Ev didn’t say anything.
“Our Rocky Steps wager,” I clarified as if it needed remotely any clarification. “Loser grants the winner a wish.”
“Grace…” I watched Ev’s gaze skim the ground. “I won’t be able to take it back.”
“Look at me,” I said, blood now thumping through my veins. “Please, Ev, look at me.”
He slowly did, with heated cheeks and an intense expression I’d never seen before—a storm that he wouldn’t allow to rage. I shifted from one foot to the other as he raised his eyes to mine, and once they met, lightning barely had time to strike before Everett Adler and I started kissing. A rip went roaring up my spine. We had crashed together—but too quickly, too roughly, and too anxiously. Like this moment was some stupid middle school dare. It was a truly terrible kiss.
He knew it, too.
“Shit, I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m a little nervous.”
“Why?” I asked. “It’s me.”
He sighed. “Exactly.”
“Yes.” I told him. “Exactly.It’s me—just me, Ev.”
I heard him inhale, but there was no time for an exhale—his lips were back on mine. My heart did a backward handspring when the kiss slowed and softened, and it did three more times when Ev slid his hands into my shorts’ back pockets to pull me closer. I knocked off his Mets hat so I could run my hands through his thick hair. “Hey,” he murmured as we found our rhythm, falling into a fantasy. Our breathing grew heavy, the warm air thick between us. I started kissinghis neck, working my way down to his collarbone. His skin burned like sugar against my lips. I could not stop.
Ev failed spectacularly at muffling a groan and moved his hands from my pockets to my hips. We still weren’t close enough, even though our bodies had tangled together like the exhibit’s holographic tree roots. The rush of the waterfall had set the pace for my pulse. I wanted more.
Ev did, too.
I mean, I was pressed up against him.
“We should probably leave,” he whispered in my ear. “Go someplace else.”
“Where?” I asked, officially breathless. “There are like a million rooms here.”
“I don’t know,” he answered. “Let’s consult our maps and pick one.”
“A janitor’s closet, perhaps?” I matched my grin to his before kissing a dimple to my heart’s content. This time, he laughed and let me.
“Well,what do we have here?” a gravelly voice said, and after being blinded by a flashlight beam, I blinked to see a bearded, stern-looking museum security guard.
My stomach plunged.
He’s going to arrest us,I thought.Detain us. Put us in museum jail—
“Out,” the guard said in a firm but also resigned voice that sort of suggested this wasn’t the first time he’d caught some teenage PDA. “Both of you get outnow.”
Ev and I didn’t dawdle. He quickly bent down to grab hisbaseball hat before gesturing that I should walk in front of him for…certain reasons. We kept our eyes to the floor as we trailed through theUniverse of Water I-Can’t-Remember-the-Rest-of-Its-Nameroom, but once we pushed through the exit and found ourselves in a normally lit hallway, I felt like I’d been clocked in the head—clocked back into real life.
Ev.
Me.
Not just one wish, but two.
“Oh my god,” I whispered. “Oh my god…”
“Grace, relax,” Ev said hoarsely. “It’s fine, it’s okay.”
But it wasn’t fine, and it definitely wasn’t okay. When Ev reached for my hand, I stepped away from him. A couple museum goers walked past us, and while neither of them was Isa, theycould’vebeen Isa. She could be anywhere, in any exhibit. For all I knew, she’d seen us disappear under the digital waterfall.
And what had Ev and I done?
