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This isn’t the Lavender I remember. She wasn’t this ballsy. Maybe it’s the alcohol. “You’re drunk and not making sense. Go back to bed, Lavender.”
“Do you think you can still tell me what to do and I’ll just do it? I’m not a little girl anymore, Kodiak. I think for myself now. Why were you in my bedroom?”
“I-I was looking for a place to crash.”
She scoffs. “And I thought I was the shitty liar.” She leans down, long hair brushing over my arm. “Did you want to see what you left behind?”
“You’re the one who never came to say goodbye,” I bite out. It’s really the only thing I have to hold on to now.
She barks a humorless laugh. “I was going to, but you know what made me change my mind?”
My stomach sinks, and I stay silent.
“I saw you kissing that girl, the one you took to your eighth-grade grad dance.” Her fingertip moves in a rhythmic figure-eight pattern over my biceps, an infinite loop, mirroring the one I seem to be forever stuck in when it comes to her. I’m not sure if it’s meant to calm me or her. “I know she was friends with Maverick’s girlfriend at the time. I thought maybe you went with her as a favor. It hurt, but I could understand why you would take her. She was pretty.” She sits on the edge of the bed, her hip resting against the outside of my leg. “I looked out the window and saw you there, and for a moment I thought maybe you were waiting for me to work up the nerve to come over. But you weren’t. You were kissing her inourspot.”
“She kissed me.” I’d been so angry at the time. Angry that Lavender had given me up so completely. Angry that she’d been strong enough to survive without me.
“You kissed her back.” It’s not an accusation; it’s simply a statement of fact. “And maybe I could’ve gotten over that too, but it was whereweused to go when we were kids and wanted space from everyone else. The placeyouused to go when you needed to be alone. You sat there all the time after . . .” She trails off, not needing to finish the statement.After they took you away from me. “And then you ruined all of those memories for me.”
“Lavender.”
“Why, Kodiak? Why there? Why somewhere I could see? Why was she even there?”
Because Maverick invited her. Because he was thinking about himself and what he wanted. But I don’t tell her that, because in doing so, I’d be opening a door I can’t afford to step through.
A shuddering breath leaves her. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter anymore. None of it does.” Her hand smooths over the comforter, perilously close to parts of me I have no business wanting her to touch. But I do, and it’s messing with my head. We’re not kids anymore. We’re teenagers, vital and alive, with an excessive supply of hormones to interfere with our decisions.
She reaches the edge of the comforter, and her fingertips find the bare expanse of my chest. She settles her palm over my heart, so soft and warm.
“There you are,” she whispers.
My fingers flex beside her knee. “Lavender.”
“It’s okay. We’re okay.” My skin burns where her hand rests. “I needed to know if it would feel the same after all this time.” Her palm slides up, over my collarbone, along the side of my neck. “I wasn’t sure if it was all in my head or not.” And there’s the vulnerability I remember.
I say nothing, do nothing. I need to tell her to stop, but I don’t want to. I want to soak in this feeling, because in a lot of ways, it does feel the same. But it’s also so very, very different, because the innocence of childhood has disappeared, and in its wake are feelings that only existed in the periphery before—a whole different kind of need. A new thing to become addicted to. Obsess over.
Something else I can’t afford to indulge in.
“This isn’t a good idea,” I grind out.
“Oh, I know.” She shifts, and suddenly she straddles my hips, settling over my erection on a low whimper.
Too far. This is way too far. I understand now what everyone was so worried about. What they all feared would happen over time. Because it is happening, right now, and I don’t want to stop it.
Reality hits hard when Lavender leans down, her hair sweeping across my chest, breath washing over my face. She still smells faintly of vodka. There’s a chance she’s half drunk, despite having been asleep for hours. It would make sense. Lavender generally isn’t this bold, at least not the old version of her.
I consider the ramifications of allowing this to happen, whateverthisis. Lavender is still in high school. I can’t feasibly date a high school girl, let alone my best friend’s little sister—with whom I already have a tumultuous history.
And that’s just stating the really fucking obvious. There’s also how easy it will be for me to drag her right back down into my pit of hell where she depends on me to make everything okay.
We’re doomed. I’ll ruin her, just like they said I would. I don’t want to shatter someone who’s already cracked.
I take her hands in one of mine, gently—they’re so delicate, so warm, so fucking perfect—and sit up in a rush. “No, Lavender.”
I tip my head back, and her lips connect with my neck. “I can feel you, though,” she whispers against my skin, rolling her hips. “You want me.”
I can’t admit she’s right. I can’t tell her what she wants to hear, because then she’ll be under the false belief that one day, we’ll be able to be together. And we won’t. We can’t. If I break her again, I’ll never survive it. I barely did the first time around. So I do what I must to save her from me.
