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Now she’s going to make me suffer.
‘Truth or dare?’
‘Dare,’ Archer says.
Cassie looks me dead in the eyes and says, ‘I dare you to kiss me.’
I laugh, because of course Archer won’t do it. He’s frozen beside me, but instead of saying no, he simply says, ‘You know I don’t—‘
‘I know, I know,’ Cassie interrupts. ‘I know you don’t kiss, but it’s just a game, Arch.’
I hold my breath. I want to tell him no, no I’m not comfortable with any of this, no I won’t speak to him ever again if he does it, but he should be able to make those decisions for himself. If I have to remind him of my boundaries, then I want nothing to do with him.
That doesn’t stop my heart from sinking or stop nausea roiling in my gut when he disentangles himself from me and leans towards Cassie.
He’s doing it. He’s actually kissing his ex in front of me.
I can’t watch. I can’t see his hands on her cheeks or his lips meeting hers or hear the sound of their tongues clashing. I’m going to be sick.
I can’t look at Chase. I can’t look at anything but the sky and wait for it to be over.
I want to cry, but I won’t give Cassie that kind of satisfaction.
I can’t get the image of the kiss out of my mind.
Archer refuses to look at me at all.
I should have let Chase hurt him—
I startle at my name.
Demi has the bottle and she’s looking at Chase.
A hush falls over the meadow. Chase, beside me, is still, but it’s the tension in every line of Archer’s body that alerts me.
‘No,’ Chase says hoarsely. ‘I can’t. I won’t.’
‘It’s only fair,’ Demi points out. ‘Since as Archer kissed Cassie, it’s only fair you kiss Frankie.’
Wait,what?!
He shakes his head, but our eyes lock.
The ground shifts and crumbles around me until it’s just me and Chase. Suddenly, the distance between us seems worlds apart. I want him to be my first kiss—I’ve always wanted him to be my first kiss, and I can see from the spark in his eyes that he wants to be my first, too. Not in the sense that he has any feelings for me, but in the way that there’s a certain pride in being someone’s first something. Firstanything.
And it’s almost like Chase is visualising it for the first time. As if he hasn’t considered me in that regard before. I glimpse the darkening of his eyes and his pulse quicken at his throat.
And despite that, I would have said no, for Archer. Out of respect for him, I would have refused.
But Archer hadn’t expressed any such loyalty to me when he kissed Cassie, had he?
Archer must sense my hesitation, because he clamps his hand around my arm, hard. Hard enough to hurt, to bruise. ‘If you do this,’ he growls in my ear, ‘we’re done.’
I want to tell him we’re already done. That the moment he didn’t say no to Cassie, he betrayed me. That it can’t be one rule for him and another for me.
Instead, I turn to him, and say, ‘It’s just a game, Archer.’
The blood drains from his face. His grip turns crushing, but I yank free and face Chase.
