“Shall I enlighten you?” Then he laughed and my toes curled. “Some of this is mildly embarrassing, so try not to mock too much.”
And then he told me.
“Your bike is destroying my backseat, but I keep it covered with a blanket so you’ll let me keep driving you home.”
I tried to lean around him to see if I could make anything out from where he was parked, but Sean mirrored my movement and caught my hand.
“Sometimes I let the air out of my tires so you’ll help me change them.” His thumb started tracing the veins at my wrist causing my pulse to speed up. “See my bumper? I deliberately backed into a tree two days ago. For you. Well, for me really, because I’ll get to be with you when you fix it.”
I made a face.
“I told you it was embarrassing.”
“No, it’s not that.” I squirmed a little in his hands. “But did you have to wreck your car?”
Whatever Sean was expecting me to say, that wasn’t it. His dimples went into overdrive. “That’s what bothers you about what I just said? Wrecking my car? Here.” He lifted my hand and placed it on his chest directly over his heart. “I’d drive it into the canal if that’s what it took.”
“Don’t do that. You can’t imagine what kind of damage water does to a car.”
“I’ll put sugar in the gas tank.”
“That’s not funny.”
“And the next time I get a flat—”
“Please don’t say it.” I squeezed my eyes shut.
“—I’ll. Just. Keep. Driving.”
“Sean.” My eyes shot open. “We will not be friends anymore if you do any of those things.”
“Promise?”
And I felt it. That match strike, engine catch, firework thrill in my heart. It wasn’t that desperate need that had smothered me in the past, keeping me anxious and half-sick most of the time. It was like a flower blooming. It made me feel strong and warm and happy.
I felt the gentle beat speeding under my palm and knew my heart was pounding just as fast, and not only from car-related anxiety. I felt it in the fingers that locked with mine and the breath that ghosted over my lips.
When Sean kissed me, I waited for that same wrongness to flare up, the one that reminded me of Mom holding his shirt, the one that saidstop because this will hurt.
But it never came.
Instead, I thought of him coming to the track after working all night to run with me, because of me. I thought of him bringing me movie-theater popcorn even when he wasn’t going to the movies, because he knew I loved it. I thought of the way he’d held me when I told him about my mom. The way my pain had hurt him like it was his own. Not just that night at the park, but always.
I thought of everything that had ever made my heart soar, and it was all Sean.
And I kissed him back.
His arms encircled me and his lips pressed against mine with the sweetest pressure. It wasn’t a long, drawn-out kiss. It was his lips on mine, his breath mixed with mine, and it was a moment that I would have lived in for eternity.
When he pulled back and took in my face, his lit up with a kind of wonder that I couldn’t help but laugh at. Sean’s dimpled smile did that funny thing to my heart again, only this time it didn’t scare me.
But the screaming from Daniel’s house did.
CHAPTER 44
Sean and I jerked apart. He spun every which direction, but I knew exactly where to look even before her next scream had words.
“You killed him!”
