“Can I tell you something?”
But suddenly I’m talking again, words spilling out before I can stop them.
“I thought about you too.” My face is burning, but I can’t seem to stop. “Even when I felt like I shouldn’t. Even when I thought you only saw me as a burden—”
“Mira—”
“I kept thinking about your hands.” The confession tumbles out in a rush. “When you changed my bandages. The way your fingers felt against my skin. I couldn’t look at you because I knew—I knew you’d see—”
I clamp my mouth shut, mortified.
But it’s too late.
His eyes have gone dark. Hungry. The ice in them melted into something that makes my skin feel too tight for my body.
“What would I have seen?”
His voice is a low rasp that does things to my insides.
“I...”
My phone is buzzing again. Somewhere in the distance, I can hear students laughing, a frisbee game happening on the quad, the normal sounds of campus life continuing on without us.
But all I can see is him.
“Tell me,” he murmurs. A command wrapped in silk.
“You.” The word comes out choked. “You would have seen how much I wanted y—”
He doesn’t let me finish, with his mouth crashing into mine, and this time there’s no hesitation, no gentleness. His hands are in my hair, and he’s kissing me like I’m oxygen, and he’s been drowning for years, and all I can do is grab fistfuls of his jacket and hold on.
And kiss him back, of course.
I kiss him like I’ve been wanting to since the moment he pulled off his mask in that car. I kiss him like I’m pouring every sleepless night and every forbidden daydream into the space between our mouths.
When we finally break apart, we’re both breathing hard.
“This isn’t the place,” he says roughly.
I nod, still dazed. We’re in public. On campus. Anyone could see—
“Come with me.”
He takes my hand, and my heart skips a beat as his fingers thread through mine like it’s the most natural thing in the world, his grip firm and possessive as he leads me away from the archway, down a path I vaguely recognize, toward the quiet garden behind the old chapel.
It’s deserted at this hour, the late afternoon light filtering through the trees and turning everything soft and golden. A stone bench sits beneath an oak tree, half-hidden by hedges.
Private.
Secluded.
And I barely have time to register any of it before he’s backing me up against the oak tree and his mouth is on my neck.
“I told myself I was protecting you.” His lips trace a path to my collarbone, and I shiver. “Keeping my distance.” A kiss to the hollow of my throat. “Finding you someone better.”
“There is no one better.”
The words slip out before I can stop them, and he freezes against me.
