“Probably.”
“My father will bench you.”
“Maybe.”
“You’ll regret it.”
“Possibly.”
“Reece—”
I don’t let her finish.
I close the distance and kiss her.
It’s impulsive, reckless even, but the second my mouth meets hers, everything else falls away. The street, the stadium, the consequences I should be worried about, but suddenly can’t remember.
There’s onlyher.
She freezes for half a heartbeat, and I think I’ve miscalculated, pushed too far, too fast. But then her hands fist in the front of my jacket, pulling me closer, and she kisses me back with a ferocity I wasn’t expecting.
Her mouth is soft and demanding all at once, her lips parting under mine as I tilt my head to deepen the kiss. She tastes faintly of mint and something sweeter underneath, and when I slide my hand up to cradle the back of her neck, she makes a low, involuntary sound against my mouth.
I press her back against the roller door, my other hand bracing against the metal beside her head, and she arches into me, her fingers tangling in my hair. The kiss turns hungrier, desperate, all the tension snapping into something tangible and electric.
Her nails scrape lightly against my scalp, and I groan, breaking the kiss to trail my mouth along her jaw, down the curve of her neck. She tilts her head back, her breathing ragged, and I feel her pulse hammering beneath my lips.
“Reece,” she breathes out, and it’s half warning, half plea.
I pull back just enough to look at her. Her lips are swollen, her eyes dark and glassy, and her chest is rising and falling in quick, shallow breaths.
“Tell me to stop,” I murmur.
She stares at me, her hands still twisted in my jacket. “I should.”
“But are you going to?”
A beat. Two.
Then she pulls me back down, kissing me again, harder this time, more certain. I slide my hand down to her waist, fingers pressing into the leather of her jacket, and she hooks one leg around mine, leveraging closer until there’s no space left between us.
The world could end right now, and I wouldn’t notice.
I don’t know how long we stand there, seconds, minutes, or hours. Time blurs, loses meaning, and becomes irrelevant compared to the taste of her mouth and the way her body fits against mine.
When we finally break apart, we’re both breathing hard, our foreheads pressed together.
“Okay,” she whispers.
“Okay?”
“Okay.” She exhales shakily. “We have to stop.”
“Do we?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
