Chasing Spring(36)

I looked up at him and then laughed. There was dirt streaked across his cheek and his hair was a wild mess, even more so than when he’d first woken up.

“What? Is something funny?” he asked with a wicked gleam in his eye.

I pointed toward his cheek. “I think you've got a little something on your face.”

He swiped aimlessly at his mouth, chin, and forehead. I couldn't tell if he was intentionally missing the spot or not, but either way I pushed off the ground and rounded the flowerbed. When I was crouched down in front of him, I reached up with my thumb and wiped his cheek. The dirt hardly budged.

“Did you get it?” he asked, hopeful.

I chuckled and licked my thumb to see if it would help. The dirt was caked on really well.

He flinched when I brought my thumb back to his face. “Oh, gross. Now you're just wiping your spit on me.”

“No! I swear half your cheek is covered in dirt,” I laughed.

Before I could even react, he reached into the bed and wiped some dirt across my cheek.

“Chase!”

He shrugged. “There. Now we're even.”

Over my dead body.

I reached for a handful of dirt and took aim directly at him.

“Wait!” he yelled, holding up his hands in defense. “You don't want to do that!”

My eyebrow arched on its own accord. “Oh, I think I do.” The dirt he'd rubbed onto my cheek was cold and damp from the garden hose. It slipped down my face like sludge and then a small splatter hit the top of my shoulder. I didn't wait another second; I threw the wad of dirt directly at him and it landed square in the center of his white T-shirt.

“Lilah!” he bellowed as he lunged forward and caught my wrists in his hands. I instinctively tried to get away but I couldn’t move while he held me. I wiggled around and fell onto my back. He leaned over me with a confident smile, silhouetted by the sun behind him.

“Let me go, Chase.”

“I don't think that would be fair. You just slung a dirt clod at an unarmed man.” His smirk didn't budge and the longer it was present, the harder it was to convince my heart to slow its wild beat.

“You did it to me first,” I pointed out.

He nodded and his head fell an inch closer to mine. My eyes traveled to his lips on instinct.

“So maybe we should get even once and for all?” he asked. My breath caught in my throat and I knew he could hear the blood rioting in my body.

“About last night...” I began, feeling the blush creep up my cheeks as I thought about our kiss. I couldn't even look at his lips without remembering the feel of them on my mine.

“What about last night?” he dared, keeping his hazel eyes pinned on me.

“Um.” I couldn't think with him so close. His knee was wedged between my legs and his grip was tight around my wrists. The scent of his body wash was enough to confuse my logic. “We shouldn’t do it again.”

“Do what?” he challenged.

“Kiss.”

“So you don’t want me to lean down and kiss you right now?” he asked with an amused grin.

I pressed my lips together as if I feared he would act on his words, and then I shook my head no.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear that.”

“I—”

My dad’s truck rumbled into the driveway, cutting our moment short and saving me from a stuttered reply. I listened to his engine cut off and then the truck door slammed closed. Chase let go of my wrists and pushed off the ground to stand. He’d been blocking the sun before and when he moved away, I had to squeeze my eyes shut from the blinding glare.

It was too bright.





Chapter Thirty-Nine


Lilah





My school’s windows didn’t get cleaned as regularly as they should have. It was nearly impossible to see past the dirt and dust, but if I tried hard enough, I could see the perimeter fence and the fields that lay beyond. I focused there at the start of my detention, trying to count the rows of dirt to keep my brain occupied. I didn’t want to think of Chase or my mom. The two of them already had ownership of my mind at night when there was nothing to distract me. They’d duel it out in the darkness of my room, tugging me back and forth like I was the leading lady in some sort of twisted love triangle.

Every step I took toward Chase, every time I let my guard down even an inch, I could feel my mother’s ghost twist around me, rooting me to the ground like a poisonous vine. I resented her for it, the way she could claw her way back from the dead. I’d foolishly assumed that death would finally take her away from me.

A student slipped into the spare seat in front of me, slinging his backpack so that it slammed into the stack of textbooks on my desk. Half of them went sliding off onto the ground and the chaos of the moment pulled me out of my staring contest with the cornfields.

“Oh, shit. Sorry,” he said, reaching down to grab the fallen books.

He pushed them back onto my desk and I waved off his apology, trying to decide if I had the willpower to open any of the books that were now restacked haphazardly on my desk. I was already ahead in all of my classes, but I wouldn’t survive an hour in detention without some sort of distraction.

Mrs. Nicholson—the poor teacher who’d been lucky enough to land detention duty—instructed everyone to have a seat and get comfortable. I glanced up at the large black clock that hung above the whiteboard at the front of the class. According to the plodding hands of the clock, I had fifty-nine minutes until freedom. With a sigh, I flipped open my literature textbook and turned to a chapter we weren’t due to cover for a few weeks.