Probably more than everything.
I’d take the blame for every glitter bomb ever launched in Shipwreck. I’d own up to being the one who taped a kazoo to Waverly’s armored SUV’s tailpipe a year ago in an incident that shut down the entire town for three hours. And I’d claim credit for the goats that got loose during my first trip to Shipwreck and still are all over town, along with their offspring now.
None of which I’ve done or had anything to do with, but Iwantto confess to everything when he stares at me like that.
You know the way.
Like he’s figuring out that he’s been my secret pretend boyfriend for the past year.
And I’m still unprepared for his first statement on the situation.
“You named me Steve?”
I force a bright smile that probably looks like the expression a panicked goat would make when it comes face-to-face with a lion. “Haha, yeah, probably should’ve gone with Colt or Steel or Aiden. Actually, I don’t know why I would’ve thought you looked like an Aiden. But there was an Aiden that my grandmother hated when I was growing up, and I don’t mean my brother, I mean the other Aiden. The one who used to draw penises on my arm in math class. Although sometimes I hated my brother too, but you know how it goes with siblings.”
He’s not saying a word.
Not interrupting me.
In fact, his gaze is dipping to my lips.
That kiss recreates itself in my mind, and the only reason I don’t shiver again is that I’ve decided I’m done shivering today. Possibly for the rest of my life.
I’m all shivered out, and I’m in control of my body.
My eyes dip to his lips, and my nipples, vagina, belly, knees, and heart demonstrate that I’m full of shit if I think I’m in control of anything right now.
“My grandmother’s the type who thinks a woman’s job is to get married and have babies, and I have a pretty crappy track record with men, so I’ve decided I’m never getting married, and I’m not interested in doing the single mother thing, but she wouldn’t stop asking who I was dating, no matter how many times I told her I like being single and that my life is fulfilling all on its own. It used to be funny, like, haha, of course that’s what older generations think, but the past two or three years, she’s gotten…harder? Yeah, harder about it, so I just kinda…snapped…one day, and the next thing I knew, I was sending her a picture of you and making up stories about us dating so that she’d leave me the ever-lovingfuckalone about it.”
He keeps watching me, not saying anything, and my mouth keeps verbally vomiting when I should probably shut up. “I swear on my honor as a human being whose life has mostly been guided by guilt and shame, even if I’m working on getting over that, that I never once imagined that we were actually dating. I didn’t tell anyone else we were dating. I mean, Tillie Jean was in on it, but it’s Tillie Jean. If there’s mischief, she’s in, you know? But she knows the truth. She knows why. I didn’t send pictures to anyone else. I didn’t fantasize about actually dating you, and I have never masturbated to thoughts of you.”
Crap.
Craaaaap.
The minute you say you haven’t done anything, that’s like saying youhavedone it, even if Ihaven’t, but I certainly will now after kissing him, and unlike Mr. Straight Face, I have a face so expressive that outer space aliens could probably translate everything that’s going through my brain right now.
Davis continues to stare at me in silence.
Heat floods my entire body, including my eyeballs.
No.
No no nope nope nope.
I will not cry.
I won’t.
Even in absolute mortified embarrassment.
“Okay,” he says.
I suck in a breath so fast that I choke.
He releases his grip on me and lets me cough myself out.
You know what’s dumb?
