Kiss and Break Up (Magnolia Cove, #1)(38)

I bumped his shoulder with mine, smiling. “Or maybe, the person you were always supposed to be.”

“Careful, now. If you think too highly of me, you’ll only be letting yourself down in the end.” I snickered as we found my old room. He switched on the light and shut the door halfway.

It was pink. Everything. The duvet, the walls, the old wooden dollhouse in the corner, and even the drapes. Nothing had changed. My white twin bed sat exactly where it had the day Mom and I left.

I exhaled a wistful sigh, then spotted the box Dash had given me on the end of the bed and walked over to it. “You brought it up here?”

“I didn’t want to risk anyone ruining it. You’ll see why when you actually open it.”

His last words held some bite, causing guilt to gnaw quick and sharp.

I picked up the box, taking a seat with it on my lap as Dash started messing with my old Goosebumps collection.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I got distracted. I didn’t mean—”

“Just open it.”

I tugged off the silky purple ribbon, then opened the cardboard flaps to reveal what was inside. Photographs, possibly hundreds, dating back to when we were newborns.

Tears collected, and I couldn’t contain them as I started sifting through the memories. “Dash,” I croaked, closing my eyes to try to steady myself.

“You do all that scrapbooking shit with your friends, but I’ve yet to see you make an album for us. So it’s a selfish present, but I don’t even care.”

It was the furthest thing from selfish he’d maybe ever done. It would’ve taken him weeks, maybe months, to find, collect, and print all of these. We both knew that, but I let him keep his brick and mortar shield in place and reopened my eyes to finish looking through them.

Soon enough, he’d fetched more drinks from downstairs, then took a seat beside me as we replayed and retold as many memories as we could remember.

“I did not wear a diaper until I was four.”

“Pictures don’t lie, Freckles.”

I shoved him. “It was Halloween.” I drained the rest of my third drink. “I was dressed as Pebbles, and you were Bamm-Bamm.”

His lips puckered as he studied the photo. “I didn’t wear a diaper, and I was George of the Jungle.”

“You were Bamm-Bamm.”

“Bamm-Bamm and Pebbles don’t wear diapers.”

“They do, puffy Stone Age diapers.”

He flicked the photograph, and I took it from him, trailing my finger over his chubby four-year-old face.

“Why the hell did they dress us up as that anyway?”

“Hell if I know,” I said. “Probably because we made cute Flintstone babies.”

“Didn’t they end up together?”

I snapped my gaze to his, grinning. “Shut up. You’ve watched it?”

“A time or two,” he said with a shrug, then finished his whiskey, likely stolen from my dad’s office. “Don’t get too excited.”

“So they get married?” I tucked the flaps of the box shut, sliding it to the other side of the bed.

“I think so. Just like you and I will.”

I fell backward, laughter howling out of me.

“You find the idea that ridiculous, do you?” He leaned over me, blue eyes smiling.

“Imagine that.” I squinted up at him, my head dizzy.

“Actually”—he swallowed, his Adam’s apple shifting—“I do.” His words made my heart pause. “Imagine it.”

My breath caught. “Dash.” He was drunk, I tried to reason with the burning in my chest.

With his eyebrows dipped low, he licked his lips. “You shouldn’t be with him.”

My heart began racing, and my lungs failed to keep up. “Why?”

“Because …” His head lowered, his hair falling forward and grazing my face as his nose touched mine. “You should be with me.”

We crashed together in a tangle of heated lips, rough hands, and desperate sounds.

“I want you so bad. I swear it’s all I think about,” he said, his voice dry and punctuated between heavy breaths. His tongue licked up my neck as his hand sank behind my head, and his body lowered over mine, grinding between my spread legs.

They wound around his back, and I panted, hands greedy in his thick hair. “I don’t know what we’re doing, but …”

“But?” he asked, eyes meeting mine as he rocked into my core.

I moaned. “But it scares me.”

“Good,” he bit out, his teeth nipping at my lip. “Because you fucking petrify me.”

His words paralyzed. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he said, his eyes twin storms of charged electricity. Then his tongue dived into my mouth, and mine was ready to meet it.

My leg hiked higher up his back, and one of his hands skimmed lower, crawling between us and dipping inside my panties. He froze, his lips leaving mine bereft and cold. “You’re bare.”

My eyes narrowed, and I blinked the cloud-like haze from them. “Um, yes?”

His forehead creased, his gaze dark and filled with something unnamable. “For him?”

And just like that, what we were doing, what I was feeling, seized the moment within its brutal grasp and crushed it all. It fell away like broken petals on the wind, scattering in a million directions, too far out of reach.