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We started moving, falling slowly down the lumpy slope.
“Whoa.”
Gabriel stayed by my side. He said, “I’ll be here the whole time.”
I tested moving side to side a bit, tested the pressure needed to turn my skis together, and before I knew it, we were halfway down.
“This isn’t so bad,” I said, turning my head to see Gabriel.
My body twisted with it. My skis crossed over each other. My balance shifted, twisted, and I started to tumble.
Gabriel was there, just like he said he’d be.
He caught me.
I found myself leaning against his firm chest, his arm around my waist. I looked up into his warm brown eyes. I felt seen and cared for and ridiculously unlike myself.
His lips called to me—pink and plump and tempting.
I breathed in the cold air, filling my lungs with the crisp scents of pine and snow and him.
Before I could overthink it, before I could think at all, I pulled myself upright.
And I kissed him.
TWENTY-TWO
GABRIEL
Layana ambushed me with an assault on all of my senses—she tasted sweet like chocolate chips, she smelled warm and comforting, she moaned ever so softly, and she pulled hard on my jacket as she pressed her pillowy lips to my mouth.
The surprise contact made my entire body tense, every nerve coming to life in a way I’d never felt before.
This small kiss was a tease of what could be, whatwecould be, like this moment the two of us existed in a bubble frozen in time and space, away from reality. She felt amazing, which felt so wrong.
This kiss changed everything.
She pulled back, her hands still lingering on my chest. A pleasant blush tinted her cheeks.
Her bright blue eyes searched my face, then narrowed, suggesting I’d displeased her in some way.
“You’re all stiff as a board,” she said.
Oh I was stiff all right, and not by choice. My body simply reacted to hers, involuntarily.
I clenched my jaw. “You kissed me.”
“It was a friendly, happy, thanks for getting me safely down the mountain smooch. It didn’t mean anything, clearly.”
Clearly? Did she truly feel that way?
Did she not feel the air siphoned from the sky? The irresistible magnetic pull of two opposing forces colliding?
She smiled at me and punched my shoulder. “Let’s go again,friend.”
We were fake friends. The kiss meant nothing to her. None of this was real.
I tried to clear the fog and frustration that battered through my head. I tried to pretend the kiss meant nothing to me, too.
