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I thought about the question he once posed to me.You’re not afraid of the unknown?“Not weird,” I decided, threading my fingers through his hair, the silkiness slipping against my skin. He leaned into the touch ever so slightly, like we were magnetized together. “Being afraid of change sounds very normal to me. Then again, as a girl who has an alter ego, how normal am I?”
“What about you?” he asked, eyes tracing mine. Even through my denim jeans, I could feel Harry’s touch, like there was no fabric between us at all. “How’s your dream coming along?”
“We’re waiting on acceptance letters,” I told him. “I should hear soon, then the scholarships we submitted should be announced in late April.”
“We.” Harry grabbed my hand, gently pulling it away from his cheek. “That’s not your dream.”
It was my turn to shrug. “I’m keeping my options open.”
More like I was too chicken to tell my parents no. Then again, what would’ve happened if Ihadtold them no? If I’d put my foot down, refused to fill out the stupid packets, refused to go to college?
They’d have filled out the papers themselves, and if they still couldn’t make me go, they’d probably kick me out. If a soldier wouldn’t obey orders, they were given the boot, right?
His eyebrows came together, enough to wrinkle his forehead. “Don’t do that, Destelle.”
My full name on his lips had me stilling. “Do what?”
“Act like what you want doesn’t matter.”
I let out a soft breath, a sick feeling stirring inside me. “It’s not that Idon’twant to go to college. I just…don’t want them to tell me what I can and can’t do, you know?”
He smoothed his hand over my knee, the friction soothing. He didn’t say anything, just listened.
“What I want doesn’t matter to them. Not always.” That was why ditching the volunteering over the past few weeks made me feel so powerful. I finally had control over my own life. “Margot says I need to stand up to them, but I don’t even know how. Maybe that’s why I want to travel so badly—I just want to run away.”
“You want to experience life and what it has to offer you,” he corrected. “That’s not a bad thing.”
It felt like a bad thing. Not letting my parents have control was terrifying. What would my life look like beyond them?
Staring into Harry’s beautiful eyes, a pit in my stomach took hold, growing wider and bigger with each passing second. Here I complained about my parents when he didn’t get to live a life with his.
“Sorry for unloading all that on you,” I said a little awkwardly, feeling my cheeks warm up. “I…I want to be open with you. I don’t want any more secrets.” Harboring the Stella secret for so long made me never want to go back to the realm of secret-keeping.
Harry looked at me for a moment before something dark passed over his gaze. It was a shadow much like the expression he’d had moments ago, like something unnerving passed through his thoughts. I wanted to stop and ask him about it, ask him what was on his mind, but he spoke first. “I’ll always listen.”
“Me too,” I told him, touching my fingertips to the lines of his tattoo. I could feel his pulse beating underneath his skin, and suddenly I couldn’t help but notice how close he was, still crouched in front of me. Even though I didn’t have the Stella wig on, I had the urge to pull my hair away from my neck. “I’m always here to listen too.”
Delicately, Harry reached up and wound one of my curls around his finger, studying it. “Sometimes I forget,” he murmured.
“Forget what?”
“About this.” He wound my hair another time, careful not to tug. “I spent nearly three weeks thinking about you. AboutStella. Picturing the black hair, bangs—sometimes, when I think about you, I find myself—”
“Forgetting that I look like this? Pink and proper and curly?”
Before the uncertain feeling swamped through me, he coasted his palm along the surface of my curls delicately, careful not to tangle. “Curly hair or straight, you’re beautiful. I love both.”
The way he dropped that l word startled me, but in a way that had me leaning closer to him.Beautiful.I love both. The entire time I held my Stella secret, I’d been so afraid he might think it was weird—might prefer one over the other. But he thought both were beautiful. Both sides ofmewere beautiful.
He watched me for a moment longer, long enough that I thought he might dive into whatever was on his mind. Instead, he leaned forward and pressed his mouth to mine, as delicate as a spring breeze. I inhaled softly, drawing in the sweet scent of him. His palms still pressed into my knees, his torso caught halfway between them.Closer, my mind sang, blood pounding to agree.More.
Even though we’d been together for a month, our kisses had been nothing more than glancing, a few seconds at most. But this, with no prying eyes anywhere in sight, suddenly took a charged turn.
And I wassohere for it.
Harry pushed onto his knees so that our mouths were at the same height, and then he edged me backward. I moved until my head touched his pillowcases, his scent everywhere, surrounding me. The bed made a noise as he leaned over me, never breaking the mind-melting kiss. I nudged his loose T-shirt upward, trailing my fingers along the bare skin of his side—his very muscular side.
Every time his mouth touched mine, my heart pulsed as if on the brink of exploding. As if someone had rigged it to a live wire and too many jolts of electricity were shocking it, leaving it trembling and shuddering. His hands were gentle, one threading into my hair, the other trailing the length of my body. One of my hands wrapped around his back, trailing my fingers along the line of his spine.
