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He hadn’t just let me kiss him. He’d kissed me back, like he couldn’t get enough of it, like he was as starved for me as I was for him.

“Why do you hate me?” My dream self had bravely murmured into his mouth.

He gripped my hips and pulled me harder into him, surging against my belly. “Does this feel like hate to you?”

I’d moaned and pressed into him, enjoying that pressure against my stomach.

And back in reality, a hand was rubbing my stomach through the covers. It wasn’t mine.

Rough breaths panted into my ear. For a few brief moments between asleep and awake, I imagined it was someone else, and leaned back into the hold, enjoying the feel, letting the hand stay.

But then.

Oh no.

That wasn’t Declan. That was Clayton, and Clayton would get the wrong idea from this.

I moved away, pushing the hand off me. I rolled until I could look at his face.

He was just coming out of sleep, very little coherency in his blinking eyes.

“Good morning,” I told him quietly.

He kept blinking, and then it dawned on him. He looked around, appearing more alarmed by the second, as he realized he’d overslept and stayed the night.

“Oh shit,” he whispered. “Your dad is going to shoot me.”

“Go out the front door now, and quietly,” I ordered. “Once you get outside, book it to your house, because you know he’ll wake up the second the front door opens. So just, you know, be fast.” It was his best hope.

“My dad is going to shoot me as I come into the house if he realizes where I’ve been.”

He had a point. Their dad was just about as obsessively overprotective of me as my own.

“Go. Pretend it’s a normal morning. Say you went for a walk or something. I’ll see you at school.”

He sat up, took a deep breath, then abruptly bent to me, placing a quick, hard kiss on my mouth, giving me very solid eye contact. “You look beautiful in the morning. That’s the face I want to wake up to for the rest of my life.”

And with that, he left.

A few seconds later the front door gave its familiar little twang. So much for quietly.

I groaned.

I was so screwed.

And my dog was still gone.

I ran before school. I needed it.

Max still wasn’t home.

The house had been locked.

I kept not thinking about that.

I’d slept badly, my dreams full of dark trees and warm hands and Declan saying Always like it meant something.

Then there was Clayton. That’s the face I want to wake up to for the rest of my life.