Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 125117 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 626(@200wpm)___ 500(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 125117 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 626(@200wpm)___ 500(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
“What!?”
Then Truman remembered his amnesiac text to Greta the night before. “Oh god,” he groaned.
Ash smiled. Not a smile of amusement but one of pleasure. “Truman.”
“Nope.”
“Truman, hey.”
“I can’t believe she told you!”
“She’s my best friend,” Ash said gently.
“She’s my…my… Yeah, fine, she’s my nothing. Fair point.”
“So.”
“So.”
Ash looked at him and quirked an eyebrow.
“We can’t kiss now!” Truman exclaimed. “You just got a message from your friend about a drunken text I don’t even remember sending. That is not romantic.”
Ash’s smile was warm and fond and grew into a grin. “Okay,” he said. “I disagree. But I get it.”
“You disagree? I drank a bottle of wine in the bathtub and got sad cuz you left our brainstorm and I was thinking about your lips?”
Ash shrugged. “I’m not, like, up on my grand gestures or anything. But I think kissing after you yelled your feelings at me in the middle of the ocean after we discovered that our teenage years are kind of mystically linked by the cave that we’re currently in all alone is, yeah, kinda romantic.”
“Grumble, grumble, grumble,” Truman said. Because when Ash put it that way, damn it, he was right.
“Did you just say grumble?”
“Okay, c’mere.”
“What?”
“Come here. You’re right, it is romantic.”
“Well, now you’re glaring at me, and it’s not seeming that romantic anymore,” Ash said.
They both fell silent.
“This is super awkward now, huh?” Truman said miserably.
“Yup.”
“Should we go?”
Ash nodded and stood. He held out a hand to Truman, and his grip was warm and sure.
Truman let himself be pulled up, and then they were standing face-to-face in the dimness of the cave.
The blue-gray of Ash’s eyes was swallowed by his pupils, and Truman wished they were lit by candles the way Clarion and Aerlich were the first time they sought refuge in the cave. The flickering light would carve Ash’s jawline and cheekbones, glow in his eyes, and paint the fine honey hairs of his eyelashes gold.
They stepped closer.
“Is it romantic now?” Ash murmured.
Truman nodded and slid his hand to the back of Ash’s neck, cradling his skull, his thumb rubbing the sensitive skin behind his ear.
Truman tipped his head up and Ash bent to meet him. Their lips hovered a centimeter apart, and Truman could feel the pull between them. He closed the distance and caught Ash’s lush mouth in a kiss. His lips were just as soft as Truman had imagined.
It began as a slow, tender exploration. Then Truman hooked his arm around Ash’s waist and pressed them closer together. Ash deepened the kiss and Truman’s stomach flipped. He was breathless, weightless.
He twisted his fingers in Ash’s long hair and touched his tongue gently with his own. He felt Ash shudder, then found himself pressed to the rock wall of the cave. Ash’s hand cradled his head, and he relaxed into the firm hold of rock and Ash.
The kiss went on and on until Truman was light-headed and breathing hard. Then Ash broke it, groaning, and rested his forehead against Truman’s.
“Damn,” he murmured.
Truman couldn’t agree more. He sagged in Ash’s arms, and they slid to the floor again, grinning at each other. Ash reached out and traced his cheekbone, then dragged a fingertip over his lips. They felt kiss-stung and hot.
Truman, too comfortable to move, said, “Can you reach my phone in my pocket?”
Ash cocked his head in question but slid his phone out and handed it to him.
Truman opened the text thread with Greta and, in full view of Ash, wrote Can confirm. Those lips were made for kissing. Twelve out of ten would recommend.
He held up the phone and Ash grinned. In the cave he’d read about at twelve years old and never thought was real, Truman sent the text. Then he leaned back in for another kiss.
Chapter 15
Truman
Truman and Ash left the cave and bundled into the van like giddy teenagers, giggling when Bruce howled at the ocean, chortling when a gull almost flew into Ash’s windshield, and snorting with disgusted laughter when Bruce sat between them with a dignified expression, like a third person, then farted so loudly he scared himself and rocketed back into the rear of the van to recover.
Back at Truman’s house, they made cocoa to get warm and then flopped onto the couch.
“And we’d bring candles in our pockets and stick them to the floor, but it wasn’t that big in there, so once Lorin almost lit their knee on fire.”
Ash was regaling Truman with his teenage attempts at witchcraft in the cave.
“What were you trying to conjure?”
“I’m not sure we even knew, really. But going through the rituals felt important somehow. It’s like we wanted something to happen. Something that would tell us we weren’t alone in the world or that there was power we could tap into.”
Truman understood.
“I still feel that way, I think. Like there’s forces out there that I can feel working, but I want to know how to tap in. Not god or anything. More like…something outside that’s made of the same stuff as something really deep inside me that I don’t even know how to access.”