"I wasn't going to give you alcohol, Evan. I'm in deep enough shit already with you. We don't really need to mix drinking in with all this."
I pull my index finger around the edge of the glass, collecting condensation in the whorls of my fingertip.
"What is all this exactly?"
I keep my voice tightrope taut, but my eyes hunt his, refusing to let him duck and cover away from my gaze.
He shifts uncomfortably on the chair. "I don't know."
"Why?" I bully, not above beating this out of him if that's what it takes.
"Because my life is a clusterfuck, Evan!” His voice bursts out louder than either of us expected. We both jump, then he lowers his voice and explains. “It's not fair for me to even imagine letting you into it. And it looks like things are going to get a fuckton worse before they get any better."
He puts the glass down with a thump and pushes up off the chair, moving around the room in a random, edgy circuit. I sit straight on his bed, legs crossed, and watch him.
"I thought I'd be able to just flirt with you when we met. Like that would be enough." He runs a hand through his hair, then brushes it back down, over and over, his still-fresh tattoo poking from the cuffed sleeve of his untucked, cuffed button-down. "Then I thought, fuck it, we could just be friends during that shitty time we had to hang out at our service assignment. I figured I'd get my fill of you and be able to leave. But you know how that worked out."
"Actually, I thought that was exactly how it worked. You took me on one date, then didn't call for a week. I would have said that was you getting me out of your system."
I put my glass down and jump up, reaching for his hands because there's no way I can watch him attack his hair like a maniac anymore. He stills instantly, but, somehow, it’s like he’s transferred all the pent-up, pacing, wild momentum of his body to his eyes, so it still feels like he might as well be climbing up the walls.
I run my fingers over his forehead because I can’t convince myself not to touch him. "Look, if this is so damn hard and so damn confusing, maybe it's not meant to be, right? In the last few months I found out my ex-boyfriend is a sexually harassing shithead, my parents’ marriage is probably officially over, and I had to move in with my grandparents and start a new school I hate, all on top of getting arrested and having to do community service. We're both in a shitty place, and it was fun to flirt, but maybe that's all it needed to be. I'm cool with that."
My heart is a pod of dolphins beaching themselves on the rocky shore for no apparent reason.
His hands break from mine and sweep up and down my arms, replacing his manic hair mussing with lulling arm-brushing. His words are low, slow, and ring with solid honesty.
"I'm so not cool with that."
"We can just be friends." My voice slaps and smacks, devoid of any real conviction.
His fingers press and draw down my arms. "I haven't stopped thinking about you all week."
"If it bothered you that much, you would have called." The flop of my voice has moved up several octaves, graduating to a high-pitched squeak.
His voice, on the other hand, is beach-glass smooth.
"I'm crazy good at resisting temptation." He cups my shoulders and drags the back of his fingers down the skin of my bare back. "Correction. I was crazy good at resisting temptation. But here you are, in my room when I should be on the road bringing you home."
My heart had been warming like a surfers' contained bonfire, but his words are the gasoline that’s exploded it into an arsonist's wet-dream.
"What do you want?" My voice scratches out of my throat desperately.
"You." He cups his hand under my chin and rubs the pad of his thumb along my bottom lip.
"This is stupid."
My sad little voice barely registers at a whisper because his thumb plus my lip equals debilitating brain chaos.
"This is too fast."
His other hand holds the side of my face, and he traces his thumbs in sweeping crescents over my cheekbones and around the curves of my ears.
"We tried this, and it was worse than a royal fucking mess," I remind him and myself.
I need a ruler slap to my brain, because I might be falling way too hard and fast under the wrong guy's spell.
"Try again?"
His mouth closes in on mine, and that single second before our lips meet spins out for an eternity. And it makes graphs and flow-charts and PowerPoints underlining all the reasons we should absolutely not be doing this.
But we are.
We so completely are.
Winch walks me back to the bed and lays me down, his entire body pressed long and perfectly weighted over mine. He kisses me with gentle, coaxing pressure for a few minutes, like he's taking my temperature, gauging my heart rate, and determining if I'm in.
I'm all in.
I vice my arms around his ribs, clamping him close, and his kiss deepens, his tongue slides into my mouth and moves sweet and quick over my tongue and the inside of my lips before he pulls back and sweeps in again. I arch my spine and can feel how hard he already is against my thigh.
His thumbs trip under the straps of my dress, and he pulls his mouth away so he can kiss my shoulders where the cloth was. His mouth follows up and down my shoulder and the curve of my clavicle. He presses his mouth to my breastplate and leaves a soft, warm trail of kisses up to my neck
