I can’t stop staring at her lips as I reply, “Likewise, Icarus.”
For a second, we stand there, her fingers tangled in the back of my hair, my eyes tracing her chewed bottom lip. I want to kiss her. I shouldn’t want to kiss her.
“I can’t—” I start, pulling back. My stomach sinks. “Sorry, but, after—”
“Yeah, no,” she cuts in quickly, dropping back to her heels. I’m suddenly a whole lot colder without her pressed against me. “I know. Me too. I don’t know what I was thinking. I’m sorry.”
She shoves her hands into her pockets, awkwardly rocking on her feet. I shake my head.
“You don’t have anything to apologize for,” I say.
She flashes me a cocky grin. “Butyoudo.”
I frown. “What? Why?”
She hitches a shoulder. “You can’t walk around with lips like that and expect me to not want to kiss them.”
Heat creeps across my cheeks, and I curse its existence because Peyton is doing what every arrogant hockey player does, and I should be immune by now. Iamimmune. She just has a way of slipping through the cracks sometimes.
“Has that ever worked for you before?” I ask, head tipping to the side.
Peyton hooks her arm in mine, just like she did that night downtown. “Yes,” she answers simply. “Yes it has.”
A loud melody springs from her back pocket, startling the both of us, and she fishes out her phone as I navigate our way to the coffee shop. I don’t make out the name on her screen before she swipes it away, declining the call.
“Everything okay?” I ask, brow creasing in concern.
She just nods, slipping it back into her pocket. “Fine. Spam call,” she says lightly. Then spins around to face me, walking backwards down the sidewalk. I follow. “Hey, so, how did Icarus get to the sun anyway? Spaceship? Blimp?”
I glance at my phone’s map and toss my head to the left to signal a turn. She pivots—still backward—without missing a step.
“You think a blimp could fly to the sun?”
She shrugs. “Maybe. Humor me.”
“Wings,” I answer, eyes flicking to hers. She’s still walking backward, and some irrational part of me pretends it’s because she wants to keep looking at me and not because Peyton Clarke does things simply because no one told her not to. Which isstupid, because I just turned her down. Because she drives me completely insane. Because I can’t date people. Because I shouldn’t want her to like me.
But for some reason, I do. I want her to like me.
Her brows lower over her hooded eyes. “Wings?”
“Wings,” I repeat. “He and his dad were imprisoned on Crete. His dad was this genius craftsman and built them both a pair of wings out of wax and feathers to escape. But he warned Icarus not to fly too high.”
Peyton exhales like she already knows what’s coming. “Let me guess,” she says, glancing behind her just in time to dodge a mailbox. “He wanted to be just like Daddy too?”
I shake my head. “No. That’s the thing. He wanted to bemorethan his father. He wanted to be agod.So he flew higher. Too high.”
She frowns. “And then he burned to death.”
“Actually…” I grin. “The wax on his wings melted, and he plummeted to the sea and drowned.”
Her feet come to a sudden halt, and her pretty porcelain jawliterallydrops open. “What?” Her voice is an equal mix of horror and disbelief. “What thefuckkind of stories are these, Darcy?”
I laugh. “The good kind.”
She’s shaking her head, but she’s smiling.“No.Because apparently you either try to be like your dad and get shot, or try to not be like him and drown under the scorching sun.”
I give her a long deadpan look. “There is a third option.”
