Broken Beautiful Hearts(68)

As much as I want to know what happened, he doesn’t want to talk about it even more.

“You win. You don’t have to tell me.” I sigh. “I’ll wait in the hall while you change, in case you need me … I mean, need help.”

I turn to walk away and Owen touches my elbow. He lets his fingers slide down my arm until he’s holding my hand. “Don’t leave.” He takes a deep breath and raises his eyes to meet mine. “I’ve got…”

Whatever he’s about to tell me is difficult for him. Instead of pushing, I wait until he’s ready to talk. I understand how it feels to need time. I rarely tell people that my dad is dead, but when I do, it takes me a minute to collect my thoughts.

Owen leans his shoulder against the locker and faces me. “I have asthma. It gets bad sometimes.”

I’ve had teammates with asthma, but I’ve never seen any of them unable to catch their breath.

“A black eye is bad. You could barely breathe when I got here. What would’ve happened if I hadn’t come looking for you?” The moment I ask the question, the truth hits me.

I care about what happens to Owen.

“Eventually, it would’ve let up enough for me to grab my inhaler. You walked in during the worst of it.” He sounds so calm.

“What if your bag wasn’t nearby?”

“It would’ve been okay, Peyton.”

“You don’t know that for sure.” Before Dad left for a mission, he’d give me a bear hug and tell me that he would be okay. Even though high-risk ops were the norm for him, Dad believed he would always come home to us. Then one day he didn’t.

“Don’t dodge the question. What happens if you have an asthma attack and you don’t have your inhaler?”

“Peyton—”

I’m not giving up that easily. “What would happen?”

“I wouldn’t be able to breathe.”

Something else occurs to me. “Does fighting increase your chances of having an attack?”

Owen sighs. “Yeah. But so does running across the street. Should I stop doing that, too?”

“If it keeps you alive.”

“I don’t want to live that way—avoiding anything that might hurt me.” He looks directly at me.

“Normal people don’t want to get hurt, Owen.”

“Normal is overrated.” He takes a step toward me. “I can’t let my condition control my life. I don’t want to play it safe all the time. I don’t want to be afraid to go after the things I want and take risks … like this.”

Owen wraps his arm around my waist and pulls me against him. When I don’t protest, he slides his other hand up my back and into my hair. “Unless you tell me to stop, I’m going to kiss you.”

He leans in, never taking his eyes off mine.

When his lips graze mine, it feels too good. The kind of good I want to feel a hundred more times. He brushes his lip against mine, and the contact sends shock waves through my body. He continues to tease me, tracing the seam of my lips with his tongue.

I part my lips. Owen accepts the invitation and kisses me for real.

My hands touch the bare skin on his chest and he moans—low and sexy. He tastes sweet, with a hint of copper from the cut on his lip. I loop my hands around his neck, and he tightens his hold around my waist, carefully turning us until I’m leaning against the lockers.

The combination of the cold metal against my back and the heat of Owen’s skin against my chest creates a delicious burn inside me. Part of me knows I should stop kissing him, but the other part of me wins out.

Owen lets his hands trail up my sides, and he reaches over my shoulders and plants his palms on the lockers, boxing me in. His bottom lip is swollen from the fight and I brush my lips across it. His breathing speeds up and he deepens the kiss. I’m breathing just as hard, and our chests press together whenever one of us exhales.

When Owen finally pulls back and looks at me, his eyes are glassy and his cheeks flushed. “I knew that’s how it would feel to kiss you.”

“How?”

He leans over and whispers the answer in my ear. “Like it was worth the risk if you didn’t feel the same way.”

I do. That’s the problem.

“We can’t do this, Owen.” I turn my head away and try to pull myself together. “We’re just friends.”

He touches my chin with his finger and turns my face back toward him. His mouth hovers in front of mine, so close that his breath teases my lips. It takes every ounce of self-control I have left not to kiss him again.

“If that’s what you want…” he says.

It is and it isn’t, but I can’t say that without giving him an explanation.

When it’s clear I’m not going to respond, Owen leans over to my ear and whispers, “We can be just friends. For now.

“As long as you aren’t just friends with anyone else.”





CHAPTER 28

Secrets

I’M STILL IN the hazy place between dreaming and waking, but I don’t want the dream to end. It feels so real. Owen’s hands tangled in my hair. His mouth finding mine over and over, nipping and tugging until my lips are swollen. I can’t think about anything except what it would feel like to have his hands on me … because kissing Owen feels too good.