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Not wanting to be rude, I plaster on the most genuine smile I can muster. “Yeah, it was great.”
She nods, takes a bite out of Mitch’s leftover apple. “We worked on it all morning.”
“Cool.” I stand again, and again, Rhys pulls me to sit back down. “I have to piss. You want me to do it right here?”
“Oh. Why didn’t you say so?”
This time, I’m allowed to leave, and I practically sprint over to the football field. Ava is waiting in her usual spot, and I race up the steps two at a time. “I had to sit with the stupid team in the cafeteria and the—”
She holds out a container, cutting me off. “I made you lunch,” she says, pouting. “But it’s probably cold now.”
“I’m so sorry,” I rush out, sitting in front of her. “I got stuck. I had to sit through the cheerleaders—”
“The welcoming routine,” she mumbles. “Shoot. I forgot about that.”
I want to crack a joke about how she used to be one of them, but she wasn’t the one to tell me, and I don’t know if she wants me knowing. “It was horrible,” I assure.
She rolls her eyes. “Yeah. It’s such a travesty that you had to watch a bunch of hot girls in super short skirts screaming your name over and over.” She mocks fanning herself. “Oh, Connor, Connor, Connor,” she moans.
The sound replays in my head for longer than it should, and I stare, unabashed. Her lips are red, wet, and I can’t help but lick my own, wonder for the umpteenth time what those lips would feel like against mine, what she’d taste like. I realize she’s watching me, too, her focus on my mouth. She’s the first to break our trance, looking away and down at her hands. “Are you still okay to give me a ride home later?”
“Of course.”
“And um… what you said last night, in your text, did you mean it?”
I swallow, nervous. “Which part?”
“Did you lie about any of it?”
“No.”
She nods, slowly, but still doesn’t make eye contact. And before I even get a chance to open the lunch she made me, the warning bell goes off. I curse at the same time Ava drops to her knees beside me. She settles her hands on my chest, her gaze intense and locked on mine. Her lips part, her tongue darting out, spreading moisture on the parts of her I’ve been fixated on for days. Her touch drifts up to my shoulders, my nape, and I’m frozen with fear but melting with desire, and then she moves an inch closer and closer and closer, her eyes drifting shut and mine doing the same, my own hands blindly finding the small bit of skin between her knees and her skirt. She whispers my name, and I groan in response, and then her mouth’s on mine, so fucking soft—a complete contrast to the instant reaction in my pants—and my lips part to take hers in. Her hands are in my hair, fingers laced through the strands, and mine are on her thighs, under her skirt, and she’s warm… warm enough to light a fire inside me. I need air, but I need her more, and when the tip of my tongue searches for hers, finds it, I squeeze her legs—an impulse—and she tugs at my hair, pulls me closer again. My head tilts one way, hers the other, and we’re two jagged pieces of two different puzzles that somehow fit perfectly when we’re connected. Her breaths are sharp, short, and I hear every single one through the loud thump, thump, thumping in my chest. She’s sitting higher on her knees, and my hands move behind her, to the spot right beneath her ass. She moans out my name, and all I can do is open my mouth wider, kiss her harder. So many fucking hours of fantasizing about this moment, and never—not once—did it ever feel like this. This… this…
The air hits my mouth where she should be, and I open my eyes to see her watching me, her lips red and raw from my assault. “Holy shit,” she whispers, and I use her legs to bring her back to me. She falls, almost on top of me now, and I continue where we left off. This time, I go for her neck, her jaw. She holds me to her, her fingers running through my hair and I’m so fucking turned on, I can’t see straight. In the distance, the bell rings again, and Ava pulls away, her eyes glazed. “We should go,” she says, but I don’t want to. I don’t want to stop, and I don’t want to leave her, and I don’t want this moment to end.
She giggles, pulling away completely. She adjusts her clothes, and I adjust the bulge in my pants. She gives me one final kiss. Chaste. Then she smiles. “Now you no longer have to wonder,” she says.
“Wonder what?” I breathe out, confused.
“What it would be like to kiss me… just once.”
TWENTY-SIX
ava
How much damage can one kiss possibly do?
A lot, apparently, because it’s all I can think about for the rest of the day. His lips, his hands, all the ways he touched me, the ways he made me feel… I can’t focus on anything else. Not the classwork in biology. Not a phone ringing somewhere in the distance. Not Rhys hissing my name.
Something nudges my elbow, pulling me from my daydream. I turn to Rhys sitting next to me, my eyes narrowed in annoyance. “What?”
“Your phone’s going off,” he says, and I look up and around me, and everyone is staring. Then reality hits and hits hard. I reach for my pocket, see Krystal’s name on the screen. I answer it without any regard for where I am or what I’m doing.
“Your mom’s having an episode, Ava. You should come home right now. Trevor’s on his way.” I don’t even respond before I’m on my feet and heading toward the door.
No one asks what I’m doing or where I’m going; they already know.
The two minutes waiting for Trevor in the school parking lot feels like hours.
