Instead of You(25)

“Me?” My thumbs moved just barely over her cheeks as my hands slid to the back of her neck.

“It’s always been you.” Her words were just whispers, but they sounded hopeful and shameful at the same time. I brought her shivering frame closer to me, my forehead resting against hers. And the most wonderful part of it was that she let me. She came, willingly, into my arms, wrapping her own around my waist. “Hayes,” she said, just a breath, before I felt her lips press against mine.

She was kissing me. She was kissing me. And I only let my brain ponder that magnificent fact for a nanosecond before I started kissing her back. I’d relived our kiss from two years ago daily in my mind, thought about it many times, always with mixed emotions. Some days I was glad I’d taken what I thought was my one and only shot at kissing McKenzie. Other days I was absolutely overflowing with guilt for kissing my brother’s girlfriend. Most days though, most days, I was absolutely broken that it would never happen again.

And here she was, putting me back together again with her lips.

She kissed me slowly, tentatively, as if she were afraid I was going to stop her.

My fingers threaded through her hair, now drenched from the rain, and I gripped it, making sure she had nowhere to go but to me. Her lips were soft but cold, moving over mine as if I were fragile. I stepped into her farther, even though we were clinging to each other with no room between us, but pushing her back made her unsteady and forced her to hold on to me tighter.

I passed my tongue over the seam of her lips, hoping she’d give me the permission I sought. When her lips parted and a tiny sigh escaped her, I was done handling her gently.

My tongue swept over hers, licking her, tasting her, and a growl rumbled through my chest with the feeling of finally getting that part of her back. As I kissed her, my lips moving over hers, her lips responding with so much heat and need, I was aware of her body. Aware of the way she slowly softened against me, losing all the stiffness she’d held on to just moments before. Her hands gripped my shirt at my back, and when her fingers twisted in the material, she pressed herself against me even more. She was holding on to me because she had to; I had her at a disadvantage. But she was also clinging to me because she wanted to, I could tell. She told me in the way her lips sought mine out. If I moved left, she went with me, followed me. When I took her bottom lip between my teeth, sucking on it, she let me and her shuddering breaths told me she never wanted me to stop.

When our lips finally separated, it was only because we needed air, both of us panting to pull in as much as we could.

“Kenzie,” I said between dragging breaths, “I won’t let you go. I can’t walk away and pretend this didn’t happen. It’ll kill me if I do it again.”

“I wish you’d never walked away the first time.” Her eyes were so clear, her expression, for the first time in weeks, relaxed and sincere.

“What is this?” I asked on a breath, unsure if I wasn’t having some sort of hallucination, my hands back at the sides of her face, examining everything about her in that moment because I never wanted to forget what she looked like the instant I felt my life click into place.

“This is us.”





Chapter Ten


McKenzie


Hot water cascaded from the top of my head, down my chest, over my stomach, all the way to the shower floor. The warmth was welcomed after standing in the rain. Although, admittedly, while I was standing in the rain, I hadn’t noticed the cold.

Oh, no.

I was very much not cold outside, with Hayes’s arms wrapped around me, lips kissing mine, hands running all over me.

Good God, he could kiss. I remembered the kiss we shared two years ago, but everyone knew your first kiss was never the greatest. I remember it being amazing, not only because of the actual kiss, but because of the way it made me feel.

Well, kiss number one with Hayes held no candle to kiss number two.

The first time, he kissed me because he thought he’d never have another chance. But the second time, well, he kissed me because he got the chance he never thought he’d have.

I pushed thoughts of Cory out of my mind. It was maddening to think about the two of them in the same frame, as if they were mutually exclusive—which they were. I could only have one without the other. But the difference was, I kept telling myself, that Cory wasn’t a choice anymore.

I let out a large sigh as I rinsed the conditioner out of my hair.

We’d kissed in the rain until Hayes had finally pulled away, running the back of his large hands over my cheeks, telling me to go inside and warm up, but that we weren’t finished. I did what he asked because I had just been kissed stupid, but as I dried off and put on a pair of yoga pants and a tank top, I found myself getting nervous, wondering what he’d meant.

I walked into the living room and noticed my house was still empty. I figured Mom had stopped at Mrs. Wallace’s when she got off work, and I’m sure she was planning on staying for a while since she was upset about the ring.

The ring.

I wasn’t surprised that Cory had picked out a ring for me. In fact, absolutely nothing about our relationship surprised me because everything was so transparent and laid out for us. Our story had been written before either one of us could put up any kind of argument.

I grabbed my backpack and started working on the piles and piles of homework I’d gathered from school. Twenty minutes later I’d done a pretty good job of sorting work out and determining which assignments needed to be completed first. I’d always been a really good student, so I was determined to catch up quickly. The last term of senior year was not the time to fall behind.