Deeper (Caroline & West #1)(47)

I just know that when she looks up, the tears make her eyes shine, and that’s where the stars are.

That’s how it looks to me. Like the stars are in Caroline, and the whole world is just me and her.

Because I’m stoned.

And because I’m in love with her.

“This, too, Caro,” I say, leaning in. “This is completely my fault.”

When our lips meet, she breathes in, and that’s all that happens. Maybe for a second, maybe forever—it’s hard to tell when you’re stoned. Time gets unpredictable. Sex gets much bigger and much smaller, both, because you can feel everything. Every hair, every breath, every heartbeat, every firing inch of skin. It’s distracting. I get distracted by how Caroline’s mouth feels soft but dry, and it’s like shaking hands, this kiss. Taking her measure. Saying hello. It’s not sexy. It’s … interesting.

“Weird,” she says against my mouth.

“You’re weird.”

“Look who’s talking.”

I lick her bottom lip, and she sinks to her elbows.

I follow her down and do it again. “Still weird?”

“You’re licking me,” she murmurs.

“How’s that working for you?”

She closes her eyes. “I think …”

I draw her lip into my mouth and bite it gently. It feels fleshy between my teeth, more substantial than it looks. I want to do this to every part of her. Lick it and taste it, bite it, test it. Consume her, piece by piece.

“Don’t think. Thinking isn’t your friend.”

“You’re not my friend, either.”

“Funny.” I get my hand in her hair, my thumb under her jawline, tilting her head where I want it so I can really kiss her.

I think, fleetingly, Don’t, and then I do.

Our tongues meet. Our teeth bump gently, and she makes this sound with her breath that would be a laugh if she weren’t so busy sinking her fingers into my hair and kissing me back.

If we were friends, it would be disgusting. Spit and tongues, teeth and lips.

But we’re not friends.

It’s f*cking amazing.

I kiss her hard. I control her, use her mouth, direct her head.

I kiss her soft. Tongue that sexy gap between her teeth. Pull back, let her take over, show me what she likes, how she wants it.

She does want it. Maybe only tonight, maybe for all the wrong reasons, I don’t know. I’m not thinking about it. I’m kissing Caroline, which is better than thinking.

We fall into this kind of haze, nothing touching but our mouths, hands stroking over hair, necks, shoulders. I’m hard, but it feels like a faraway piece of information, with no urgency to it. This isn’t sex. It’s kissing. The forever kind of kissing, where there’s no urgency and no time. Kissing like waves lapping. Perfect kissing.

“Still weird?”

“So weird.”

She’s smiling when she pulls my head back down.

Caroline’s smiling, and we’re kissing, and everything is perfect, until light cuts across her face and she says, “Oh, shit.”

Headlights in the driveway.

“My dad.”

Her Romeo and Juliet balcony turns out to be the perfect height for dropping into the backyard.

My car turns out to be in just the right spot for getting out of Dodge without being spotted.

But the drive between Ankeny and Putnam is way too short for me to sort out what the f*ck it is I thought I was doing and way too long to endure the memory of Caroline’s mouth against mine.



The apartment looks alien when I get back. Small and cold and ugly. Empty.

I go into my room and shut the door. I flop onto my back on the bed, feeling tired and used up.

My phone rings. I almost decide not to answer it, because I know it’s got to be Caroline.

I can’t talk to her. I have to get my head on straight first, figure out what that was. Figure out why, when I snuck down her driveway at a crawl with my headlights off, half of me was hoping I wouldn’t get caught and the other half was disappointed, ashamed, f*cking furious with her for making me feel like her dirty little secret.

When I glance at the screen, it’s not her, though. It’s my mom.

“Hey, what’s up?” I ask.

Frankie’s voice. “Dad’s here.”

My heart jolts. I sit up so fast that my vision narrows. I have to put my palm to my forehead to steady myself. “Where are you?”

“At home. At Bo’s. He’s—he won’t go away, West. You have to make him go away.”

She sounds like she’s about to cry, her voice high and reedy, right on the verge of losing it.

Frankie never cries.

“Okay, take a deep breath, kiddo. You’re inside, right?”

“Yeah.”

“And he’s outside.”

“Uh-huh. And I locked the front door, but he’s pounding and pounding on it. I’m afraid it’ll break!”

Now that she says it, I can hear the pounding. I’m thousands of miles away, and the sound scares the f*ck out of me. I still remember him outside the trailer, yelling at my mom in the middle of the night.

“Michelle! Let me in! Let me into my own goddamn house, you worthless slit!”

He was drunk, Mom told me. He was angry. He didn’t mean it. But I shouldn’t worry, because she would never, ever let him hurt me.