“You’re not as mean as you pretend,” she murmured.
I huffed a laugh. “Don’t spread that rumor. I’ve got a reputation to maintain.”
She giggled — quiet, tired — and leaned against the doorframe, hair slipping over her shoulder. The air between us felt too small, too charged.
“You came for me,” she said softly.
“Someone had to.”
Her eyes lifted, slow and searching, like she was trying to figure out if I meant it the way it sounded. I didn’t know myself.
The moment stretched — long enough to feel like falling.
I knew what I should do. Step back. Say goodnight. Leave before I made everything worse. But she tilted her chin just slightly, lips parting — an accident or an invitation, I couldn’t tell. Didn’t matter.
I kissed her.
It was soft at first — hesitant, testing, like we both expected to wake up from it. But then she breathed my name against my mouth, and that was it. The line snapped.
Her hand came up to my chest, fingers bunching in my shirt, and I sank into her, letting everything I’d been holding back pour into that single, reckless moment.
Her lips tasted like heat and salt and something dangerously close to relief. The porch light flickered, the night tilting around us. I could feel her heartbeat through the space between us — uneven, real.
This is selfish. This is wrong. I don’t care.
I kissed her again, deeper this time, until she sighed into me — a sound that felt like it had been trapped inside her for years. My hands found her waist, not to pull her closer, but just to feel that she was there — alive, warm, impossibly human.
When we finally broke apart, she stayed close, her forehead brushing mine, breath unsteady.
“Beckett,” she whispered, not quite a question, not quite a warning.
“Yeah,” I said, voice low, rough.
She looked up, eyes glassy in the half-light. “I shouldn’t have?—”
“Yeah,” I said again. “Me neither.”
But neither of us moved.
The third time I kissed her, it wasn’t careful.
It was hungry.
That slow burn that had been simmering between us for months finally broke loose, spilling over like it had been waiting for the right excuse. She made a small, startled sound in the back of her throat—surprise, maybe, or something more—and I took it for permission.
Her hands came up to my shoulders, clinging like she didn’t want to let go. And for one insane heartbeat, I thought maybe this was it—maybe she wanted this too.
Then she froze.
Her palms pressed against my chest, gentle but firm, pushing me back an inch. Her eyes were unfocused, dazed, then suddenly sharp with alarm.
“Oh no,” she whispered.
“Wait—what?—”
Before I could even finish the sentence, she doubled over and threw up. All over me.
Warm. Immediate. Unavoidable.
