Hardwood - K.M. Neuhold Page 0,82

he kisses me deeper. “I’ve never felt this way before about anyone. I want to know everything about you, I want to be around you all the time, I want…I don’t even know,” he murmurs between kisses.

My heart twists, and I push back from the kiss. “This is all really new for you,” I reason. “I can still remember the first boy I kissed. It was junior year of high school, behind the gym between third and fourth period. I thought we were going to be together forever.”

Ev is quiet for a few seconds, rolling off of me, but keeping one leg hitched over my waist as he props himself up facing me. “What happened?” he finally asks.

I chuckle. “Life.” I shrug, Ev’s head moving up and down with the motion of my shoulder. “I realized he was kind of an idiot, and he found someone he thought was cuter, and a month later there was some other guy I was sure was the love of my life.” My stomach twists itself in knots, a voice in the back of my head yelling at me to shut the fuck up and let Ev think these amazing things about me while it feels so real. “My point is, this is new and exciting, let’s just enjoy it.”

“Yeah,” he agrees.

Ev kisses me again, his lips even more desperate on mine, like he thinks if he can kiss me deep enough, somehow that will fix everything else. I put a hand on his chest to feel his heart pounding, and it’s all I can do not to blurt out how much I really like him too, fuck, that I think I’m falling in love with him.

“It’s getting late,” I say instead, pulling back and sitting up. Some stupid part of me is hoping like hell he’ll ask me to stay, give me some reason to think that I could be wrong, and this could be real. Some small sign…

“Oh, okay. I’ll walk you out,” he offers, and my heart sinks.

“That’s okay.” I wave him off, hopping out of bed and groping for my discarded clothes on the floor.

Ev sits up in the bed, too, scrunching his eyebrows and looking at me with confused concern as I try to remember where my socks ended up.

“Did I say something wrong?” he asks. “Fuck, you’re mad about what happened at the bar, right?”

“I told you I’m not mad.” I spot one of my socks, stooping to snatch it up, doing my best to ignore the tight feeling in my chest. “But maybe it would be a good idea for us to take a little bit of a break.”

Ev looks like he’s been slapped, his eyes going wide and his mouth falling open. “A break?” he repeats in a daze. “I don’t understand.”

“Fuck, my head is feeling really messy right now, and I need a little time to get my thoughts in order.”

“So, not a breakup?” he clarifies.

My eyes land on my final missing sock, and I pick it up off the floor, holding all of my clothes in a haphazard pile.

“I don’t know. I can’t think straight right now.” My lungs feel incapable of filling properly as I replay the sweet words he was saying only two minutes ago and trying to figure out how I got here instead of the two of us making each other moan. All I know is I’m on the verge of believing Ev could be the real deal, and that’s very dangerous ground.

“I don’t understand what’s going on; can you please give me something?” he pleads, getting out of bed and moving to stand in front of me.

“I’m just starting to think that maybe this is bad timing on our part. I am all in here, and I don’t think that’s fair to you. You’re just exploring all of this for the first time, and you have wild oats to sow and everything.”

“Watson, I don’t—” I put a hand over his mouth before he can finish that sentence.

“It’s not a breakup,” I assure him, because the panic in his eyes is too much for me to take. “But what I really want right now is to get dressed. Then, I want to go home and for both of us to take a few days to think about what we want out of this relationship. Okay?”

The fight goes out of his eyes, and he nods. I drop my hand from covering his mouth and press a quick kiss to his lips.