Total pages in book: 140
Estimated words: 137433 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 687(@200wpm)___ 550(@250wpm)___ 458(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 137433 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 687(@200wpm)___ 550(@250wpm)___ 458(@300wpm)
“Yes.” His pupils dance frantically, searching my face. “But I have a feeling this is a punishment, not a reward. Is this about my asking you to stay?”
It’s about our entire relationship. It’s about sacrifice. Redemption. About us finding who we are without being attached at the hip.
“It’s just a kiss, Levy. Don’t read too much into it. I just want to feel good.”
He slides his long fingers through my hair, bringing my face close to his, and he is arrestingly beautiful—always but now especially. “I was born to make you feel good, Bailey Followhill.” His breaths are slow, his heartbeat fast. “But I won’t take a kiss from you. Not right now.”
“Why not?” My lips curl in annoyance. Seems like he is very good at denying me everything I want.
“Because I don’t want our first kiss to be like that.”
“Like what?”
“Tinted by my anxiety and your anger.” He brushes the tip of his nose over mine, holding my shoulders in his big bear palms. “When I kiss you, you will believe every unspoken word the kiss will say. You’ll believe the I love you, the It was always you. You will see that I mean the You and I are forever. There will be no second-guessing.”
His lips slant to the edge of my jaw, then move down to skim the column of my neck.
The initial touch is an electric shock, and the world is thrown out of focus.
The entire room is holding its breath—walls, furniture, ceiling.
Then his lips move back up and close in on mine. It’s a perfect lock-and-key match.
His lips taste divine, but it’s not them that make our kiss a once-in-a-lifetime event.
It’s the fact that it symbolizes the complete destruction of what we were until now. Best friends.
“Bailey?” Dad asks from behind my bedroom door.
I gasp into Lev’s mouth, panicked, but all he does is pry my mouth open and slip his tongue into my mouth, slowly and sensually exploring the area.
Dad presses. “I heard noises from your room.”
Lev is chuckling into our kiss. I try to bite him, but that only makes him laugh harder.
Bastard.
“Um, yes, Dad!” I call out, voice muffled. “Everything’s fine!” More than fine, to be honest.
“Everything okay?” Marx, so rude. Why can’t I have a neglectful family that leaves me to my own devices when they hear random whimpering coming from my room?
“I…was…crying?”
Awesome job, Bails. Nothing screams certainty more than finishing a sentence with a question mark.
Lev is nibbling on my lower lip leisurely before returning his attention to the inside of my mouth.
“Why were you crying?”
Who died and made you the Spanish Inquisition, Dad?
“It’s…happy tears.”
“You fucking bet,” Lev mumbles into the side of my mouth, kissing and biting and teasing. As my father drones on about his patience running thin with my shenanigans, I focus on the magic unspooling between me and my best friend. The way he holds me in his arms.
“Why?” Dad insists.
“I’ll tell you when I come out.” Thank you, Juilliard, for giving me news to break to him and inadvertently saving Lev’s life. “Just give me a few minutes.”
“All right, baby.”
Lev stops snacking on my skin and pops his head far enough for us to look each other in the eye.
He is pressed on top of me. We’re both grinning like lunatics.
Then I remember what caused all of this, and my heart drops.
“I thought you said you weren’t going to take a kiss from me?”
“This wasn’t a kiss.” He shakes his head. “This is a foreplay for a kiss. A declaration of intention. When I kiss you—yes, just kiss, nothing more—you won’t be able to think straight for weeks.”
We both grin like two idiots.
“You may stop crushing me to death now,” I whisper, patting his shoulder awkwardly.
“Not before you tell me this changes nothing.”
“It changes nothing,” I lie.
“Why don’t I believe you?” His eyes—green with a drop of hazel around each pupil—scan me.
“Because you’re paranoid?” I offer with a sweet smile.
“I didn’t mean what I said about Juilliard. I want you to go.”
“Good, because I’m going.”
Reluctantly, he rolls off of me.
I put the bracelet on.
He dons his too.
“How’s the sky looking, Dove?”
“Clear as day.”
CHAPTER 25
Lev
Miserable Fact #2,016: The human body is reduced to between 3 and 9 pounds once being cremated.
The blowup with Dad and Knight in Jackson Hole changed something in me.
Made me snap out of my autopilot existence.
It is time to do right by the people I love.
I started out with Dove, by redirecting her attention to getting sober, as opposed to getting dicked.
Yeah, we messed up a little by fooling around, but she’s managed to do so well.
I don’t want her to switch one obsession with another, so I’m giving her space.
And Bailey was right. I am jealous of her passion for what she does.
I am cruising.
I play ball and don’t apply to the Air Force Academy because of Dad and Knight. I don’t move on because of Bailey. I fake a relationship with Thalia because I don’t want her feeling embarrassed or used.