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Thoughts flew around in my head like butterflies trapped in a jar. Had he seriously just offered to be my boyfriend? I opened my mouth to speak, but I had no idea what to say.
“It wouldn’t be real, of course,” he added. “We’d just make your parents think it was.”
My soaring heart suddenly plummeted through my body, crashing in my stomach with a heavy thud.
“Only for show,” I clarified, trying to keep the disappointment from my voice. “To piss them off.”
“Right.”
I pressed my lips together for a moment. “You’d do that?”
His easy smile was back. “Oh, yeah. For all the shit they put you and Colin through? I’m happy to help.”
My pulse sped as I tried to muster the courage to ask for what I wanted. “And what if,” I tried to look confident, even as I felt none of it, “it wasn’t fake? What if we did it for real?”
His eyebrows tugged together, and the corners of his mouth turned down. “No way. You remember your brother happens to be my business partner, right? And he has been pretty fucking clear I’m not supposed to go near you.”
His tone was strange, like he was mad about this rule Colin had put in place, and . . . I got it. I was mad too, because I certainly didn’t need anyone else putting restrictions on my life. Him telling Preston to stay away from me was kind of bullshit.
“He said that?” I asked.
“Yeah. Last year, right after I kissed you.”
My eyes went wide. “You told him we kissed?”
“What? No.” He made a face. “He doesn’t need to know about that.”
“You kept it a secret.” I wasn’t surprised. In fact, I hadn’t told Colin either.
He looked conflicted. “I thought it was better that way.”
“Okay.” I shifted to face forward in my seat, and my tone brightened. “Then I don’t see why you’d have a hard time keeping anything else we want to do a secret.”
Unease flitted through his expression. “That’s a really bad idea.”
It was, but try as he might, it was obvious he didn’t totally hate the idea. Excitement sparked inside me.
“Isn’t that the point, though?” I asked. “You said you could show me how to be bad.”
The conversation with my mom had put me through the wringer, and for once it made it easy for me to be assertive. I spoke without worrying about the consequences.
“You could teach me,” I said. “I mean, there’s so much I haven’t done yet.” My voice fell to a hush, maybe making me sound provocative. “There are things I’ve wanted to do. Things that a good girl shouldn’t.”
He asked it like he couldn’t help himself. “What kind of things?”
I bit my bottom lip. “Like, sex.”
He held perfectly still. Perhaps he was trying not to react. “You telling me you’re still a virgin?”
When I nodded, Preston let out a heavy breath, and he squeezed so hard on the steering wheel it made the leather creak. Then he abruptly swerved right and took an off-ramp. It had seemed like we had been heading toward Colin and Madison’s place, but this was several exits too early, spitting us out in the middle of nowhere.
“Where are we going?”
“Someplace where I can focus on this conversation and not cause an accident,” he muttered.
When we reached the top of the ramp, he glanced around, surveying our surroundings. He turned left and headed down a lonely, two-laned road that bisected newly planted farm fields.
Once the secret was out, it was like I couldn’t hold any of the other ones in. “Whenever I thought about who I might lose my virginity to . . . I always pictured you.”
