One Was Lost(37)

I still remember flipping down Sophie’s passenger-seat visor, staring at my smeared, traitorous reflection in the tiny mirror. My hair was shorter, my makeup was lighter, and my acting days were traded in forever. I had changed everything that made me like her.

It didn’t matter, and it still doesn’t. No matter what I change, when I look in the mirror, I will always see my mother looking back.

Is that who my father still sees?

Is that who I really am?

“What are you thinking?” Lucas asks.

“I don’t know,” I lie.

Lies are part of the game I play with Lucas, and my heart told the prettiest ones of all. All those weeks that led up to kissing him, I inched my way from one flirtation to the next, convincing myself nothing would come of it. Until it did.

I guess I lied to him too. I made one silent promise after another, knowing I’d break every one. God, that’s so not fair to him.

“So what was it, Sera? Get tired of slumming it with the white trash boy from—”

My heart snags like a hooked fish. “Lucas, no.”

“Or is that just your act—the virginal, never-been-kissed bullshit.”

“It wasn’t an act.”

He steps forward and tilts his chin. My heart is climbing so high and beating so hard, I’m sure it will fly right out of me. God, I hate this feeling. Even the steady pulse of my body—inhale and exhale and over again we go—it’s all affected by him. I can’t think straight, and I want to. I don’t want to follow my heart—I want to be so different from my mother that one day, she disappears from my head. Just like she did from my life.

“What am I supposed to think, Sera? You came to my shop every day for three weeks. And every time, we talked a little longer, and you sat a little closer.”

“Stop.” My face is going hot.

“Stop what? Stop rehashing the fact that you literally asked me to kiss you, and now I feel like I misinterpreted or—I don’t even know! I feel like I wronged you on that deck.”

“You didn’t! I never, ever felt wronged!”

He throws up his hands, looking twice as big as usual. “Then what the hell was with the silent treatment? What did I do wrong?”

Nothing. My insides are breaking apart. My mother is winning, isn’t she? I push my hands into the center of my chest and beg my ribs to hold true. “Can we just let it go? It was one kiss. One night.”

He moves in until I can see lighter flecks in his irises. “You made it clear that kiss was a really big damn deal for you, that whatever it was between us was worth that deal.”

Shame burns up my throat like acid. “I know that.”

“And the second you walked away, you acted like you didn’t know my name.”

“I did, and I’m sorry.”

“Why? Why did you do it?”

Because after I walked off that porch, I knew. Lucas wasn’t just some guy to hang out with on a Friday night. And all that fluttering in my middle wasn’t just a lethal cocktail of teenage hormones and postwrap high either. It was different. More.

It wasn’t going to end on Sophie’s deck. I knew I could fall for him. Get swept away. Follow my heart until I changed. Until he changed me the way Charlie changed my mother.

How can I explain any of that? Answer: I can’t.

“I’m so sorry I hurt you,” I say instead.

“Don’t tell me you’re sorry. Tell me why.”

My eyes fall to the Dangerous on his arm. Feels about right. “Because I’m afraid.”

“Afraid because we kissed?” he asks.

“Afraid because you’re you.”

He steps closer, and my breath catches. Another step and I’m not sure I’ll be able to pull air at all. He lowers his head until I can see the prominent line of his nose, the wide, heavy-lidded set of his eyes.

“You wishing you could undo what happened?” he asks.

My heart double-thumps because I know that look. He wants to kiss me again. Or still. I don’t know which word applies. I only know I want it too. And I can’t.

I step back, foot wobbling over a root, finding harder ground. Another step and I’m turning, trees stretching up around me like walls. I can’t be here anymore. The real world is out there somewhere, with my dad and my senior year and all those little stupid things I worked hard to keep under control. My room is out there, my yellowing quilt and the window air conditioner that smells like a cheap hotel and drips cold water onto my carpet. I want to go home.

Lucas catches me a hundred yards down the stream. I’m already breathless and stiff-legged, and mosquitoes are flitting around my head and neck. But he’s not winded, steady hands clamped on my arms and voice even when he says my name. Of course he’s steady. He takes one step for every three of mine.

“Let me go,” I say.

“It’s dark, Sera,” he says.

“Let go!” I push against his grip with a keening sound that should embarrass me. It doesn’t. Pushing doesn’t work, so I pull hard. I’m free but not for long.

Lucas grabs me again, gently, but I’m lurching like a dog on a chain. He hauls me back against him, and I take a breath. He doesn’t smell great, but he’s so solid and warm and making all the right soft, hushing noises.