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How was your date?

ME

I wouldn’t know. I wasn’t on one.

It sure fucking looked like it. I’m almost there. Open your window.

There? He’s coming here?

I know I should tell him not to come. My father isn’t home yet, and the thought of them crossing paths terrifies me—I’ll be grounded until I’m in the grave. But I sit holding the phone in my hand, doing nothing.

I look across the room at my reflection, cross-legged on the bed, a mix of both my parents yet different somehow. I wonder if Mary Joyce looked at herself like this too, once upon a time. A good girl, sitting on a precipice, deciding which life she wanted to live—the one that she was in, or the one that kept calling to her.

I want something different than what I have. I want to feel alive.

And Ford makes me feel that way.

My parents would never dream that this is happening beneath their roof, but I lock the door just in case, then cross the room and push at the window. It sticks for a minute, and the flimsy mullion falls right off. It’s loud, but my parents run a sound machine in the hall to keep Faith asleep, so I doubt it was heard.

Ford is just walking into the backyard when I finally get it open. He’s lost the tie and button-down, wearing only the T-shirt beneath it with his suit pants. He sees me but doesn’t smile. He looks so much older than me right now. So much older and so much more experienced.

I’m not sure I’m ready for what will happen when he reaches me, but he’s already got his foot on the downstairs windowsill.

He scales the house gracefully, and with unimaginable upper-body strength, he swings himself into my room.

“How on earth are you going to get back down?” I whisper.

He raises a brow. “Maybe I’ll stay. I’ll stroll downstairs in the morning and ask your mom to whip up some bacon for us.”

I run a hand over my face, torn between laughter and tears. “I got grounded for all of Christmas break because Mrs. V saw us speaking, Ford. Do you have any idea how bad it would get if my father caught you here?”

He sighs. “Yeah, I know.” He places his hands on my hips. “I’ll be quiet when I leave. I just...it really bothered me, seeing you with Alex.”

“That’s crazy. He didn’t even touch me.”

“He’s lucky he didn’t,” Ford growls, pressing his lips to the top of my head before he steps backward and looks around. “So, this is your room. It’s, uh, plain.”

I glance around, as if seeing it for the first time. The walls are bare. It would look entirely unoccupied if not for my books stacked on the desk and my backpack in the corner. “It’s not like my parents were going to let me put a Harry Styles poster on my wall.”

He grins. “I guess not. But I thought there’d be something.”

I hadn’t thought anything of it until now. Mostly, it’s that I’d prefer blank walls to the kind of crap my parents would approve of—crosses and biblical verses in needlepoint. “I’m only here for a few more months.”

Something troubled flashes across his face, and he closes the distance between us, cradling my jaw, then pulling my face to his.

His kiss is hard and sudden. He leans closer, his hand at the small of my back and sliding down until he’s got me tucked against him. My hands go to his neck, wanting him closer when he couldn’t possibly be any nearer than he already is, and into his hair, his lovely thick hair. I tug and it makes him groan—low in his chest, involuntary, a sound I’ve never heard. A sound that makes the heat between my legs almost painful.

I’m turning from liquid to steam, something so hot and insubstantial I can’t quite tell where he ends and I begin. The bulge against my stomach leaves me both terrified and exultant at once. But he keeps kissing me, and I forget to be scared. I want more of his perfect, soft mouth and that hand—large enough to cover half of me as it sweeps lower.

I want everything.

The thought startles me and I pull away, placing a hand on his chest. When I sink onto the edge of the bed, he sits beside me.

“Do you know how many times I’ve pictured you in this bed?” he asks.

I blink up at him. “You did?”

He laughs. “I pictured you having a much more girly bed, actually. Like, lots of lacy shit and heart-shaped pillows. But yeah, sometimes I pictured us in this bed together, and sometimes I pictured you here alone, touching yourself while you thought about me.”