you as a friend” to “Take me now.” Though I don’t exactly know what the latter would mean in this context.
“What’s going on in that head of yours?”
“Excuse me?” I ask.
“Tell me. You look freaked, but excited.”
“Pierce, I—I don’t know. I can’t explain a feeling I’ve never felt.” One I never thought I’d feel. “Aren’t the others waiting for us?”
He shakes his head and sits down next to me. “Don’t think about them. Think about you. Me and you. What do you want?”
It doesn’t take a Google search to figure out what he means. He’s talking about how far I want to go. How many bases. How far we’ll take this tonight. If we’ll ever leave this bedroom. He wants to share this with me, and that’s the most mind-blowing thing I’ve ever experienced, but it feels wrong.
I need to decipher whether it feels wrong because it is wrong, or because it’s how I’ve been raised. Or if I’ve seen one too many movies where person A gets screwed over by person B because B was fucking around but A loved B and B didn’t really care about anyone but B.
“Honestly, I don’t know.”
“Yes, you’ve said that.”
I smile. “Can we make out for a couple more minutes? Then go downstairs before people start talking?”
“They’re already talking.”
He leans into me, kisses the side of my nose, which causes chills to explode down my back. Apparently that’s where all my nerve endings have been hiding.
I bring him into me. His lips meet mine. His tongue pushes in, and I let it happen. I taste him, and the taste is so uniquely … Pierce. Tea and sugar. Spearmint lip balm. I breathe him in when he exhales. I can’t remember ever feeling this close to another human before.
We lie back on the bed, lips still locked on to each other, but now I pull him as close to me as possible. A million firsts already, but I want him to be my first everything. I want to be with him, from grabbing lunch between classes to flying to America to meet my parents.
And that’s what stops me.
I want something real. And he might want something real too. But we’re not going to figure that out by mashing faces.
I’m panting. He is too.
My face still stings from his rough beard.
“Let’s go downstairs, now.” I give him a last kiss. “Or I’ll never leave this bed.”
His lips perk up into a smile, and it makes me want to start the whole make-out session all over again, but I can’t. My chest aches to have him close to me. But I can’t I can’t I can’t I won’t. I am stronger than this.
SIXTEEN
There is nothing, in all of life’s existence, more putrid than instant coffee.
But it’s all I can find here. So I choke down a sip, because it’s early. Wales seems brighter than England, but I could be making that up. Sophie’s still on the pullout—that girl can snore—and everyone else is asleep upstairs.
So I’m stuck in the kitchen with my toxic sludge.
My ears perk up as I hear someone come down the stairs, and my heart aches, since I have a one-in-three chance that it’s Pierce.
But it’s not. It’s Dani. Her hair’s a massive, stringy mess, and she’s thrown on the same clothes from last night.
“Morning, love. You all right?”
I nod to the living room, where Sophie’s snoring echoes throughout the house.
“Not great,” I whisper.
As I take another sip and fight the urge to gag, she reaches into the purse she discarded on the kitchen table the previous night. She pulls out a set of keys.
“Can’t believe you’re drinking that. I’m going to the café we saw on the way in—you want to come?”
I smack my tongue against my mouth, begging the taste to get better. Then I slam down my cup.
“Yes. God, yes.”
We leave the cottage and jump in the car. The passenger seat is a whole new world. We’re wildly close to the left curb, and everything feels off. But it also feels exciting, somehow. Different.
“Ready for the most fire opinion of film composers you’ve ever heard?” Dani asks.
I laugh. “Go for it.”
“Ennio Morricone’s a hack.”
“Excuse me?” I fake a gasp. “You saying you didn’t like my piece?”
“Look, I think your performance with Sang was beyond epic. But I’m a film score aficionado, and his are not the best.”
“Right.” I roll my eyes. “Let me guess, you’re a Hans Zimmer fan.”
“Ouch. That physically hurt me.” She gives me a light punch from