‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It is.’
It was fully dark now. I could barely see anything beyond the faint lights of the Convent below us, and that was the only thing that made me brave enough to say it.
‘You mean a lot to me, Dylan,’ I said. ‘I don’t connect with people easily, but I connected with you. Right away. And I’mnot going to be able to salvage this friendship if I fall in love with you.’
He took a step up the hill towards me. ‘Cece—’
‘Don’t say anything. Please.’
‘I have to.’
He took another step towards me, and another. He was right in front of me now.
I knew I shouldn’t. But I was all out of strength. I reached out and touched him, trailing my fingers over his face in the darkness.
‘Please don’t say anything,’ I whispered. ‘My heart can’t take it if you say something nice to me right now.’
He covered my hand with his, pressing it to his cheek. I could feel the pulse in his wrist against my skin, beating very fast.
‘If you won’t let me say anything,’ he said, ‘can I kiss you goodbye?’
‘That’s a terrible idea.’
He didn’t say anything. His thumb stroked across the bed of my fingernails, again and again.
‘Yes,’ I said.
The word was barely out of my mouth before he kissed me.
It should have been a goodbye kiss. It should have been short and swift, quick and chaste. He should have pressed his lips to mine for just a second longer than if I was some elderly relative who insisted on being greeted by a kiss on the lips, and then said goodbye, and that should have been the end of it.
It wasn’t like that at all.
His mouth was hot and hungry. The hand that had beenresting on top of mine was suddenly fisted in my hair, and the other one was on the small of my back, pressing me into him as his tongue pressed against mine.
I wound my arms around his neck. He was slightly too tall for the kiss to be comfortable and he let go of me abruptly for a second to hoist me up, my legs around his waist. His stubble rasped against the palm of my hand as I pulled his face back to mine, and his body was hard against me as he pressed me back against the hedge, sticks poking into my back, and God, if he’d kissed any of the other women like this—
The other women.
The other women.
The research scientists. The Amal Clooneys. The hero nurses.
I pulled away. ‘Put me down, please.’
He did. ‘Cece,’ he said, running a hand through his hair but failing to dislodge the leaf that had caught there. ‘I—That—’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I meant it. Don’t say anything.’
I was running down the hill before he could make me love him more.
He didn’t follow me.
11
When I was eight years old, there were two men that wanted to adopt me.
I met them a bunch of times. They came to visit me at the group home, and I heard them telling the social worker afterwards that they’d fallen in love with me. ‘What a sweet, sunny little girl,’ one of them said.
