There’s a long, long silence.
And then, very quietly—
“…Jesus Christ,” Colten mutters.
Or maybe he just wheezes.
I’m already basically asleep, so who knows? All I know is happiness, assured that Colten and I worked through the misunderstanding, and that Colten will stop thinking about such unnecessary things.
Maybe we’ll even be able to make out again, soon.
Maybe this lame spell has some benefits.
Chapter 11
The road trip settles into an ease I’ve missed.
Not boring—never boring, not with Colten—but…comfortable. Like a drill we’ve run a hundred times, but it’s my favorite, so I don’t mind at all.
We stop for gas, snacks, and the world’s worst coffee. I feed him all three different flavors of jerky as he drives, which he insists he doesn’t want but still eats it when I tap it against his mouth until he sighs and takes it.
In return, he forces me to listen to an entire album with every song he’s never managed to get me to sit through before. There’s a lot of screaming and guitars doing things I didn’t think a guitar could, or should, do.
It’s a fair trade.
And everything feels normal again. Better than normal, actually.
Because that weird tension that’s been hanging over us since the spell? It’s gone, like Colten finally stopped clenching around me. Perhaps Julian is right, communication is a good thing.
As long as it keeps Colten by my side, I will eagerly gut myself and spill out my feelings for him any day.
I stretch as much as I can in the passenger seat, watching the road blur past, and let my head fall back against the window.There’s a lot of time to think on a drive like this, especially since Colten still won’t let me drive.
Of course, my thoughts keep circling back to one subject: Colten.
This whole situation…despite things being good again, it’s still changed things. Colten is my best friend, someone I’ve known for three years and trust with pretty much everything.
And we still have that! But now it’s more, deeper. I’ve seen sides of Colten I haven’t seen before, pieces of him that even three years of living together hadn’t given me.
The way he looked in the exercise room, the way hewantedme. That’s all new, all part of this exciting and deeper connection we’ve been building.
It’s still hard to believe he wanted me. Honestly, I sometimes wonder if I imagined it.
Except I didn’t, and now that I’ve peeled back the layers of my best friend, I’ve found so muchmore.
Now I know what he looks like when he loses control, when he stops being so careful and precise and justtakeswhat he wants.
I know what his hands feel like when they’re not shoving me during practice or catching me when I fall. I know how they feel when they’re holding me down, steady and impossible to ignore.
I know what it feels like to have his attention, full and hungry.
And it’s—
I shift in my seat, swallowing hard. It’s a lot.
Not bad. Not even a little bad. Just…intense. Like being ahead in points during a game and thinking you can take it easy, until the other team is suddenly moving faster and scoring pointafter point, forcing you to give your full focus to something you thought you already knew the outcome of.
Which is not something I’ve ever had before. With girls, it’s always been the same for each of them.
