I literally didn’t know how to wrap my head aroundhersaying that aboutme.I felt like I was being pranked. “Maybe…” I was too embarrassed to finish the thought, and I looked away. I felt her eyes on me from behind.
“Maybe what?”
“It’s nothing.”
She touched my arm, soft and delicate. “Tell me.”
I folded like paper when it was her asking. “Maybe just… while we’re both here…” I shrugged hard, trying to play it off. “Nothing serious. I don’t know. Maybe we can call it an off-ramp for you from a shitty relationship.”
She let out a small sigh, soft and longing. Or I was probably just projecting. “Jade…”
“Yeah?” I winced as I looked back at her, and that anguished look on her face—heart pulled in two different directions—it made something tangle up inside me too. I shouldn’t have been doing this. Should have minded my own business. I was supposed to be helping Cat and then leaving. Now that Catwasgetting back into the community, I should have left earlier. Too late now.
She sighed again. “I don’t want to have to keep you… secret, or anything like that.”
“Well—” Did she have to? My chest ached like it pulled taut. I desperately wanted people to see us together, to think of us as two parts of the same unit. I’d been thinking a lot thatAlyssa and Jadesounded really nice as a phrase. I’d been thinking too much. But maybe I was just stupid and shallow and dazzled by a pretty face, and I wanted to parade her around on my arm. Of course she didn’t want people to know anything we were doing. She had friends in this town. Even before I’d pissed everyone off, I’d been the moody loner off in the woods. If she didn’t want to risk her reputation with her people here, I felt a little rotten about it, but I understood.
And I really was a sucker for a pretty face, because I’d rather have her in secret than not have her at all.
“It’s fine,” I said, and I dared to slip a hand to her back, touching her between the shoulder blades. She leaned into me, and the touch was electric, the connection explosive and instantaneous. “If it’s just a temporary… casual thing anyway, I get it.”
“I really shouldn’t…” she whispered, caressing her hand over my front. This girl was going to break my fucking heart.
“Neither should I, but hey, here we are.”
She laughed, and my heart melted when she kissed my shoulder. “Tell me… you’re not planning on leaving too soon.”
I needed to get out as soon as possible. But I couldn’t find it in myself to say that to Alyssa, not when she was curled up against me, touching me like I was the most precious thing she’d ever seen. “I haven’t found any solid leads,” I said, which was strictly true. “Nothing pulling me away just yet.”
“Mm.” She kissed my cheek, letting her lips brush me softly, tenderly. “I need to get back home soon, but…”
“Are your lips less likely to burn me now?”
She laughed, resting her forehead against my temple. “You’re such a baby. It’s cute.”
“I’m not a baby, I’m just not trained on detonating thermonuclear warheads inside my mouth.”
“I think the spice is all gone now. It’s safe to kiss me.”
Like hell it was. Spice wasn’t the only way I was burning myself by kissing her.
But I kissed her anyway. Turned and melted into her lips, slipping my fingers into her hair, and from the blissful noise she made as she met me, I knew this was going to break me.
Chapter 23
Alyssa
Iknelt to the ground to snap a picture of the flower, pushing the bushes aside and pushing my phone in to get a closer shot. A tall shoot of blue scilla flowers, little blossoms that had only just lost the long-nosed look as they’d opened up with the weather finally warm here in Vermont. I felt like they weren’t the only things opening up as things got warmer here.
“I,” Jade’s voice said from behind me, and I looked up at where she stepped off the hiking trail towards me, away from the others, with a smirk on her face, “for one, am stunned.”
“I know! Sound the alarms,” I said, standing up.
“Alyssa Taylor, stopping mid-hike to take a picture of blue flowers?” She put her hands on her hips. “We’re lucky I didn’t have a stroke out of shock.”
“I mean, god, I’d say. That would suck.” I tugged my hair tie out, letting my ponytail down, and I did it up again, catching all the stray strands that had gone wild while we were hiking. It was a short route, but probably for the best with a big group—the others were up on the ridge behind us, Daniela and Cat leaning over the old wooden fence looking at us, Linda and Charlie up towards the front of the group with Linda visibly getting impatient over how slow everyone was, Abby, Kaitlyn, and thehipster couple Matt and Skye. And it wassayingsomething to call someonethe hipster couplein Vermont. I didn’t think they’d ever met a New Age spirituality they didn’t like. Skye had brought her best few crystals, carefully selected for hiking. I was pretty sure they were just rocks.
And of course, Jade. We’d been playing it cool ever since our evening together at her house—I would have loved to spend every minute at her place, but the town was a dangerous combination of small, nosy, and perceptive, so we stuck to flirting over text and hanging out in group settings, where it still gave me butterflies every time our eyes met. It was hard to put words to it, because it wasn’t like we were dating, but… we both knew where things stood. And I was giddy with anticipation waiting for the next time I’d get to kiss her.
