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“I understand if you need a break from this, from us, but—”
“Ian.”
“I’ll tell them the truth. I’ll make sure they know this is all on me. I’ll—”
“Ian.”
As her palm cradles my chin she actually pinches my cheeks, holding them between her fingers until my mouth puckers so that I physically can’t say anything else. She looks irritated, which only makes me more anxious. Her hand relaxes against my jaw, her eyes contemplative.
“Do you know the moment I realized you had ruined all other boys for me?”
“I…What?”
“It was a random Wednesday. I was fourteen, and you and Jack were throwing that huge graduation party while Aunt Bea was visiting her mother.”
“I remember,” I say curiously.
“I was supposed to be in bed, but there was too much going on. The music and the lights and the laughter…I hung out in the hall outside my room just listening to it all for hours.”
My mouth opens only to close, that night coming back to me hazily. “You said you had just woken up.”
“Yeah, well, I lied,” she laughs. “You had just come stomping down the hall all arms and legs, looking for the bathroom and almost tripped over me. What else was I supposed to say?” She smiles; it’s slow, and sweet, just like her, and the knot of anxiety in my chest loosens a bit. “Do you remember what you did?”
“I made your ass go to bed,” I scoff.
Her lips tilt up higher as she beams back at me. “That was after. You don’t remember what happened before that?”
I frown, trying to recall, but in all honesty, there was a lot of beer our friend Paul had stolen from his dad’s fridge involved that night.
“I told you I wanted to come to the party,” she says, helping me out. “And you told me that was absolutely not happening, that I was too young.”
“Okay?”
“So I did what I always do, I pouted, telling you I wanted to dance with everyone else, and that I wasn’t going to bed until I got to dance to one song.”
Sparks of memory tickle at the back of my brain, my mouth parting. “I danced with you.”
“Right on top of your feet,” she laughs. “It was awkward, and I have no idea how you even stood up for it since I’m pretty sure looking back you were hammered, but…God, Ian. I went to bed that night wishing I was just a little older, that there weren’t so many years between us, because I was afraid I would never feel the way I did standing on top of your big-ass feet dancing to a bad pop song.”
“Lila…”
Her thumb brushes across my cheek, and she leans in close, feathering her lips against mine. “And I haven’t. Not once. I’ve never felt that way since. Not until you. Not until you saw me.”
“Fuck, Lila.” My voice cracks, emotion choking me. “What if I ruin everything for you?”
“Not going to happen,” she asserts.
“How can you be so sure?”
“I’m not,” she says easily. “I told you before that I know now that I can’t be sure of anything, remember? But I know what’s worth holding on to. You are. Nothing is going to change that for me. Do you know why?”
I shake my head, my heart thudding wildly in my chest again but for an entirely different reason. “Why?”
“Because I love you,” she says softly, the words quiet and yet the feeling they invoke so loud that it has my ears ringing.
“You do?”
She looks so sure, so utterly at peace with this revelation that the stunned way it leaves me feels almost ridiculous. She nods, pressing another gentle kiss on my mouth as she breathes against my lips, “Completely sure.”
