Things You Save in a Fire - Katherine Center Page 0,87

you can’t seem to keep in your ponytail holder.”

I started to lean in for another kiss, but he stopped me.

“I think you are so beautiful,” he went on slowly, deliberately, “that it’s blinding. But it’s not just that. When I look at you, I just see all the things I admire. It’s all the badass stuff about you, sure, like the way you’re so calm when all hell’s breaking loose, and the way you can toss a three-point shot backwards without even looking and make it with nothing but net, and don’t get me started on the one-arm pull-ups. It’s how you never panic and nothing scares you. But it’s also that your first career goal was to be the Tooth Fairy. And that you hum to yourself when you’re washing the dishes. And that when you laugh really, really hard, you run out of breath and start squeaking like a mouse.”

“I don’t squeak like a mouse.”

“There’s all this toughness about you—but the most impressive thing about that toughness, I think, is that you built it to protect the tenderness.”

I blinked at him. Who was this guy? “It’s not true that nothing scares me,” I said then. “You scare me.”

He let out a laugh. “I am far too lovesick to scare anybody.”

I had to clarify something. “Are you lovesick?” I asked.

He met my eyes. “Horribly.”

“About me?” I asked, just making sure.

He gave me a look like I was adorable and ridiculous and lovable, all at once. Then he nodded and got serious again. “Every single minute of every single day.”

“It’s not you that scares me,” I said. “It’s the things I feel about you.”

“The things I feel about you scare me, too,” he said, looking very serious. “We’ll just have to be very careful with each other.”

“Okay,” I said. Agreed. Next, I kissed him breathless.

“We can stop whenever you want,” he kept saying.

“Okay,” I’d say, and keep going.

The official plan was to snuggle. But I just kept kissing him instead.

I don’t know how long this had been going on—an hour, maybe?—when I started tugging at his pants, like I wanted him to take them off. I’m not even sure what my plan was, exactly. I just wanted there to be fewer barriers between us. I just wanted to get rid of everything that was in the way.

He shook his head. He didn’t break the kiss, but he pulled my hand away. “Nope. Not a good idea.”

I went back to tug some more. “Why not?” I said, not breaking the kiss, either.

“Because we had an agreement. And I’m trying to stick to it.”

“But the agreement was more about me than you.”

He squinted at me, like, Kind of. “True. Ish.”

“So if anyone should be allowed to amend the agreement, it should be me.”

“We’re not amending the agreement.”

“Because we don’t have protection?”

At that, Owen squeezed his eyes closed.

“What?”

“We do, actually, have protection.”

“We do?”

He put his hand over his eyes. “My cousin Alex put a condom in my pocket at the party.”

I thought about that for a second. Problem solved. I went back after the pants.

“Nope,” the rookie said.

“Why not?”

“I don’t want you to regret anything.”

“I won’t.”

“You don’t know that.”

Maybe he was right, but I was willing to find out. “Don’t you want to?” I asked.

He honked out a hoarse laugh. “There are not enough words in the universe to describe how much I want to. But we can’t.”

“I think we can.”

“Cassie,” he said, lifting up on his elbows, “I don’t want to mess this up with you.”

His saying no had the opposite of the effect he intended. It didn’t discourage me. It freed me up to go forward.

His saying no just made me say yes harder.

I pushed him back down on the bed and started working on him to change his mind. I kissed him with new purpose. I ran my hands through his hair. I draped myself over him.

He kept talking. “We don’t have to rush things.”

But I could tell he’d closed his eyes. And the way he was breathing—so deep and fast—I could tell that I was melting his resistance.

“We can do this anytime,” he went on, still protesting. “Life is long.”

“Life is not long,” I said, running my hand over his torso. “It’s short.”

“I think we should wait,” he said, kissing me back just as hard.

I was winning. Or maybe we both were. But I could feel him giving in.

Then I pulled back and looked him in the eyes. I had a serious question. “Do you think, if we got