Wesley nudges the brakes, slowing down even though we’re nowhere near the house yet. Then we stop entirely. The look on his face drowns out all sound, din pushed beyond our bubble by magic. “That’s a lie,” he says quietly.
Blood drains from my extremities, rushing to my brain. “What’s a lie?”
He stares straight ahead, deathly pale save the bright red blooms on his cheekbones, ruddy blotches under a stubbly beard. I follow his line of sight, trying to see whatever it is that he’s seeing. Wesley’s elbow bends, white-knuckled fist easing the gearshift into park.
“Is something—?” I begin to ask, when Wesley unbuckles his seat belt without warning and gets out of the car. He’s going to run.
Ohno,he’s going to run.
But he doesn’t. He rounds the hood of the car, stride powerful, coming right for me. All of my attention telescopes down to that minute flex in his arm as he throws open the passenger door.
My jaw drops, another question forming.
He cradles my face in his hands, ever so gentle. I slacken in thefierce hold of his stare, his pupils hungry stains drinking up the iris. He is himself, endearing and unsure, but he’s also under siege by something new: steely determination. Wesley’s mentioned he often has trouble expressing himself, but mouths can speak in more ways than one. For this, all he needs is a kiss.
He answers my question with shuttering eyelids, no room to wonder anymore because this isn’t anI like you, maybeor anI’m into you, a littlekiss. It’s a force that cuts me off at the knees, stealing the breath from my throat like pulling rope, both of us tangled and tethered to each other as we pitch over the cliff’s edge.
He jams the button on my seat belt to release me, bringing me to him. I snatch him closer, too, greedy. My arms slide around his neck as though they belong there, slick with rain. I smile dreamily against his mouth, face upturned, mist in my hair.
“I’m sorry,” he pants when we break. “I had to... Ihadto—”
I don’t let him finish, not done falling yet.
I drag him back for more. Wesley goes rigid, then every part of him loosens, a small sigh escaping like a candle blown out. He wants and I want, no chance of miscommunication. Kissing him, I feel powerful. In command, even as I fumble and paw. There’s no such thing as a missed mark, only shifting ones.
At long last, I get to do what I’ve so badly wanted for weeks, plunging my fingers into his hair. Thanks to rain, the strands are more slippery than supple, fresh water lifting the strong scent of his shampoo. His mouth is pure satin everywhere except a crescent of tougher skin where his top teeth have dug into his bottom lip for years. Anxiety. Nerves. Self-punishing, but so painfully sweet with me.
We break to readjust, trying out new rhythms. While I sense his self-consciousness, perhaps comparing this kiss to what hethinks it should be, I wish he could know how much I love what itis. It doesn’t matter how much pressure he applies, what angles we meet each other at, or his level of confidence. It matters that he gives himself at all.
I want everything, I want all of him, I want to familiarize myself down to every freckle and fine line.
His kiss is the Fourth of July, a Southern summer night. Cicadas and the tongues of smoke off a burning firework—hiss, pop.Hot.A bead of sweat rolls down his temple andoh, he’s good with his hands. Firm, reverent hands, one sliding along my scalp to cup the back of my head, the other undecided between jaw, waist, hip. He feels better than I ever dreamed, and I’ve done quite a lot of dreaming.
He leans back slightly, brows drawn together in mingled desire and trepidation, still not quite sure if he’s doing the right thing. “More,” I murmur into his ear. Wesley shivers, but that crease between his eyes disappears and he switches our positions, him on the seat, pulling me onto his lap. I have to tilt my head so that I don’t bump the roof of the car. There isn’t enough room for us to sit like this comfortably with the door shut, so we leave it hanging open, cold rain streaming in.
My hand lingers at his throat, and the close touch seems to steal something from him. He lets his head fall back, Adam’s apple bobbing up the arched column. I kiss that, too. His breathing comes shallower, shallower. The red blooms on his cheeks are roses, his eyes hooded and glassy.
I like it here, his hand decides, spanning broad fingers across my hip, pressing into a sensitive divot where muscles join. I make a soft sound in his mouth, involuntary; his palm flattens, pressing more, more. I move against him just right, feeling a hard ridge inhis jeans. My skin sears even as goose bumps radiate, awareness never this heightened, and I feel the full vibrancy of it as I burn and burn and burn.
“I’m rusty,” he admits, clearing his throat. “I’ve never slept with anyone, but I’ve kissed. It’s been a long time, though.”
“You’re perfect,” I tell him. He doesn’t kiss like an expert, like a Casanova who’s smooth and sure of his every practiced move. He kisses like Wesley. That’s the new standard.
We kiss and touch and taste, until the rain abates, until my mouth feels bruised and my body is dying for more. But we taper to a natural close, both somehow knowing that this is a kiss, only a kiss. Whether he wants a dynamic with me in which we’ll ever go further than this, I can only guess. As for me, I’m still trying to remember why this was a bad idea. Right now, it feels like there are no bad ideas.
Eventually, I slide off his lap and we emerge in a different world from the one we last stood in, both a little disoriented. When he’s back in the driver’s seat, he sits up straighter than usual. His gaze flicks to the upper-right corner of the windshield, to something in the sky that’s caught his attention, but I can’t remove mine from his face. He looks utterly wrecked in the most wonderful way.
I am under Wesley Koehler’s skin. I don’t know how deep, but I’m there, and I am not imagining it.
Chapter 16
MY FLIMSY, DESPERATE PLANto hide out from Wesley until my feelings for him have ceased to exist has a toolbox full of wrenches in it. For one, it’s hard to do what’s best for you when what youwantisn’t what’s best for you. And what I want is to make out with Wesley again. If we’re going to coexist as platonic pals for the foreseeable ever, putting our tongues in each other’s mouths is not the way to achieve that. I need distance. I need space. I need to eat oversized bowls of tasteless, hearty moral fiber for breakfast.
Once we’re inside the house, I croak that I need a shower, to which he responds that he does as well, leading my mind down a sordid path. A path with cozy alcoves where lovers can rip each other’s clothes off. Falling Stars has such alcoves in abundance. I start dreaming of Wesley under a waterfall resembling the one in our mural; I don’t know what he looks like in the nude, so I conjure up Michelangelo’sDavidfor a baseline, southern region hidden by a grape cluster of bath bubbles popping one by one. Ismack face-first into a closed door before the last bubble pops, smarting my nose.
It’s all on him now. I’m counting on Wesley to shut down and be all brooding and tight-lipped again. It wouldn’t hurt for him to be a little bit awful, too. Maybe he’ll insult something I dearly love, like the plastic flowers I’ve stuck into every crack and crevice, and I’ll stop spending my unconscious hours from midnight through eight a.m. in the red-light district of my brain, lying on a chaise longue as he paints me like one of his French girls. We’ve got to vaporize our attraction. It’s the only way to save this relationship.
Wesley has no regard for crafting a professional relationship or successfully living together in harmony. He’s ruthless sabotage, strolling into the living room just as I’m stretching out with hot chocolate and the remote,The Great British Bake Offqueued up to be my date for the evening. He’s designed to test my restraint in a cream cable-knit cardigan and charcoal wool trousers that I doubt he’s worn more than once. Freshly shaven. Faint traces of cologne, which he never wears, waft toward me. He’s taken special care to smooth his hair, too. I’m dressed in a hot-pink romper and a sparkly wrap like the fun nanny who’s going to entertain his two children while he goes on a sophisticated date with the governor of Vermont.
