“Weird. Relieved. Sad. Angry.”
I feel Finn nod his head. His hand strokes my back.
“Do you want to talk about it?” he asks.
“No,” I say with certainty. I’ll talk about it once I’ve processed. For right now, I want to pretend it doesn’t exist.
“Can we talk about something else?” Finn’s tone is impatient.
Here we go.Finn has been waiting to ask me what the hell he walked into this morning, and now it’s time. He’ll be relieved to hear he walked in onnothing.
“So, you kissed Brady last night?”
I pull back to look at him. My face tenses in irritation.
“What?” Finn makes a face. “He told me on the drive.”
“I don’t think that’s any of your business.”
“Well, then I guess it’s not Brady’s business to know that I’ve been kissing you since we were fifteen.”
I try to shove off him, but he tightens his grip on my waist.
“All is fair, Miss L.”
“Hardly,” I spit out. I’m angry he told Brady about all his stolen kisses. “You did that because you were being spiteful.”
He shakes his head. “Correction. I did that because I was jealous.”
“Because you saw me leaving Brady’s pool house this morning?”
“Yes. But you should know, I told him about kissing youafterhe told me you guys didn’t hook up.”
“Finn! What was the point of telling him if you didn’t have any reason to get back at him?”
“Because he had this look on his face, like he was so certain he won you. Telling him that I’ve been kissing you for years broke through his confidence. And you know he has enough confidence for two people.”
“Did you make it seem like our kisses were passionate and life-altering?” I cross my arms in front of myself so that now Finn is holding up all my weight.
He makes a face like he’s hurt. “Weren’t they?”
I scoff. “Oh, please. You kissed me because it was fun. Because it was a way to get a rise out of me. You never kissed me like you meant it.”
“Have you ever kissed somebody you weren’t sure wanted to be kissed by you?”
I watch Finn’s lips form his words, thinking of how it was those lips who gave me my first kiss so long ago, and he never even knew it. “No.”
“Stealing kisses from you was the only way I could do it without breaking the friend barrier we’d had set up for so long. What would’ve happened back then if I kissed you like I meant it?”
His words, the soft undulations of the lake, the smell of earth and water, they all come together to overwhelm me. I unfold my arms and place them back around his shoulders.
“What would happen if you kissed me like you meant it right now?”
Finn’s mouth is on mine the second I finish asking my question. He takes his hands from my waist, only to slide them down and grab my thighs. He lifts me up, guiding my legs around his waist. Now his hands are free, and he uses them to slide up my back and over my shoulders, then down my arms.
His tongue darts out, licking the seam my lips create. I open up for him, a low moan rising up from my throat. Our tongues meet, tasting, devouring. Finn pulls away to nip at my bottom lip. His hands wind up into my hair, and he pulls until my head’s tipped back, chin to the sky. He let’s go of my lip and focuses on my neck, trailing kisses across my collarbone. He comes to the soft skin where my shoulder meets my neck, and he bites down hard enough to make me gasp.
His teeth release me, but he doesn’t move from the spot. He stays there, kissing and sucking gently on the injured flesh.
