Layla - Colleen Hoover Page 0,4
size of a penny and then balloons to the size of a drum with every beat.
It isn’t beating like it’s supposed to. There’s no gentle bom bom, bom bom, bom bom anymore. It’s a plink and a BOOM.
Plink BOOM, plink BOOM, plink BOOM.
I can’t keep kissing her upside down like this. It’s making me crazy, like we don’t quite fit, and I want my mouth to fit perfectly against hers. I grab her waist and spin her on top of the water until she’s facing me, and then I pull her to me. Her legs go around my waist, and both of her hands come up out of the water and grip the back of my head, which causes her to sink a little because now I’m the only thing keeping her above water. But my own arms are too busy sliding down her back, so we start to sink and neither of us does anything about it. Our mouths lock together right before we’re submerged. Not a single drop of water passes between our lips.
We sink all the way to the bottom of the pool, still fused together. As soon as we hit bottom, we open our eyes at the same time and pull apart to look at each other. Her hair is floating above her now, and she looks like a sunken angel.
I wish I could take a picture.
Air bubbles cloud the space between us, so we both kick ourselves back to the top.
I break the surface two seconds before she does. We’re facing each other, ready to start the kiss over again. We link together, back into the same position we were in. Our mouths seek each other out, but as soon as I taste the chlorine on her lips, we’re interrupted by chants.
I can hear Garrett over several of the others, all cheering our kiss on from where they’re seated. Layla glances behind her and flips them off.
She separates herself from me and pushes to the side of the pool. “Let’s go,” she says, pulling herself out of the water. She isn’t graceful about it. She pushes up out of the deep end, five feet from the ladder, and has to roll onto the concrete to make it out of the pool. It’s clumsy and perfect. I follow her, and a few seconds later, we’re both running around to the side of the house where it’s darker and more private. The grass is both cold and soft beneath my feet. Like ice . . . but melted.
I guess that would just make it water. But it doesn’t feel like water. It feels like melted ice. Drugs make things hard to explain.
Layla grabs my hand and falls onto the melted ice-grass, pulling me down with her, on top of her. I hold myself up with my elbows so she can breathe, and I stare at her for a moment. She’s got freckles. Not very many, and they’re spread out over the bridge of her nose. A few on her cheeks. I lift my hand and trace them. “Why are you so pretty?”
She laughs. Rightfully so. That was cheesy.
She flips me onto my back, and then she pulls her dress up her thighs so she can straddle me. Her thighs suction to my sides because we’re both sopping wet. I rest my hands on her hips and soak up the intensity of this high.
“Do you know why they call this place the Corazón del País?” she asks.
I don’t know, so I just shake my head and hope it’s a long story so I can hear her talk more than she has. I could listen to her voice all night. In fact, there’s a room inside the bed and breakfast they call the Grand Room, and it’s lined with hundreds of books on every wall. She could read to me all night.
“It translates to Heart of the Country,” she says. There’s excitement in her eyes and voice when she talks. “This location—this very piece of property you’re lying on—is the literal geographical center of the contiguous United States.”
Maybe it’s because I’m very aware of my heartbeat right now, but that doesn’t make sense. “Why would they call it that? The heart isn’t really the center of the body. The stomach is.”
She laughs her sharp, quick laugh again. “True. But Estomago del País doesn’t sound as pretty.”
Fuck. “You speak French?”
“Pretty sure that’s Spanish.”
“Either way, it was hot.”
“I only took one year in high school,” she says. “I have no hidden