When the song ends, I slowly pull away, but he keeps his arms around me with his hands resting at the small of my back. His eyes are glazed over, and when he looks down at me, his gaze drops lower, stopping at my lips.
Something has been on my mind every now and then since that day in the closet, and right now, with him this close and almost like he’s at my mercy … I need to ask him.
“Hendrix?” I whisper.
“Yeah, Nineteen?”
I chew my lip nervously, looking down for a split second before daring to meet his gaze again.
“That day in the supply closet, when you … well, not the thing you’re thinking … what we did. I don’t mean that.” I pause. “I was about to have a panic attack, and you stopped it, making me breathe with you.” I sigh. “How did you know what to do?”
It’s personal. I’m asking him to tell me if he gets panic attacks. I don’t have them a lot, but the times I have, they basically left me feeling completely alone. I don’t know why, but even the thought that he may get them, too, makes me feel less lonely.
He grows somber, though I can sense a certain type of pain in his eyes. The kind of pain that you don’t just see … it’s palpable.
“My little sister would get them,” he finally says softly. “I wanted to be able to help her through them, so I did my research.”
So, he isn’t fucked up like me.
“Oh,” I whisper. “That was … that was really nice of you to do for her.”
I shouldn’t be disappointed. I wouldn’t wish panic attacks on anyone. But for some fucked-up reason, I guess I thought it was something that connected me with him. There’s this magnet, pulling us together. But there’s also a darkness that swirls between us that I can’t explain.
“Do you get them a lot?” He asks the question softly, though it’s such a big, bold, deep one that I don’t even know how to answer him—or if I even want to.
“Not really,” I say honestly. “I’ve only had four in my life. One of them you saw, and the others … well, I know what to avoid now to stop them from happening.”
I don’t tell him that my mom and I were held hostage during a shooting at a gas station when I was a little kid. Or that my dad jumped through a window just to save us and ended upgetting shot. I was so little that I don’t even remember most of it, just know what I’ve been told. And yet when I hear a noise that sounds like a gunshot, it ignites something inside of me, sending my body into a panic.
“I see.” He glides his hand up, cupping my cheek.
I swear that the thunderous music on the floor beneath us disappears. I know he wants to say something; I can see it in his eyes. Part of me knows I should tell him right now that I need to get back to my friends before he has the chance to say whatever it is. But then there’s a bigger part of me that’s rooted here, waiting for his words desperately.
“Isla,” he rasps, his dark hair hanging on his forehead in the sexiest way.
“Yeah?” I barely croak out the four-letter word as we both subtly take a step toward the wall until my back is up against it with him hovering over me.
“I really want to kiss you right now.” He speaks deeply, his voice still tender and sweet. “Please?”
In the supply closet, he was tender, but that was because he had to be, given the circumstances. Right now, he’s being so soft and so nice, and I can’t decide if it’s an act to get into my pants or if he really does want to kiss me.
No matter what his reasons … I want to kiss him too. So, I open my mouth to say yes, and I almost get the word out when loud voices stop me.
“Dude, we were wondering where the fuck you were!” a guy on the hockey team—Jameson West—hollers out, with a few others tagging along behind him up the stairs.
When he sees me, his grin only grows, but I’m too dumbfounded to move. Caught like a deer in headlights, unsure of what to even do.
“We’ll leave you two alone.” He laughs before turning back toward the stairs. “Guess Hunt is following through with that toast we made. He’s fixing to get laid!”
As soon as they are out of sight, my eyes fly to Hendrix’s, and my nostrils flare in anger. I’m so stupid. I know what kind of guy he is, so I shouldn’t even be surprised.
“A toast, huh?” I growl, narrowing my eyes.
“Isla—”
I shove him back, not allowing him to say another word before I take off for the staircase. He grabs my wrist, but I quickly tug it away from him.
“Isla, would you just fucking listen for a second?” he barks. “Just listen to me, damn it!”
