I went warm remembering the feel of his thumbs on my temples.
Then Daniel’s smile died completely. “It was like a punch to the gut when you told me how old you were.”
“It wasn’t fun for me either.”
“And then seeing you with your dad… I don’t even know all the ways I could destroy your life, and it’s a good life, Jill, it is. But that’s not even the problem anymore,” he said, drawing my attention back to him. “After that next night, I stopped trying to stay away. I barely tried to begin with. I stopped caring that it was seriously wrong for me to be looking at you the way I started looking at you. We were spending night after night together, and the first time I got you away from your roof I tried to kiss you.”
I spun to face him. “Hey, swimming was my idea. I was the one who got you away from my roof. You say you’re always apologizing to me, maybe that’s because half the things you try to apologize for aren’t your fault.”
“I shouldn’t have tried kissing you that night and I shouldn’t have succeeded the next.”
My features smoothed and I sat back against my seat. No, he most definitely should not have gotten drunk and kissed me on his couch.
“I never had any business going anywhere near you. You’re sixteen years old and you’ve got so much. All I’ve got is poison.”
“That’s a lie.”
“Which part? I know we pretended that hanging out was just about us avoiding our problems, but it stopped being about that a long time ago. If we hadn’t had that night in the pool, it would have been something else, and maybe that time you wouldn’t have pulled back.” Daniel was stopped at an intersection and he stayed even when the light turned green. It wasn’t until cars started honking behind us that he started driving again. “I’m not saying this right.”
“We didn’t set out to spend all that time together,” I said. “Or to start having more than friendly feelings for each other, really it was the opposite. But you aren’t poison. I don’t know if you realize what you’ve done for me. Before you, I didn’t have anyone to talk to about my mom and everything that happened. And I’m glad I got to be there for you even though you didn’t mean to tell me so much. But getting drunk after telling me about your dad—”
“Isn’t an excuse for what I said and did.”
“No, it’s not. But honestly, you kissing me wasn’t the worst part of my weekend, not by a long shot.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means my mom showed up and told me I was a bastard. How’s that for perspective?”
Daniel looked away. For him that probably would have been great news. For me, vomit still burned the back of my throat at the possibility.
“I don’t want to dredge any of that up right now, I just wanted you to know that I wouldn’t give you back, not even after everything…went wrong.”
“I wouldn’t give you back either.” He bounced his hand off his knee. “Is it true? What your mom said?”
“I don’t want it to be.” A tremor rolled through me. “I really, really don’t want it to be.”
“I can’t even hold you right now, can I?”
At some point while I was talking, my arms had wrapped themselves around my middle and my hand curled around the base of my seat belt. I’m sure it looked like I was seconds away from flinging myself out of a moving car, but that wasn’t it. I wasn’t holding myself back from him; I was trying to hold myself together. Period. Full stop.
“Don’t answer that. This is gonna be a problem for me.” He sat back and ran his hands through his hair. “The sick truth is that if your friend hadn’t hit me the other night, I probably would have tried to kiss you again.” Daniel slipped his glasses back on, covered the worst of the damage. “In fact, I know I would have, because sitting with you right now and after telling you exactly how much of an asshole I am, I still want to. And there is no world where that is okay. How am I supposed to go back when I don’t want to?”
If it were possible to split into two totally different people, I would have done it right there.
Part of me felt like it’d be impossible to reverse back to a place where I wasn’t aware of his body in relation to mine. Where I just wanted to help him and didn’t want…
But the other part was still clutching my seat belt like a shield between us. Because that night after the pool, when we were hiding in the bushes and he’d lifted my chin, I remembered pulling back. And after that drunken kiss, and his hurting Sean…how could I do anything but pull back? Iwassixteen. Hewastwenty-one. Dadwouldmurder us both. His mom would probably call the cops and get him arrested. He wasn’t poison, but the two of us together…
And Sean… I couldn’t even convince Claire I was over him.
The shop came into view ahead. Rather than risk Dad seeing me get out of a Jeep instead of a Jetta, I had Daniel pull in at the check advance place next door.
Daniel reached for his keys and the lulling noise from the engine died, plummeting us into silence. “I’m not going to be around for a while, a week, maybe two. I need to do something I’ve been putting off.”
I frowned. “Are you okay?”
He shrugged off the question. “It’s just stuff I should’ve taken care of before we moved. It’ll be fine. Might be good to spend a few nights away, you know?”
