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For one breath, nothing happens. Just the October air and the distant sound of the party and the warmth of his hands on my face and my heart trying to leave my body.
Then he pulls me into the kiss.
His mouth is warm and still for one full second, the longest second of my life, and then he kisses me slowly, certainly, his tongue parting my lips, and touching mine. His thumb sweeps along my jaw and I shiver in the October air. I press closer, and his other hand finds the curls at the side of my head and holds me there, gentle, and it tastes like woodsmoke and the cold night and nothing like fourteen seconds of beer and chips.
When he pulls back, it’s just far enough to look at me.
His eyes hold mine. His hand is still in my hair. The party sounds from the yard below might as well be in another county.
I stare at him. My lips are tingling. My chest is so full I cannot locate a single word in the English language.
A small, stunned laugh comes out of me and I press my forehead against his chin.
His chest moves on a quiet exhale.
I tip my chin up until my lips find the corner of his mouth.
“Now that’s what I call a first kiss,” I whisper against him.
The crooked smile pulls higher on the right than the left, and I feel it against my lips before I pull back far enough to see it.
I’ve been memorizing that smile from across rooms and backseats and dinner tables for six years.
This is the best seat I’ve ever had for it.
13
SIENNA
PRESENT DAY
“Tell me you were lying.”
I lurch forward, my hand slamming down across the strings and killing the melody dead. The rain fills the space where the music was, and my heart is somewhere in the vicinity of my throat as I scramble to my feet and spin around.
Grayson is standing three feet away.
He is soaking wet, his shirt plastered flat against his chest, rain running off the sharp line of his jaw, and he is looking at me the way he looked at me in the alley behind the bar, like he is seconds away from screaming, or telling me to get lost and never come back. His hands are balled into fists at his sides. His chest is rising and falling too fast for a man who is standing still.
“In the alley,” he says, his voice dropping low. “Tell me you didn’t mean it.”
It’s been four days since he left, and he has the fucking audacity to snap at me? I was here when his dad arrived this morning. Maggie and I have been calling him like maniacs trying to get him to come home, but he wouldn’t pick up or respond to any messages. And now he is standing in front of me in the rain demanding that I answer him? He’s lost his mind.
I tighten my arms around the guitar. “Four days, and that’s the first thing you say to me? Not Hi, Sienna. Thanks for comforting my sister, Sienna. I’m sorry, Sienna.”
“Sorry for what?” He seethes, speaking through his teeth.
“For being a complete and utter dick.”
I take a step closer, my curls sticking to my face. My chest pressing down like someone is standing on it. I’m already shivering from being out here for so long in the rain, but I couldn’t stomach being in the house because Richard looks close to death, and I don’t ever want to see another dead body. Not after seeing my parents.
He exhales hard through his nose, his hand dragging over his buzz cut and scattering rain. “Then go. Leave Sienna. Get the fuck out of my house. Get the fuck out my town. My state. Go.”
“No.”
His eyes come back to me. “No? Don’t make me say it twice.”
“Or what, Grayson?” I say again, planting my feet in the wet grass. The rain is coming harder now, soaking into my curls and running cold down the back of my neck, and I don’t move an inch. “You gonna drag me out of here?”
