The only indication of any effect I’m having on her is a minute tremble in her latex-gloved fingertips.
A heady sense of attraction infiltrates the red haze in this tiny room, and I don’t know if I can ignore it for much longer.
There’s a red-button timer to the side of the gridlock, and she sets it for twenty-four seconds. She stands, back pressed against my chest, but I still don’t move.
She whispers without looking at me, “You ready?”
“Always,” I breathe. A tiny shiver ripples through her before she presses the button, and the machine glows to life.
And so do I.
I’m burning like the negative in the machine, so lit up for her that I can’t take it anymore. That silky curve of her neck taunts me from mere inches away, soft and fragrant like her perfume. The timer clicks down as I dare to trace a finger from the angle of her jaw, down her neck, across the strap of her top, across the arc of her shoulder.
She sucks in a tiny gasp but doesn’t move. Doesn’t shy away from my touch.
I revel in my path down the velvet skin of her upper arm until I reach her elbow. Reversing my path, I drag my touch back up, and she shudders.
The timer beeps.
thirty-seven
PRESENT DAY
KATE
Ibusy the quiver in my hands as I withdraw the undeveloped print from the easel, dropping it immediately into the first of the chemical trays the staff member set out for us. She already assured me that each of the chemicals are a steady sixty-seven degrees, so I don’t bother to use the thermometer.
“S-set that timer for sixty seconds, please,” I croak. The timer clicks.
Each nerve is a live wire as Brandon brushes behind me again, sweeping his fingers across the nape of my neck.
“Sixty whole seconds,” he breathes into the dip of my neck, and I swear I feel the press of his lips as he dips his nose against my skin.
“What are you doing, Brandon?” I whisper.
“I thought it was obvious,” he chuckles darkly.
“But no one can even see us here.”
“They could walk in here at any minute,” he murmurs, tugging the swell of my hip around to face him.
I tremble beneath his stare, his touch.
“What are you doing, Brandon?” I repeat, the ache in my voice both a plea to stop and continue. My heart hammers a mile a minute as his lips draw closer to mine.
“The rules,” I say. “We’re friends.”
“Is that what you still want?” he whispers across my shallow breaths.
“I–I don’t know.”
His thumb traces my cupid’s bow, dropping a line across my bottom lip to my chin, which he takes captive with intent.
There is no glowing forging iron here.
No basket of toppling apples ready to shatter this dream.
Because this isn’t a dream.
