Page 46 of Under the Orchard’s Spell

“I don’t know,” I whisper, because right now we’re pressed so close together that all I can feel is the heavy, staccato beat of his heart. The stuttering, pining answer of my own. His finger on my chin. Our skin running together. “I tend to feel a lot of stuff.”

He lowers his hand. “Tell me.”

You, I want to say. I feel nothing but you.

I shift, angling our bodies together, chins aligned. Between the water and the silt, it’s so easy it’s practically frictionless. I breathe in, he breathes out, and our lips hover less than a foot apart. It’s a line we’ve crossed before, dozens of times, and yet—

“I feel like I’m circling back to something I forced myself to forget,” I say.

Logan draws in a breath. The water picks up its pace, the current seeming to circle us, nudging us together into a tightening eddy.

“And you?” I whisper. “What do you feel?”

He hesitates before his forehead lowers to mine. “Like everything I thought I knew is changed.”

My next breath trembles into my lungs.

The eddy swirls faster, cinching our limbs together. Maybe Logan closes the disappearing distance between our lips. Or maybe I do. Or maybe it’s just the spinning current, but, in the next breath, I feel his lips brush against mine. A butterfly of a kiss. So soft it might not even count.

But then, his mouth presses tighter and I part my lips. And suddenly that invisible line is a thousand miles behind us. His mouth is on my neck and my hands are climbing into his hair, my fingernails grazing down his wide back.

It’s familiar and effortless—the shiver of his exhale when I run my tongue against his jawline and the firm press of his fingers against my neck. Like, despite all the years and changes, this kiss is pure muscle memory.

But, also, entirely new.

Because the last time I kissed Logan, he wasn’t yet the man who’d been left by one parent and then the other, trying to fill both the roles they abandoned. And I wasn’t this Ali—broken and mended and broken all over again.

Or maybe it’s both. New and old. The way it would have been if, through some miracle, I had spent the rest of my high school years here instead of the farthest reaches of this continent. Like I’m closing an open circle I hadn’t fully appreciated was incomplete.

Somehow, we’ve changed positions again, because I find myself straddling Logan’s torso, both legs wrapped around his middle. His hands run up the backs of my legs, cup my backside, and he drags me closer. My hips roll against his torso and our skin runs together, made glossier and silkier by the warm water and twist of silt.

Logan moves his lips along my throat. My skin feels like it’s tightening against my bones, a cling wrap of pleasure. I roll my hips into him again, aching to get closer despite the way we are pressed together. I feel his erection twitch against my thigh and it sends a low rumble of pleasure and want through my center.

My breaths are coming in harder. Like every time he kisses me with conviction, I want to respond with nothing but recklessness. The creek seems to swell with it, with us. Water rushes faster, crashing over the rocks and frothing in eddies. Logan’s hands explore my back even as the current tightens and grasps, trying to pull us together or down. I’m losing myself in this torrential, dizzying moment, and it’s so intense and overwhelming that just for the briefest of seconds, I need a breath, a bit of air, so I release myself from Logan and a single word slips from my lips:

“Wait.”

He’s off me so suddenly it’s like he ran headlong into a low-hanging tree branch. His body is strung tight, his eyes roaming over me with some realization dawning.

“This is—” He pulls even farther away, difficult considering the bathtub-sized space we’re wedged inside. “We need to slow down.”

The creek stills like ice.

I blink. “Okay? Like right now or in general?”

Logan doesn’t answer, but his eyes drop to my left hand, where my fingers are still squeezing his forearm. My empty ring finger. I withdraw, curling a fist into my chest. “Because of Blake?”

He frowns. “Blake?”

“My ex. You’re saying this is going too fast because I was engaged a month ago.”

“No, I certainly was not thinking about Blake.” He says the name like he’s just tasted an ancient pickle hot-boxing a minivan. He raises a thick eyebrow. “Were you thinking about Blake?”

“No.” The word bursts out of me. Maybe I should have been? Is it weird I wasn’t? “Absolutely not. But then, sorry, can you tell me the problem?”

Logan closes his eyes, massages a temple. “The problem is that I’m an ass.”

“I doubt it.”