Chapter 9
759 Words
The first time he kissed her, it was an accident.
Or that was what they both told themselves afterward.
It was a Saturday. Parents out looking at venues. The house quiet and theirs again, the way it only ever was when no one else was home.
They'd been in the kitchen arguing about something that didn't matter — a movie, a song, one of the small stupid things they argued about now because arguing was safer than the other thing.
"You're wrong," she said, laughing.
"I'm never wrong."
"You're wrong constantly. You're wrong right now."
"Name one time."
She opened her mouth to list them, and he stepped closer to make some point, and suddenly the space between them was gone and neither of them was laughing anymore.
She looked up at him.
He looked down at her.
The kitchen was very quiet.
"Aria," he said. Low. Almost a warning. Almost a question.
"Don't," she whispered.
"Don't what?"
"Don't look at me like that. I can't think when you look at me like that."
His hand came up to her jaw, the way it had the night the parents came back early, except this time no headlights swept the window. This time there was nothing to stop them.
"Tell me to stop," he said.
She didn't.
He kissed her.
It wasn't gentle. It was eight months of looking and weeks of pretending and days of three feet of careful distance all collapsing at once. Her hands found the front of his shirt. His found her waist. The kitchen disappeared.
When they finally broke apart they were both breathing hard.
Neither of them stepped back.
"That was a mistake," she said.
"Probably."
"We can't do that again."
"Okay," he said.
Then he kissed her again.
And this time she kissed him back without pretending it was an accident.
They ended up on the couch, talking in the dark, the way they had in ten minutes eight months ago except now they had faces and names and all the time the empty house would give them.
"This changes everything," she said. Her head was on his shoulder. His arm was around her. It felt terrifyingly natural.
"I know."
"If our parents find out—"
"I know."
"Cayden. I'm serious. This isn't just us. If this goes wrong it blows up two families."
He was quiet for a moment.
"Then we don't let it go wrong," he said.
"It's not that simple."
"I know it's not." He turned to look at her. "But I spent eight months looking for you and three weeks pretending I hadn't found you and I'm done pretending. If you want to stop, we stop, and I'll figure out how to live across the hall from you. But if you don't—"
"I don't," she said.
The words were out before she could stop them.
He went still.
"Say that again," he said.
"I don't want to stop." She looked up at him. "I tried. Since the kitchen, since the party, since all of it. I can't make myself not want this."
Something in his face changed — the last of the guard coming down, the boy from the dark fully there now, looking at her like she was the answer to a question he'd been asking for eight months.
"Okay," he said quietly.
"Okay."
"But we do this carefully," he said. "Nobody finds out until we figure out what this even is. Not Priya. Not Jordan — well, Jordan already knows, but nobody else. Not the parents. Not yet."
"Agreed."
"It stays between us."
"Between us," she said.
He pulled her closer and she let him, and they sat on the couch in the dark of a house that was about to become a family, holding onto the one impossible thing they'd both decided they couldn't give up.
It was reckless.
It was dangerous.
It could ruin everything.
And neither of them was willing to stop.
Outside, headlights swept the driveway.
This time they had time. This time they pulled apart slowly, and by the time the parents came in talking about flowers and seating charts, Aria was in the armchair and Cayden was in the kitchen and the only evidence of anything was the way they couldn't quite stop looking at each other across the room.
"Good day?" Victoria asked.
"Fine," they said at the same time.
Victoria smiled, oblivious, and went to put the venue brochures on the counter.
And the secret — warm and dangerous and theirs — settled in to stay.
- Writer
