house I can’t afford waiting for me.
But I’m still in that moment of the vacation where I’m playing pretend—imagining other lives for myself—and I’m not ready to stop. “I haven’t ever thought of you and me as a possibility. I couldn’t let myself picture it, knowing it could never happen.”
“And now?” he asks, his expression so full of boyish longing. It’s that dreamy, wistful look he used to wear when he talked about music or an imagined future outside of our tiny town.
“I feel alive too, Ethan,” I tell him. Even though it doesn’t do the feeling justice. The way my heart feels so tangible, I could tear it out of my chest and hand it to him. This indescribable pull toward him was nailed shut in a box in the deepest corners of my mind and I’ve busted it open with a crowbar. Nothing I feel for Ethan is new—it was always there—but now I’m consumed by it. His gravitational pull will yank me off a cliff if I’m not careful.
“You called me Ethan.” His expression rearranges itself into something more cocksure.
“So?”
“I’ve never heard you call me that before.”
My nose scrunches. “Sure you have.”
His expression shifts—a storm changing direction. His eyes trail all over my face, staring back at me like I’m something to look at, a work of art to stand in awe of. It’s how I sometimes catch myself looking athim. I drag my hand up to his collarbone, noticing the way the rhythm of his breathing slows.
I don’t ask what this is or how this trip will change things between us. Instead, I kiss him, tangling our limbs as we grab hold of each other like our lives depend on it. Maybe because touching like this feels overdue after years of suppressing the occasional burst of fantasy. I know the weight of him, the feel of his skin, the press of his lips, from each and every time I thought about kissing him and didn’t.
I’m so used to loving him, but loving himlike thisis all new, and I won’t waste a second of it parsing out where the fantasies end and reality begins.
Chapter 19
A Combination of Brayden and Brody
Eight Years Ago
It’d been twoweeks since Ethan and I ran out of gas and Owen Twombley pilfered me pretzel buns like a man obsessed.
Though I was still swept up in his new affections, Owen was, at present, in Albuquerque for a student government summit. What was supposed to be my low-key weekend of laundry andSurvivorhad been upended by my postgrad sister whisking into town, newly single and ready to mingle. Whatever overtures Petey had made the week prior did not go to plan. Their flickering bulb of a relationship was off at the moment, so Laurel was falling into old patterns.
“I’m single!” she yelled into the mouth of Theta Delta’s shot luge. We were on a fraternity porch precariously close to an indoor couch that’d been left in the rain since the Clinton administration. A poorly mixed mashup of “Hotline Bling” poured out the windows and onto the lawn of shivering women in bandage dresses and cold-shoulder tops.
Laurel swallowed her vodka shot and let out a woo.
“Charley, take a shot! Shot. Shot. Shot,” she chanted,pumping her arm in a way that inspired the surrounding randoms to chant too.
I shook my head. “I’m not having aChristmas Storymoment on a frozen liquor trough tonight.”
“Boo.” She threw her thumbs down with gusto, and, dear god, people were following.
I tugged on her puffer jacket sleeve and dragged her to the edge of the porch. “Stop that. We’re at a fraternity. These people are very susceptible to chants. They’ll repeat anything.”
“I’m single, and you’re ruining it,” she said, pouting.
“How? By not being blackout at nine p.m.?”
