Her long hair fans out in a chaotic wave across her pillow, one arm stretched toward the door, palm up. I don’t understand how after all this time I can still feel the same unbearable pull. For years I’ve had to build walls and detach myself from her, from all the bad choices we made as kids. All the bad choices I made. All it takes is seeing her and the sound of my name to storm the gates and force me to my knees.
I don’t realize I’ve moved until the floor creaks under my foot. I’m halfway into the room when Lavender shoots up in bed. She sucks in a gasping breath, and her eyes dart around. She was always a light sleeper—unless she’d had a particularly severe panic attack; then she could sleep like the dead. A full-on party could happen around her, and she wouldn’t move for hours.
“Hello?” Her voice is thick with sleep. She squints and leans toward the nightstand, patting around for her glasses. I use the momentary distraction to step back into the hall, pulling the door closed behind me.
I don’t stick around to see what she’s going to do next. Instead, I rush to the end of the hall, to the last empty bedroom on this floor. The comforter is already rumpled, telling me I’m not the first person to use this room tonight.
I close the door, yank my shirt over my head, and shove my jeans down my legs. I pull the covers down and slip between them, slamming my head against the pillow. “So fucking stupid.”
I don’t know what the hell I was thinking, creeping on Lavender. It doesn’t serve a purpose, other than to make me more aware that I’m not even remotely over losing her.
I stare up at the ceiling, adjusting to the inky darkness and trying to calm my heart and my breathing. A chandelier hangs above my head, teardrop crystals glinting despite the minimal light. I focus on those, on taming the panic over my reckless actions.
The sound of footfalls in the hallway spikes my already-frantic heart rate. I don’t breathe as I wait, unsure if I’m hearing things now. I swear I can feel her on the other side. The doorknob turns, and long seconds pass before the door creaks open.
She slips through the narrow gap and closes it behind her. Her breathing is quick and shallow. She’s wearing a shirt that hits her mid-thigh. I don’t move, focused on keeping my breathing even. It’s pointless. She’s not an idiot. She knows it was me creeping in her doorway like a desperate douchebag. Eventually she moves away from the door, toward the bed.
I don’t know what she thinks is going to happen. Or what I’ll do. It’s closing in on six in the morning. I’ve been drinking for twelve hours—not to mention the edible I had earlier in the evening. All of my decision-making skills are flawed at best and damning at worst.
Lavender reaches the end of the bed and comes around the side I’m lying on. Her fingertips travel along the edge of my comforter-covered leg. I jerk my hand away when her fingers brush mine.
“What’re you doing in here?” My voice is barely a croak.
She cocks her head, blinking in the darkness. She’s not wearing her glasses, which means I must be blurry. “I could ask you the same thing.” Her voice is smokier than I remember. Soft, sexy, knowing.
I try to inject some disapproval into my tone. “You should go back to your room.”
Her fingertips glide up my arm, causing a wave of goose bumps to flash over my skin. “And you shouldn’t have been creeping in mine, so it seems like we’re even.”
“What do you want?” I snap, frustrated with myself for creating this problem I don’t know how to solve.
She chuckles, but it’s flat and jaded. “Answers. Acknowledgment. An explanation.”
This isn’t the Lavender I remember. She wasn’t this ballsy. Maybe it’s the alcohol. “You’re drunk and not making sense. Go back to bed, Lavender.”
“Do you think you can still tell me what to do and I’ll just do it? I’m not a little girl anymore, Kodiak. I think for myself now. Why were you in my bedroom?”
“I-I was looking for a place to crash.”
She scoffs. “And I thought I was the shitty liar.” She leans down, long hair brushing over my arm. “Did you want to see what you left behind?”
“You’re the one who never came to say goodbye,” I bite out. It’s really the only thing I have to hold on to now.
She barks a humorless laugh. “I was going to, but you know what made me change my mind?”
My stomach sinks, and I stay silent.
“I saw you kissing that girl, the one you took to your eighth-grade grad dance.” Her fingertip moves in a rhythmic figure-eight pattern over my biceps, an infinite loop, mirroring the one I seem to be forever stuck in when it comes to her. I’m not sure if it’s meant to calm me or her. “I know she was friends with Maverick’s girlfriend at the time. I thought maybe you went with her as a favor. It hurt, but I could understand why you would take her. She was pretty.” She sits on the edge of the bed, her hip resting against the outside of my leg. “I looked out the window and saw you there, and for a moment I thought maybe you were waiting for me to work up the nerve to come over. But you weren’t. You were kissing her in our spot.”
“She kissed me.” I’d been so angry at the time. Angry that Lavender had given me up so completely. Angry that she’d been strong enough to survive without me.
“You kissed her back.” It’s not an accusation; it’s simply a statement of fact. “And maybe I could’ve gotten over that too, but it was where we used to go when we were kids and wanted space from everyone else. The place you used to go when you needed to be alone. You sat there all the time after . . .” She trails off, not needing to finish the statement. After they took you away from me. “And then you ruined all of those memories for me.”
“Lavender.”
“Why, Kodiak? Why there? Why somewhere I could see? Why was she even there?”
Because Maverick invited her. Because he was thinking about himself and what he wanted. But I don’t tell her that, because in doing so, I’d be opening a door I can’t afford to step through.
A shuddering breath leaves her. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter anymore. None of it does.” Her hand smooths over the comforter, perilously close to parts of me I have no business wanting her to touch. But I do, and it’s messing with my head. We’re not kids anymore. We’re teenagers, vital and alive, with an excessive supply of hormones to interfere with our decisions.
She reaches the edge of the comforter, and her fingertips find the bare expanse of my chest. She settles her palm over my heart, so soft and warm.
“There you are,” she whispers.
My fingers flex beside her knee. “Lavender.”
“It’s okay. We’re okay.” My skin burns where her hand rests. “I needed to know if it would feel the same after all this time.” Her palm slides up, over my collarbone, along the side of my neck. “I wasn’t sure if it was all in my head or not.” And there’s the vulnerability I remember.
I say nothing, do nothing. I need to tell her to stop, but I don’t want to. I want to soak in this feeling, because in a lot of ways, it does feel the same. But it’s also so very, very different, because the innocence of childhood has disappeared, and in its wake are feelings that only existed in the periphery before—a whole different kind of need. A new thing to become addicted to. Obsess over.