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Una broke away first, inhaling a deep breath. My lungs forgot how to work; all the oxygen depleted from my body.
At least I would die happy, having the last thing I did being kissing Una.
“Technically, I meant no rules in the game…” she muttered.
I shook my head. “Specifics,” I replied. “Who needs them?”
With that, my hands went to her waist, her hands encircling my neck, and we continued right where we left off, standing in the heart of the overgrown field.
Just the two of us.
Chapter 23
Una
I was soscrewed.
Kissing Charlie—rather, making out with him for what felt like hours—while playing soccer yesterday was the wrong move.
Not that I regretted it. But it totally threw my plans off. How could I show him that true love was a dead theory when we didthat?
I couldn’t.
And now, I didn’t want to.
I wasn’t in love with him. That I knew for one hundred percent sure. I still didn’t have to believe in love in order to make out with someone.
But proving my point would be next to impossible. Which meant my entire scheme was up in flames. Now I was playing by Charlie’s rules.
Pulling out of the contract wasn’t an option. He would know something was up, that I planned to sabotage the whole thing to begin with.
The thought crossed my mind for a second late last night, when I laid in bed, wide awake, replaying the entire afternoon.
The contract still stood. But for the first time, I wasn’t concerned about it. I sort of… wanted it. Being with Charlie was fun. He was an entertaining guy. A bit too unrealistically nice at times, but it was so sweet, it was cute.
That sentence alone scared me. Ihatedsugary sweet people. They were all fake, with ulterior motives. That I understood—ulterior motives.
But Charlie wasn’t fake. If it were all an act, I would have figured it out by now. I could pinpoint the pseudo-nice people within seconds. They weren’t hard to find—with as many stepmothers as I had over the years, I was an expert at sniffing them out.
Charlie Henrikson was genuine. He was kind for the sake of being kind. Because it made him happy to see other people happy.
He was happiest lately whenIwas happy. The pure bursts of laughter, the smile that stretched his cheeks and made the skin by his eyes crinkle. That all came when he was with me. He had been practically glowing after our make-out session yesterday, walking on air as we retrieved the ball I had kicked out of bounds with my pretend goal.
He even held my hand as we went back to my car. That was after we played and kissed for another thirty minutes, until we were both too exhausted to continue.
To sum it all up—I was completely screwed.
But I wasn’t upset about it.
“Squidlet?”
Dad’s voice jolted me back to reality. I had been mindlessly pushing around the food on my plate for a few minutes while he occupied my thoughts.
“What?” I snapped back, in a harsher tone that I meant to.
“I asked where you were yesterday. You were supposed to help me clean up the backyard.”
My face dropped when I remembered. Dad had asked over a week ago to help him tackle the overgrown garden and random clutter the previous tenant left behind before we moved in. Ali had done a bit of work with him right when we moved in, but he said he wanted to spend some ‘quality father-daughter time’ with me.
