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“What did you want your first kiss to be like?”

He tips his chin up at me when he asks, and the moonlight catches the line of his jaw at an angle that should genuinely be illegal in a town this small. His arms are still crossed over his chest, the gray Henley pulling across his shoulders every time he shifts his weight, and he is looking up at me with those crystal blue eyes half-lidded and patient, the way he looks at things he has already decided he is going to wait out. There is a small curve at the corner of his mouth. Not a smile yet. The threat of one. Like he already knows what I’m going to say and is giving me the courtesy of saying it myself first.

I hate that I notice all of this. I’ve been noticing all of this for six years and I’m still no closer to being immune to it.

I open my mouth. Nothing comes out.

He uncrosses his arms and reaches up, his hand closing around the branch above his head. He pulls himself up in one easy motion, finding the foothold in the trunk, and then he is level with me, his chest at my eye line, his boots finding the branch on the other side of the trunk until he has folded himself into the tree beside me the way he didn’t fit a minute ago and now somehow does.

He is very close. The branch isn’t wide. His knee is pressed against mine and his shoulder is an inch from my shoulder, and he smells like woodsmoke with something warmer like cinnamon underneath.

“Sienna,” he says softly. “What did you want your first kiss to be like?”

“I don’t know.” Which is a lie, and from the way one corner of his mouth pulls upward, he knows it’s a lie.

“Yes, you do,” he says, his elbow finding mine on the branch.

My fingers curl around the bark in my lap.

I know exactly what I wanted. I’ve known since I was eight years old and saw it in The Notebook, when Iris made me watch it three times in a row during a Friday sleepover. Noah and Allie kiss in the pouring rain on a street corner with everything around them blurring out until it’s just them... I wanted that. I wanted rain on my face and somebody’s hands cupping my jaw like I was something worth holding still, and a kiss that felt like the whole world had been building toward it. I wanted to feel it in my chest before it reached my mouth. I wanted to remember it when I was old and gray, and I wanted to think, yes. That one. That was the one that counted.

I know how it sounds.

“It’s stupid,” I say, my eyes dropping to my lap. “Forget it.”

“Tell me.” His voice lowers half a register, his shoulder turning toward me on the branch.

“It is genuinely stupid, Grayson,” I say, blowing out a raspberry. “And anyway, my first kiss was playing spin the bottle, sweaty in your living room, so it doesn’t matter.”

“Sienna.” He says my name sternly, eyes sparkling. “Tell me.”

I exhale through my nose. “I wanted it to be in the rain.” I say it fast, like speed will make it less embarrassing. “I wanted it to be with someone who actually wanted to kiss me, not someone who was dared to. I wanted hands on my face, and I wanted it to feel like something was happening, or I wanted it to be passionate like right after an argument or a confession, and I know it sounds completely insane, but I wanted the moment. I wanted romance and passion. The thing all little girls want. It’s stupid.”

He is quiet for a moment. I feel every second of it, the silence stretching long enough for me to replay everything I just said and feel the full weight of having said it to him, of all people, the one person I’ve been carefully performing normalcy around for six years, and I want to climb higher into this tree and simply never come down.

“I can’t make it rain,” he says.

I look up at him.

The corner of his mouth pulls in, and his eyes drop to my lips and come back up, and he leans in on the branch, just enough that I can feel the warmth radiating off him through the cold October air.

“I’m not going to sit here and argue about something random. And I don’t have a massive confession to make right now either,” he says, his voice low and even. “I’m sorry about that.”

“Okay,” I breathe, not entirely sure what I’m agreeing to.

“But I can make it romantic.” His voice is so low now, I feel it more than hear it. “If that’s what you want.”

My heart is going so fast I can feel it in my fingertips. He is so close that the cold air between us has gone warm, and with the way he is looking at me, steady and certain, like he made a decision he isn’t talking himself out of, I forget for a full second that I’m in a tree at Iris’s birthday party, with Grayson, and there are forty people nearby who don’t know this is happening. The way he is looking at me, with his blue eyes focused on my lips, I can almost believe he has been wanting to kiss me. That he has been waiting for a reason.

He reaches up and cups my face in both hands.

His palms are warm against my cold cheeks, rough at the edges the way his hands always are. His thumbs rest lightly at the corners of my jaw, and he tilts my face up toward his with a steadiness that makes my entire body go quiet all at once, every nerve ending suddenly paying attention to nothing else.

I blink up at him. The moonlight is behind his head. His eyes are almost completely black and very serious.

“Close your eyes,” he says softly.

I close them.