Page 70 of Fractured Ice

I move a dollar without looking at which stack it goes to and lean back in. His mouth meets mine half way, and I forget what argument I was in the middle of. His hand is still at my jaw and I'm leaning across this table, aware of my own body in a way I wasn't an hour ago, the warmth running under my skin, the way my nipples have gone hard against the fabric of my bra. I pull back before I can stay there long enough to make a decision I haven't finished making.

"The table," I say, for no clear reason.

"Annoying table," he agrees.

"It's doing its job."

"It's in the way."

"That's its job."

"Next," he says.

We go through more dollars. I lose count somewhere around the midpoint of the remaining stack, lose track of the argument, lose track of why I was maintaining it in the first place. The kisses keep evolving on their own, each one a little slower, a little deeper, and somewhere in the middle of all of it his tongue touches mine and I don't pull back, I just let it happen, and the heat that moves through me is startling in how complete it is.

My whole body feels like it's been turned up.

I'm wet. Genuinely, inconveniently, embarrassingly wet, and I'm sitting behind a charity booth in the middle of a public fair. Ethan Walker is kissing me like he has nowhere to be and every single thing I've been telling myself for months is doing absolutely nothing useful.

Dylan kissed me last week and I felt nothing. I keep making that comparison and I can't stop making it. I hate that I can't stop.

"You know," I say, against his mouth, "this doesn't mean anything."

"I know," he says, and kisses me again.

I’m breathing hard when I pull away. "I'm just using up the dollars."

"Completely reasonable."

"This is a booth. It's for charity."

"Very responsible." His thumb traces my jaw. "Next."

We keep going. The remaining pile gets smaller. Every time he pulls back, because now he's the one managing the pace, I've lost any pretense of managing it, he's leaned further over the table, and I've leaned further in. The space between us is barely a table anymore and mostly just him.

"I really don't like you," I say.

"I know," he says. "I'm still working on that."

"You have a terrible reputation."

"Also accurate."

"You've been with half the⁠—"

"Next," he says, quietly, and leans in, and this kiss goes long enough that I close my eyes. My hands find the edge of the table and I'm holding on to it. His hand has moved from my jaw to the back of my neck, and his fingers are in my hair. I'm making out with Ethan Walker at a kissing booth and I cannot locate a single objection.

The table hits me in the legs.

I open my eyes.

Ethan is attempting to climb over it.

The attempt is not going smoothly. He gets one knee up on the folding table and the whole thing lurches sideways, the remaining pile of dollars sliding toward the edge. He catches himself, gets the other knee up, and comes over the far side in a controlled disaster. There’s too much momentum and not enough grace. He stumbles into the grass before catching the table's edge to stop himself. He ends up standing about six inches from me, breathing hard, hair wrecked, looking completely undignified and entirely unbothered by it.

I lose it.

The laugh comes out of me all the way, full and genuine, and I can't stop it, and he's standing there with the chair at his knee and the dollar bills scattered at his feet and he's grinning, that real one. I'm laughing hard enough that my eyes are watering, and then he takes my hand.