“You’re gonna be so grounded after this,” he whispers into my hair.
My pulse jumps so hard that there’s no way he doesn’t feel it.
“Can you imagine?” I say. “My dad will lose his shit.”
“No prom for you.”
“Not now.” I shift, lean a little farther back so my hair falls over his shoulder and he sucks in a breath.
I feel his heartbeat speed against my spine.
“Why—” he starts, then abruptly stops.
I wait, trying to decide if I can let it go.
I can’t.
There’s nothing, nothing to distract myself. I say, “Why what?”
“Why do you guys hate me so much?”
I furrow my brow and turn my face, forgetting just how close we are, not realizing that that move will put my mouth a literal breath away from his throat. Just a centimeter from brushing his jaw. “I don’t hate you.”
He makes this noise that’s caught between a choke and a laugh.
“I swear,” I say.
“Your parents hate me.”
“Well.”
“Mmmhmm,” he hums against my jaw.
“In fairness, my parents hate, like, everybody.”
“You,” he says, “are just afraid of me.”
I frown. “What?” And whip my head so that I’m staring at him, even though it puts us in absolutely uncomfortable proximity. Even though it forces me to consciously still so that I don’t shift and brush his mouth with mine.
. . . Thank god for toothpaste.
“Come on,” he says, fingers slipping around my wrist, thumb pressing into my pulse. “It’s like a rabbit’s.”
“No it isn’t.”
“Why do I freak you out, Hallie?”
“You don’t.”
He blinks, and I suddenly realize how long his eyelashes are.
His jaw is a little tight, mouth a disbelieving line. He’s not mad, he just . . . thinks I’m full of shit.
I say, “I’m more afraid of my parents than I am of you.”
“Well, no shit.” He laughs and his breath is warm on my mouth.
And because it’s easier not to look at him, because it’s easier not to feel his laughter on my lips and watch his eyes react to everything I say, I turn again and lean back into his chest.
There is so much more of us pressed against each other this way, but it’s not so intimate that I can’t breathe.
The wind whistles through the slight imperfections in the wood the hunter used to put this blind together.
I shut my eyes, even in the dark. “It was easy to be just a little afraid of you.”
He doesn’t answer.
He breathes.
“As if you don’t want people to be afraid of you.”
The tiniest hum in his chest. It’s almost an acknowledgment, but it stops just short.
I say, “You and Jaxon are so just—so wild, you know? And I only see you for fifteen seconds at a time and it’s always one or both of you getting yelled at and one or both of you giving the middle finger to whatever authority figure has you nailed that time. I’ve heard the stories, dude.”
He practically harrumphs. “What stories?”
“Lighting up in the principal’s RV?”
He laughs out loud, raspy in my ear. “Oh shit, I’d forgotten about that.”
“You’re both getting into fights like every other week—”
“I’ve gotten into two fights. Jaxon’s the Rocky Balboa here, not me. I might have let those rumors run, but in reality? The two fights I’ve gotten into, his scrawny ass got me into—what do you want me to do? Just let him get it handed to him because he couldn’t keep his head down when a couple fucks decided they weren’t going to leave him alone?”
“Hm,” I say. That’s . . . different than the impression I’d gotten.
“Didn’t you punch a cop?”
He literally snorts, then shoves me just a little and presses his fingers into my shoulder so I’ll turn around and look at him.
“Look at me,” he says.
Something hot coils in my belly. It’s so dark and it’s so quiet, and well. I look at him.
“I didn’t punch a cop.”
I wait.
“I punched an MRA fuck in proximity to a cop. That’s different.”
Cool, I’m turned on again by the mental image. What is wrong with me? (Nothing; fuck those guys.) I say, to quell the nerves in my stomach, fluttering up through the pulse in my neck, “Well. You and Jaxon spend like all your free time smoking weed and that’s a fact.”
He’s quiet for a little while, quiet enough that I wonder if maybe he’s fallen asleep. Quiet enough that I find myself shifting against him, finding the perfect crook under his arm for my head to rest, cuddling into him like he’s a guy I’m allowed to touch.
He speaks again, low and serious into my ear, and this time when he talks, his fingertips move against my hipbones. They are slow and non-threatening and casual, and I don’t even know if he knows he’s doing it except that it feels so good I’m about to full-on shudder; he’s got to know. He says, “You sure about that?”
I intend to say yes. What I say is, “No.”
His fingers freeze, just for a second. Then they begin their steady back and forth over the goosebumps on my skin again. He says, “Your cousin’s my best friend and I’ll have to kill you if you tell any of your people, but he gets up to some shit.”
“Are you seriously telling me you’ve never done drugs, man?”
“Fuck no.” He laughs again. “I’m saying that a full three-quarters of the stuff I’ve taken the blame for in your family has been Jaxon, and I’ve told him to let me fall on my sword because his parents know and his sister knows and I don’t give a shit what everyone else thinks because none of them can disinvite me to Shabbat dinner for it.”
The venom in his voice has me reeling a little.
I say, “Oh.”
He says, “Like either of us has even had the damn time to get up to much after freshman year. We’re both in core classes now, man. I’m up until three a.m. anymore, it’s to study.”
I arch my eyebrow even though he can’t see it and, before I can say anything, he says, “Well. Most of the time.”
“You go to Shabbat dinner?”
“Yeah,” he says.
“Like . . . every Friday?” I don’t even do Shabbat dinner every Friday. Or like. Any Friday.
“Yeah,” he says. I feel him shrug against my back and ribs.
“You’re not—you’re not Jewish, though.”
“No,” he says. “Not Jewish. Just . . .” He trails off and his fingers slip under the hem of my shirt, calloused tips rubbing rough against my skin. Slow and soft pressure, like it’s nothing, like this is nothing, and I guess it is nothing compared to the fact that we’re basically halfway to dying on top of a mountain. But it doesn’t feel like nothing.
Neither does however he was going to end that sentence.
“Just what?”
“Nothing.”
“Come on.”
“Jesus, don’t be such a nag.”