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No. No fucking way.
So, yeah, I walked over there, acted like I’d been looking for her everywhere—and I made sure to touch her in a way that would get the point across, tell Zak she didn’t belong to him anymore.
Charlie acted like she was uncomfortable in the beginning, and she wanted to pull away. I could see it in her eyes—they’d gone wide as saucers. I would’ve laughed, if the situation was different. But it wasn’t, and we stood there with her ex, so I held her closer to me, my hand beneath the bottom hem of her stupid old lady sweater, my fingers curled around her waist with a grip of steel.
“Boyfriend, huh? I didn’t know she had a boyfriend.” I didn’t miss the way Zak’s gaze fell to Charlie, as if he was trying to detect the lie. “Charlie and I used to date—for a few years, actually.” The way he declared it, so smugly… let’s just say he was lucky I was holding onto her, otherwise I would’ve broken his fucking nose.
I grinned at him, my comeback instant: “Thatisfunny. She hasn’t mentioned you once. Those few years must not have been that great.” If this fucking kid thought he could intimidate me, he needed to take a look in the goddamned mirror. He wasn’t exactly scrawny, but he wasn’t impressive, either. I had at least ten inches on him, and a lot more muscle.
“I’m sorry,” Zak said, not sounding very sorry at all. In fact, he sounded annoyed. “Who, exactly, are you? I don’t remember seeing you inside the house.” He was trying to get my name, so he could look into me, maybe find some dirt on me so he could convince Charlie to break up with me and give him a second chance or some shit.
But that wasn’t going to happen.
“We’ve been over this,” I said, starting to trace shapes on Charlie’s skin beneath her stupid sweater. I heard her inhale the moment I started doing it, her back rigid. She was tense. This was a tense situation, and I probably wasn’t making it any better, but I couldn’t stop myself. “I’m her boyfriend. You’re not.”
Zak’s nostrils flared, and he glanced at Charlie. “Are you really seeing this asshole? He doesn’t seem like your type, Charlie.” Trying to reason with her, get her to dump me. As if I’d let her walk away from me and go to him.
“Go ahead, Charlie, tell your ex you’ve moved on to bigger and better things,” I whispered loud enough for Zak to hear. I shot him a glare. “Emphasis on the bigger part.”
I got a kick out of the murderous look Zak gave me right then. I wanted to laugh so hard, but I managed to hold it in, for Charlie’s sake.
Couldn’t get into a fist fight with her ex, even though I really, really wanted to put him in his place.
Charlie swallowed, and she carefully set a hand on my abdomen, light enough that she put no pressure on the wound beneath my shirt. She was basically hugging me, nestled under the crook of my arm. I mean, come the fuck on. This Zak had to realize he couldn’t fuck with her any more.
“He’s really my boyfriend,” Charlie said, slow to meet Zak’s gaze. To me, she whispered, “Come on. We should go—”
But Zak still wasn’t getting the hint. “No way,” he mumbled, shaking his head over and over. “No fucking way. I don’t believe this. I don’t believe for one second that you’d ever date an asshole like him.”
“He doesn’t believe us,” I mused, and I angled my head down to Charlie. She was busy staring at Zak, but when I stopped talking, she turned her face up toward me, a look of confusion in her eyes. “Maybe we should prove it to him.”
I knew Charlie was even more confused after that, which was why I didn’t give her the chance to say no. If she said no, that’d only embolden this boy more, and we had to nip his interest in the bud.
Lifting my free hand, I brought it to Charlie’s face, and I ran my fingertips down along her cheek, stopping only when my fingers reached her chin. I didn’t hesitate after that. I leaned over—or leaned down, however you wanted to put it—and brought my lips to hers. A sharp pain erupted in my gut from the way I had to bend to accommodate our height difference, but I pushed the pain away, because it was nothing.
The pain was nothing.
Her lips on mine, on the other hand… waseverything.
I breathed her in, stole the air from her lungs, and still I demanded more. Had to make it last, make it count. No little peck on the lips would do. The only kind of kiss that would shut this fucker up was the kind of kiss you saw in movies, fast and slow at the same time, greedy and desperate and full of hunger with every push and pull of your lips.
Charlie’s lips were a lot softer than I thought they’d be—not that I’d thought of them often, or, you know, at all, because I didn’t. I hadn’t. Not really.
I would now, though.
It started as a show, a display of overenthusiasm, but it didn’t end that way. By the time I pulled my mouth off hers, I’d completely forgotten the only reason I’d kissed her was because we had an audience of one, her ex.
No, by the time I tore my lips from hers, it’d become a laborious effort, and I breathed hard, gazing down at her, watching as she lifted her eyelids with the kind of sluggish haze only real passion could bring.
Zak glared, daggers in his eyes. Charlie watched me, pupils dilated, her lips parted as she tried in vain to calm her lungs. And I—goddamn it all, I wanted to kiss her again.
“Come on,” I said, taking her hand in mine. “Let’s blow this joint.” My hand squeezed hers, and before I pulled her away from her ex, I tossed the guy one last look over my shoulder. My sunglasses made everything dark, but I could see the fiery hatred, the searing jealousy on his face.
Good. Let him drown in what he’d lost.
We walked away, though I didn’t really know where we were going. Just away. But not once did I let her hand go. I kept her tiny hand tucked in mine as I lead the way.
Charlie was quiet. She didn’t say a word. Maybe because there wasn’t much left to say after that. That kiss… the way her lips felt on mine; I couldn’t get it out of my head. It was like the scene was stuck on replay in my mind, and the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to push Charlie up against the nearest tree in the tree lawn and kiss her again.
