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She stared quietly at him, wondering what would make him take her hand again. As if her silence could keep them frozen here, stop time from marching forward.
Colin broke that spell. “Do you want me to come with you?”
The Colin Benjamin she’d once known would never have made such an offer, and she nearly took him up on it. But instead she shook her head. “I’ll be okay. Mom’s here.” She wrung her hands in her lap to stop thinking about holding his. He needed to go home and get back to his life, and she needed distance to remember why he was a thorn in her side, not a rose in her hand. No longer denying her feelings toward him didn’t change the fact that he was still a threat to Wendy’s advisee position and the spot on her research trip.
“Do you want me to wait? Give you a ride home?”
“Colin.” Allison held his gaze. “You’ve done enough. Thank you. Get yourself home. Or you can crash at my mom’s if you’re too tired?” She started to fumble in her pocket for the keys.
He shook his head. “I’m fine.” He placed his hand over hers to still her movements. “But I want to make sure you are too.”
I’m not,Allison thought to herself. “I am,” she said out loud.
He picked up her phone from where it lay on the dashboard. “You have my number, right? You didn’t delete it?”
“I do.”
“Are you sure? I don’t see it?” His finger scrolled over the screen. Allison needed to put a security code on that thing.
“Try… Unknown Number.” Her cheeks found heat in the cold night air.
His brow furrowed, Colin kept searching, then abruptly stopped. And barked out one of those amazingly unattractive laughs.
She shrugged. “You can change it if you want.”
“No way.” He tossed her a wide grin, a hint of mischief playing at its edges. Its roguishness did unmentionable things to her insides. “This is way better. The anonymity is ironically more personal.”
“Give me that.” She went to snatch the phone from his hands, but instead her fingers closed around his, the silicon case pressed like a chaperone between their palms.
This touch felt different than earlier. His skin had an unexpected warmth, like his fingers and knuckles were blushing, and his pulse skipped beneath her thumb where it settled on the inside of his wrist. Allison’s entire body thrummed in time with it.
They were both leaning in, squaring off the way they always did, but the energy between them was charged with something new. Less sharp and more… wild… his breath hot on her cold cheeks, her long hair dusting the skin of his forearm.
Allison needed to get out of this car, or take her phone away, or at least sit back against the seat, but he was like a laser beam from one of those old sci-fi books, and she was caught in him, unable to move, to think, to do anything except be this close.
His hazel eyes swept over her face, keen as ever, cataloging every blink, every twitch, every deep inhale. She smelled like old beer and had bags under her eyes and stale donut on her breath, and yet none of that stopped his tongue slipping from his mouth to moisten his lips.
They were sitting outside a hospital. Jed was in there unconscious,his heart failing. Her mother was waiting for her. Yet Allison was entirely preoccupied by Colin’s mouth. She was horrible. Maybe he was her punishment for being the worst daughter at the most inopportune moment.
After far too much mental and physical effort, she detached her phone from his hands and pushed open the car door. The frigid air was a balm to her hot flesh. “I should go. Thank you again.” She meant it, even if it was all she could give him.
Before she pulled herself from the vehicle, Colin said her name. His voice hitched, tender and graveled, like he was speaking a spell or a sacred word. No one else said it that way, transforming three syllables into something worthy of reverence. Something special.
As ifshewere something special.
Every part of Allison stuttered.
For someone who could often barely function without considering (and planning for) every worst-case scenario, she could also be oddly impulsive.
Which explained why, instead of getting out of the car, instead of calling her mother to let her know she’d arrived, instead of waving, clearing her throat, having any kind of mundane, rational response, Allison cupped Colin’s cheek in her hand. His stubble scraped against her palm as he turned his face into it to press a light kiss to her skin.
“Colin?” Her voice had gone husky, her throat full of sandpaper. Was she really doing this? Right here? Right now? With her father in the hospital and her mother waiting for her? With everything she already knew about Colin Benjamin and his tendency to crack her heart in two? What if she didn’t survive it this time? What if it ruined all her plans for herself?
Colin took her hand in his and gently exposed her inner wrist. His head dipped low. Allison shuddered as his lips met the tiny crescent scar beside her paths of veins. His mouth was everything soft, so light against that sensitive patch of skin it was hard to be sure it was real.
When he lifted his head to peer at her, his gaze was full of fire. It ignited something in Allison too.
The two of them crashed together.
