“Doesn’t mean I have to tell you.”
NINE!
“What if I could help?”
EIGHT!
She’s tucked against my side, deliriously warm, her sweater soft under my hand.
“Yeah, but what if you tried to sabotage me?”
SEVEN!
“Why would I do that?”
SIX!
Now she’s looking up at me and her hand is in the small of my back, and she’s all argumentative and annoyed and so pretty I forget how to talk for a second.
FIVE!
“I’ll tell you if you guess by midnight.”
“What?! That’s?—”
FOUR!
She’s so close I can see every eyelash in the dark, the wide black pools of her pupils, the scratches down her cheek from where she fell. I swallow.
“Better hurry.”
THREE!
“Shit, I don’t know. You?—”
TWO!
“—made a resolution to do more art?”
ONE! HAPPY NEW YEAR!everyone shouts, and the cacophony echoes through the cabin.
“Not even close,” I say, and kiss her.
It’s stupid and soft, and her fingers curl against the base of my spine, dragging the knit fabric of my sweater along with them. There’s a faint sweetness on her mouth, and the very tip of her nose is cool when it brushes my cheek, and part of me knows that I should pull back and apologize, but then she’s turning toward me and her fingertips are on my jaw, in my hair, and I’m a lost soul again.
It’s the sweetest kiss we’ve ever shared. The slowest. It’s the first time we’ve ever kissed that we weren’t also trying to get each other’s clothes off, and it’s terrifying how much I like it.
I don’t know how long it is before I pull back. My breathing’s gone uneven, and I’ve got a hand buried in her hair, the other still around her waist. Madeline takes a deep breath. She bites her lip and runs a thumb along my cheekbone, and if I lean into it a little, no one else has to know.
“You’re really fucking confusing,” she says, but she says it the way she’d saysweetheart.
“I’ve never been any good at resisting temptation,” I admit.
There’s a long pause, then she swallows loud enough that I can hear it. “Is that why you broke up with me? So I’d do it for you?”
I feel like she jammed a stick into the spokes of my brain, because the whole thing crashes.
“You have to be dating to break up,” I finally say.
