Any second now, he’ll push me down. Make me suck it back.
“You’ve never … had cherry pie? I’ll have Blu make us one.”
My focus snaps back to the glint in his and I blink. It’s so out of place to say something like that right now that I can’t stop the equally out of place chuckle that fizzles up.
“I actually haven’t. I don’t think.”
Tristen’s smile grows and it makes my stomach feel all warm again until it’s taking over all the turbulence inside me and replacing it with something so foreign that I twitch for a different reason.
I inhale deep and it’s all herbs and earth.
The scent of my undoing.
“There he is,” he whispers, his thumb swiping gently below my bottom lip.
I lean in.
Press my lips to him.
And I take my first kiss.
Chapter 31
Emmett
The track isn’t asbusy as it was yesterday. There are still people milling about, riders making deeper grooves in the dirt with each lap. Some talking, some tinkering like we are.
I’m not sure why I was expecting another blow out the second we arrived, but I shook in my seat the whole way here. Even as we unloaded Envy and all Tristen’s tools, I vibrated so hard I could barely help.
But then there’sanotherperson that nods their heads and greets Tristen like they know him.
Do they know him?
Is he … popular?
He smiles. Says ‘sup’ on more than one occasion.
Then buries his face back in the frame of the bike.
His nails are stained black around the beds. There’s a smear on his cheek and forehead from where he wiped at it.
Just as there’s a darkness beneath his eyes and a purpling around the splits in his skin.
My stomach twists up.
That sticker fell off his brow. It could bleed any moment, couldn’t it?
“Ah, shit,” Tristen hisses, and I jolt like I’ve been caught watching something I shouldn’t have been.
My face goes hot.
“Can you—” He tips his head to something inside the bike that he’s working on. “Lift that up for me. Aht—” I freeze with my hands midair and look up at him. “Don’t get your sleeves dirty, bubbles.”
My stomach flips and I release the hold I have on the cuffs of the hoodie, freeing my hands.
I have no idea what he’s doing—whatI’mdoing—but he hums something that sounds appreciative and reaches back inside.
It makes my stomach flutter.
