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CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE
“I have to remind myself to breathe—almost remind my heart to beat!”
Emily Brontë
PAST
“Let’s ditch school,” I told Dante.
“And do what?”
“Go watch movies at my grandma’s house.” She wouldn’t be there. She was gone from seven a.m. to seven p.m. every single working day like clockwork.
And Dante never said no to movies at my house. It had become our thing lately.
In fact, it had become my favorite thing in the world.
He shrugged. “Fine. Whatever. I’m not in the mood for school anyway.”
We walked back toward my place leisurely, side by side as we strolled, so close that our arms and hands kept brushing against each other.
The third time it happened, he took my hand and laced our fingers together.
A thrill ran through my entire body, and I couldn’t hold back a smile.
Neither of us said a word about it. He’d been doing it more and more lately when we were alone, but we never talked about it.
We’d been doing lots of things when we were alone together that we never talked about.
Nothing like what his mom had suggested, in fact all of it could be called more or less innocent, just physical contact that kept progressing, lingering until we couldn’t seem to stop.
But he’d never even kissed me. I was starting to worry about it. From what I heard other girls talking about concerning boys, it seemed like if he wanted to he should have tried to by now.
It didn’t take us long to walk to my grandma’s house. Okay, house was a generous term. It was a rundown two-bedroom trailer on a plot of land that belonged to Dante’s family.
Still, it was the only place we had where we could be alone.
I let him pick out the movie.
He chose Gladiator even though we’d already seen it like five times. But neither of us actually cared what we watched. The movie was not why we’d started spending all of our free time doing this.
I turned it on and Dante sprawled out on the couch, his big body taking up most of it.
As much as I complained about how fast I was growing, he was growing much faster. He towered over me, and his lean body had started to develop muscles I couldn’t help but notice.
And as fast as he was growing, he was still as graceful, as comfortable in his own skin as he’d always been. I hadn’t seen him suffer through one awkward faze yet.
It was infuriating.
I shot him a pointed look at his spot on the couch and moved to sit on my grandma’s ancient recliner.
This was another game we played. I wouldn’t sit with him until he asked me.
No. Cajoled me into it. I resisted every time. I knew I couldn’t make anything too easy for him. Grandma had slapped that bit of wisdom deep into my skull.
“Psst,” he called to me.
