Ditched (22 page)

His body tensed and his hand slid back up, so that it was resting on my waist. In his surprise, he held his breath for a moment. Then he blew it out. I couldn’t see him but I could guess he was trying to push his way through his groggy confusion.

“It’
s storming,” I explained. “The electricity went out and I couldn’t get back to sleep. My room is way too dark. And quiet. It was creepy and I started to feel a little bit...nervous.” That sounded so lame. True, but lame.

“Oh.” He still didn’t move. We were both on our sides now, facing each other. His hand still rested on me.

I let a small laugh slip out. “Why would you think you were dreaming? Do you do that? Dream about me, I mean?”

I was aiming fo
r a teasing tone but I knew I failed miserably. The words came out sounding exactly like what they were. I was digging for answers and trying to find a way to quench my curiosity. The question was met with silence. I realized I shouldn’t have blurted it out because the question was clearly loaded. I didn’t want to shoot the moment all to hell before it even got started.

When he hesitated
, it sent my heart off in a frantic beat that resembled a game of hopscotch in my chest.

“
Do you want me to go back to my room?” I whispered.

“
Not necessarily. I was just…surprised you’re here. I didn’t realize you were afraid of storms.” His hand seemed frozen on my waist. As if he wasn’t sure what to do with it.

“I’m not
afraid of storms,” I denied.

“Okay,” he said, sounding amused.
His thumb brushed against my bare skin and the hopscotching picked up its pace. “Then what
are
you doing here?”

“Maybe I am a little
afraid of storms,” I admitted. The answer was as good as any. My hand had fallen from his elbow. It was now wedged between us. I lifted it, placing it on his bicep and sliding it up to his shoulder. His breath may have caught, or it may have been wishful thinking. “It’s not just that it’s storming. The electricity is out. So it’s dark. I mean like
beyond
dark. And my room is so quiet. And it’s really creepy and…
quiet
,” I pointed out, trying to grasp onto a tiny bit of dignity. The rain had stopped again, as if to prove my point.

“Storms, silence and the dark, it’s practically a
trifecta of scary things,” he teased as I slid my hand a little further so I could run my fingers across the back of his neck. “If I’d known that’s all it would take to get you in here on your own, I would’ve flipped the breaker weeks ago.”

Despite hearing it from both Mike and Lanna, some small part of me had still refused to believe it. But Max’s comment caused relief to flood through me.
Maybe there was a chance for us.

“Holly? You okay? I was kidding. I shouldn’t have said that,” he immediately backtracked.

“
No, it’s okay. I was just thinking.” My voice was shaking. Did I really want to do this now?
Yes
. Could I do this? Because once I did, one way or another, it was going to change everything.

“
You’re thinking about…?” Max prodded.

“How badly I want you to kiss me.”
There, I said it.

Other than the sound of our breathing, there was nothing but silence
—the amplified, silence—for several long seconds. I couldn’t decide if it was better or worse that I couldn’t see his face.

“
I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” he finally said.

My hand slid away from him
again as my heart slammed around. I started to back away. “I’m sorry…I’ll just…I’m going to…” I sputtered a few more half sentences before Max’s arm scooped around me. He slid me across the bed until my body was pressed against his again. He held me much closer this time. I was acutely aware of how little fabric there was between the two of us. I was sure he was too.

He didn’t say anything for a second as he rested his forehead against mine. “Sorry,” he breathed the word out. “I just neede
d a second to wake up. You really took me by surprise.”

“I know, sorry,” I whispered back. He still had his arm around my waist. I tentatively slid my h
and up resting it on the back of his neck yet again.

He rubbed his cheek against mine. “You really want me to kiss you?”

My voice sounded embarrassingly breathless when I said, “Only if you want to.”

The last few days when I’d been thinking about kissing Max, or Max kissing me—and I’m not ashamed to admit, I’d been thinking of it a lot—I pictured it bein
g gentle and sweet. I assumed if it ever happened, the kiss would be just like Max’s personality.

I was completely unprepared when it happened for real. The way he kissed me was completely unexpected. He kissed me like I was something decadent he’d been waiting for. Like he wanted nothing more than to devour me. I felt myself wanting him to. I wanted to be consumed. I found myself making little gasps for air every time his mouth left mine to explore another part of me. When his mouth came back to mine I couldn’t stop myself from moaning into it.

My body exploded into a sensation of pure bliss.

I couldn’t decide if I should be grateful for, or cursing the thin fabric between us. Max seemed to be having the same moral dilemma.

I ran my hands across the bare skin of his back as he toyed with the hem of my shirt. His hand slid up, skimming along my ribcage and then floated back down again. He gripped my waist and flipped me from my side onto my back. He rolled with me, so that my body was buried under his. His mouth never left mine. I gripped his shoulders, not wanting him to pull away, not wanting it to end.

I was sure at that moment that Max’s first kiss had ruined any other first kiss that might follow. I wasn’t sure, even then, that I ever wanted there to be another first kiss.

Chapter 17

The first time I awoke the next
morning, I was snuggled up tightly to Max. My back to his front. His arm was looped around me. I heard him heave out a sigh so deep it ruffled my hair. Then he leaned forward and left a lingering kiss on my bare shoulder before he got out of bed. I drifted back to sleep, knowing he must be headed off to shower so he could start his day.

The second time I awoke, the house seemed far too quiet. The shower wasn’t running. I let myself snuggle down into the Max-scented sheets for just a moment. Then my eyes flew open wondering if he
’d left without saying goodbye. I glanced at the clock as I threw the covers off. It was reset to what I assumed was the correct time.

I straightened my tank top and made my way out of his room.

He was sitting at the breakfast bar. He had what looked like an entire platter of waffles, drowning in syrup, in front of him. He glanced up at me and smiled before taking a bite.

“I thought you’d left without saying goodbye,” I said. I padded over to him, resting against the opposite side of the bar.

He finished chewing and shot a confused glance at me. “Why would I wake you up? I never wake you up.”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I just thought after last night, you might.”

“Yeah, about that…” He trailed off and took a gulp of milk.

I felt my eyebrows shoot up. Something in his tone was off.

“We should talk about that later. When I get home.”

I drummed my fingers across the countertop, waitin
g for him to elaborate. After several more bites, he finally did.

“
So how is this going to go?” he asked. “Do we go back and pretend last night never happened? Or do we move forward, like into dating? Because the one place this
isn’t
going to go is into awkward territory.”

“I know. I don’t want that either.”
And yet, that’s exactly what the moment felt like.

“At
the same time,” he said as he pushed away from the breakfast bar, “if you’re not serious about this, if last night was just…fun, or something, or if you were just bored…let me know now. Okay? I can handle being a rebound for a night. As long as I
know
that’s what it was. But I don’t want make a habit out of it. I mean, if that’s all it was to you.”

“That’s not—
”

He cut me off.
“You think about it. Okay?”

He brought his plate to the sink and rinsed it off. I stood there, staring at his back because his word
s had completely taken me by surprise.

He turned to face me again. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but where did last night come from? I mean, you’ve never acted interested in me. Not that way. I know you’ve been acting strange the last few days…”

He faded off, apparently waiting for me to pick up the conversation.

I had my back to the counter now
so I could face him. I was leaning against it, my arms folded across my chest. “When Mike was here—”

He groaned as understanding flooded his features.

“—he said a few things,” I continued. “About you. And me. About how you feel about me.” I stammered. “He said you’ve felt that way a really long time.”

“Right,” he said
. He made a pained face, clearly not happy with this information.

“And Lanna, too,” I tacked on.

He grimaced. “Is nothing private?”

I made a guilty face. “Well, Mike doesn’t seem to think so. As for Lanna
, she only told me because she thought I already knew. Which, I guess I did, if I believed what your brother said.”

“So you were just…what?” he demanded.
His expression was carefully blank. His posture was too rigid for me to believe this conversation was no big deal to him. “Were you testing the waters or something?”

I shook my head. “No. The last few days, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you.
Actually, it’s been longer than a few days. I don’t know exactly how long.”

He narrowed his eyes at me and shook his head just a bit. I noticed his lips twitched
up just a bit in a smile. He fought it back down. He looked as unsure about the situation as I suddenly felt.

“It really bothered me when you were out with Tori.
When you had lipstick smeared on you, I thought I was going to be sick. Then I thought you were going to kiss me on the Fourth of July and you didn’t and I was so disappointed.” I took a breath and he didn’t say a word. “I know I’m rambling.”

“No, it’s fine,” he said. “It’s good, actually. But I’m just…I don’t even know what I am right now.”

“How much of what Mike said was true?”

Max tilted his he
ad back as if to look at the ceiling but he’d squeezed his eyes tightly shut. When he opened his eyes, he looked past me. As if he didn’t want to see my reaction to what he had to say. Any trace of a smile had evaporated. “Probably all of it.”

“Okay…then…” I wasn’t sure where to go from there. I didn’t see why Max seemed to think this was such a big problem. I thought he’d be happy about it. I wanted him to be happy about it because
I
wanted to be happy about it, too. I hadn’t expected everything to suddenly feel ten times more confusing. “Why do you look so upset?”

“It’s just that I’d rather…” He raked his hands through his hair and blew out a breath. “I can’t believe I’m saying this. But I’d rather not have you at all than only have you because you’re using me. Because if you’re using me, you wouldn’t really be mine. And if that’s the case, I’d rather have you as nothing more than a friend. So at least I would know where we stand. Does that make sense?”

“I would never use you Max.”
Not on purpose
. And there, probably, was the problem.

He clenched and unclenched his jaw for a few seconds, a sure sign that he was uneasy. Finally, he pushed ahead with what he needed to say.
“I don’t want you to use me to try to get over Collin. I don’t want to be a rebound.”

Oh. So that was it.

“
Would it help if I told you that I can’t remember the last time I thought of Collin? Not until just now, when you mentioned him.” It was the truth. Collin hadn’t been on my mind for weeks.

“
Yeah,” he said. He looked relieved for the first time since the conversation started. “That would help.”