But that doesn’t have anything to do with how I watch him as he stands and drapes his shirt over the low branch of a tree. I’m entranced by the way his shoulder blades stretch as he reaches up and with how each movement pronounces another way his body is glorious.
Maybe I hit my head and I’m concussed. That has to be what’s going on. Yet I still don’t glance away. Not even when Sawyer turns and catches me openly gaping. He raises an eyebrow, and that cocky, lopsided grin grows. God, help me, I smile with him.
“Can I help you with anything?” he tauntingly asks.
“You have to be aware you’re beautiful,” I say. “And I know for a fact I’m not the first girl to notice.”
“Maybe. But I like you noticing.”
I overtly roll my eyes. “Because you like the attention.”
“No, because it’s you.” His grin moves from cocky to adorable. The warmth in my cheeks spreads to my chest and butterflies flutter their wings along my rib cage.
Sawyer settles next to me again, closer this time. So close that when he exhales his arm touches mine, and I can hardly breathe with this strange, building excitement.
We stare at the flames dancing in the night and watch as the popping embers shoot toward the stars. We’re silent, but it’s not uncomfortable. In fact, it’s so comfortable that I don’t want it to end.
A tickling touch near the crook of my elbow and my pulse kicks up a notch at the sight of Sawyer’s finger slowly tracing a freckle on my skin.
“It looks like a tiny kitten,” he murmurs.
I laugh because it does. He circles the spot again, and I wish I had the courage to look at him and see what he’s thinking. To see if he finds me as attractive as I find him, but I stare at my arm instead. What would I do if his blue eyes had that heavy hooded expression of desire?
Kiss him. It’s a whisper in my ear, a caress along my skin. A wish, a hope, a temptation.
Good God, kissing Sawyer Sutherland. I bet he’d be an excellent kisser.
“I didn’t know freckle imagery was a thing,” I say, and my voice is softer than normal.
“It should be. Would you like me to decipher any more on you?”
I laugh louder this time as he waggles his eyebrows. “You’re funny.”
“So are you. I like being around you, Veronica. A lot.”
Me, too. “You can call me V, if you’d like. That’s what my friends call me.”
His eyes stray away from mine to my lips. “I can, but I like Veronica. It suits you.”
I blush, he notices and we both look away as if we’re unsure middle-schoolers at a dance.
He clears his throat. “Plus, I’m not interested in being like everyone else.”
Neither am I. Because of that, I tackle this head-on. “Is this as awesomely weird for you as it is for me?”
“Do you mean the fact we’re becoming friends or that I’m attracted to you and would give just about anything to pull you close and kiss you until you can’t breathe?”
Heat rushes through me like liquid fire at the idea of my body wound tight to his. “Both.”
“Do you understand what’s happening?” Sawyer asks.
“No,” I whisper. “But I like it.”
“Me, too.”
Another round of silence, but this time Sawyer reaches over and places his hand over my mine and my heart nearly beats out of my chest. I swallow to help my dry mouth. If I don’t speak, we might kiss, and as much as I want it, I’m equal parts scared of what feelings kissing might create.
“Tell me something I don’t know about you,” I say quietly into the night.
“You like this game, don’t you?”
“If it makes you feel better, you’re the only person I’ve played this game with.”
Awe flashes over him and he quickly averts his gaze to the flames. I watch him as the firelight dances across his face, curious what he’ll share with me next. Maybe that he likes peanut butter in his vanilla ice cream like me or that he, like his sister, has seen a ghost.
“My dad told me once I had to be brave,” he says.
“Sorry?”
Sawyer doesn’t look at me, only the flames. “You asked me earlier how I remained calm. When my mom and dad got divorced, he told me I had to be brave. He told me that my mom needed me and that Lucy needed me and that I had to be the man of