Page 46 of Catching Feelings

“Hi.” Her voice is soft.

I lean back against the sink, unable to take my eyes off the way her lips are slightly parted. Off their glossy, pink pout. “Were you… looking for the bathroom?”

Those lips curl in a smile. “Yes.”

“Oh.” I run a hand over my hair, fingers twitching with the desire to be lots of other places right now. “Well… you found it.”

She takes a small, deliberate step forward. “I did.”

My breathing is shallow. I want this to mean something—but I don’t want to assume— “Do you… want me to go? I can—”

“No.” Her answer is short, determined, definitive.

Instead of leaving, she closes the door.

I don’t know which one of us reaches for the other first. Sabrina’s arms twine around my neck and my hands go to her waist while our mouths clash. This kiss is nothing like the last few—it’s desperate, urgent. Full of the ghost of a quiet kiss outside another loud party, of the memory of her in a soaking wet T-shirt, of a week of torturous proximity in a car threatening to break down at any moment, of heated eye contact across a crowded room. Of wanting to be close to her and having to keep my distance. Of wondering if she wants the same.

One of her legs slots between mine, the friction between us building, and I let out a muffled groan into her mouth. In response, she drags her nails through the hair at the nape of my neck, and God, this girl. I get the sense she has very much been wanting the same.

My hands bracket her waist, and I hoist her onto the sink in one smooth lift. She pulls back for a moment, eyeing me appreciatively. “Now, that should have been your talent on display. You practice that move much…?”

I press kisses to her mouth, to her chin, to her neck, and her questions are drowned out by her soft, appreciative noises. “No,” I murmur in between kisses. The scent of her is so strong here, all vanilla and rose. “Nope, that’s all natural talent.”

She grips my chin and drags my face back to hers, and I don’t need to be told twice. As I gorge myself on the kisses I’ve been denying myself for weeks, Sabrina wraps her legs around my waist, and I completely forget that there’s a whole party full of people on the other side of that door. All I can think about is Sabrina—her warmth against me, the sweet taste of her lips, the way I’ll never be able to enter a bakery again without smelling her in the vanilla hanging in the air.

One hand drifts under the hem of her sweater, tracing the soft skin at her waist and cataloging every shiver it draws from Sabrina.

The other tugs loose the ribbon in her hair so all that blond satin falls in curtains around our faces. I pull back just long enough to say, “I’ve been wanting to do that all night.”

“Oh yeah?” Sabrina’s lips are swollen from kissing, her pupils blown wide.

“Mm-hmm. Every time you wear one.”

She plucks the ribbon from my fingers and winds it around my wrist. “Now I’ll be thinking about this every time I do.”

A guttural sound escapes from the back of my throat, and I bend to kiss her again. Kiss her until I’m drunk on it, until the whole world is Sabrina wrapped around me as tightly as her ribbon on my wrist.

Until someone knocks outside, and we jolt apart. Heart pounding, I fly to the door to make sure it’s locked, thank God. “One second! It’s… kinda gross in here, though! You might want to go upstairs!”

“Ew!” a disgusted voice says from the other side. I can hear the lip curl. “Thanks for the heads-up.”

When I turn back to Sabrina, she’s smiling. My own grin is so wide, it hurts my cheeks, and there’s no way I can leave this bathroom without the euphoria of this kiss written all over my face. But Sabrina’s sliding off the sink, pulling her sweater down and running her fingers through her hair to tame it. We both know we’ve pushed this moment further than it can safely go.

I’m already looking forward to the next.

“We should probably…” Sabrina tilts her head toward the party.

I nod. “You go first, and I’ll follow in a minute?”

She opens the door a crack to peek out, then shuts it and looks back up at me. “Coast is clear,” she says with a tiny smirk. Before she slips outside, she looks down and tugs the ribbon around my wrist. Her smile widens. “See you soon, Tyler.”

20. SABRINA

Somehow, no one clocks how twitterpated I am when I emerge from the bathroom. No one comments on my swollen lips, on the hair that’s loose where it used to be up, on the tiny smile that keeps creeping onto my face. The one I only catch when my cheeks start to hurt and I lift my hand to check.

I’d surprised myself, following Tyler into the bathroom. But I hadn’t been able to resist after watching him from across the room.

Every time I caught his eyes on me, it sent an electric jolt all the way down my spine. His shoulders looked even broader than usual when he was leaning forward on the couch to talk to someone, drink cupped in his hands, elbows braced on his knees. The featherlight brush of his fingers on the small of my back made me wobble, all the more powerful for being secret. When I turned to watch him leave the kitchen, unable to keep my attention on whoever I was talking to, he’d been looking back at me.