Rachel turns to him, astonished. “When was this? Surely, not when we were dating. I would have never touched you if you’d eaten upward of three dozen eggs, Gaston.”
“Oh my God, Rach!” Bianca giggles at the clear bathroom situation Rachel is trying to allude to.
“Nope. It was freshman year, and I was a fucking champ. Puked like twenty minutes after, but my picture is over on the wall.” Scott brushes his shoulder off and then points to the wall behind the cash register.
We’ve been at the diner for about an hour, noshing on apps and different sandwiches after the football team won their game tonight. The entire restaurant is full of students from our high school, six or seven people crammed into every booth, with parents and coaches present too. It’s the local hot spot after every game, whether it be football in the fall or baseball in the spring.
“Would you ever do one of those challenges?” I ask Logan, simply to start a conversation.
“I think I probably would, but I’d need a good incentive. Free meals from the restaurant, or money. I would not scarf down fifty buffalo wings for a T-shirt.”
I laugh, trying to imagine sitting in front of fifty chicken wings and voluntarily eating them all. “No, I guess I wouldn’t either.”
“What kind of food could you eat like that? Just scarf it all down?” Rachel muses to us all.
“Ice cream, hands down. Any flavor, but it’s just so good.” Bianca nods sagely.
“Pizza, for sure.” Logan winks at me.
“Burgers, I could eat thousands of those little ones at White Castle,” Damien, Bianca’s boyfriend says.
“Sushi. One hundred percent, I could eat sushi all day long.” Rachel crosses her arms over her chest.
“Bullshit,” Bianca and Scott say at the same time, and then laugh at each other.
“You’d get sick of it after the second spicy tuna roll,” I agree, shivering just thinking about that much sushi.
“All right, smarty pants. What food would you eat for twenty-four hours straight?” Rachel snips at me.
Tapping my chin, I ponder the question. “French fries.”
“That’s not a food challenge food!” Logan laughs, his forehead hitting my shoulder from where he sits next to me.
It’s an intimate gesture, one a boy who likes a girl flawlessly executes to make it look nonchalant but really he wants to touch her.
“Is too! I could eat fries all day long!” I argue, while the others around the table burst out laughing and shake their heads like I’m wrong.
“Fries isn’t a challenge food. It has to be something substantial. That’s a side, not a main.” Scott tries to act high and mighty.
“He’s right,” Bianca says, while Rachel backs her up. “Yep.”
I pout, only half-faking my annoyance. “Who made you all the authority on food challenges? I can fantasize about my ideal food challenge food and you can have yours. Leave me be!”
Pushing at Logan, who is still trying to get close to me by half slumping an arm around my shoulders, I huff.
“Aw, come on, Kennedy. We’re just teasing.”
When I turn my head to look at him, his lips are so close to mine, I have to suck in a breath. That should make my heart jump, the fact that a seriously cute boy is so close to kissing me. But I feel nothing.
The jingle of the bell over the door grabs my attention, and for good reason, as if I could sense him. When I turn, Everett is walking up the same aisle of the restaurant our booth is in, two of the other assistant football coaches behind him.
Immediately, his eyes find me. Search my expression and then flit to where Logan sits beside me.
Logan’s varsity jacket hangs around my shoulders, the orange and white leather marking me as his for everyone to see. He offered it to me because it’s a bit cold in here, but I’m not dumb enough not to notice the looks everyone is giving us as they pass to their tables. When a boy gives a girl his football letter, it’s significant.
I haven’t seen Everett since the night in our rooms, when he watched me with the heat of a thousand suns. But now that I’m here, in his crosshairs, those gorgeous eyes roving over my face …
My skin feels like it’s burning up. Fire licks up my thighs, spine, arms, blazing a path to my heart that beats irregularly. For a moment, we’re the only two people in the room. He’s the only boy to ever see me so vulnerable, so exposed. I gave that to him, a secret we now share.
This is what I crave, this is the way it should feel when the most gorgeous man you’ve ever seen walks into a room. I’m sitting with Logan’s jacket and arm around my shoulder, and my heart couldn’t care less. But Everett Brock so much as looks at me, and I’m a pool of lust at his feet.
“Kennedy,” he says, his tone and expression so cold he could freeze ice.
“Coach! So freaking funny I call you coach now—” Scott starts up, putting his hand up to fist pound Everett, but something cuts him off.
Without warning, Everett leans over the booth, uses one of those callused, strong hands to grip my jaw, and plants a kiss on my lips.
Right there, in front of everyone.
I’m so stunned, so caught off guard, that the squeak from my lips echoes down Everett’s throat. He moves his mouth, just a fraction, so that our lips slide in tandem. Liquid heat throttles down my spine, and my eyes flutter closed. I don’t feel my body, the only thing that exists are his lips on mine.
This is the kiss I’ve been waiting for since I was a little girl, and—
Someone coughs, bringing me back to reality, and I shove hard at Everett’s chest.
“What the hell!” Comes out of my mouth at the same time Logan jumps up and shouts, “What the fuck, bro?”
My cheeks are a shade of red I don’t even want to see in a mirror right now, shame and anger mixing with the embarrassment. Everett looks stunned, but smug, and I climb over a gaping Rachel as I go for him. I may be tiny in comparison with the former soldier, but he doesn’t resist as I damn near drag him out of the diner without a backward word to my friends.
Somewhere in the scuffle, Logan’s varsity jacket slips off my shoulders, so when we break through the exit to the diner and out into the cold, I’m shivering in my thin cotton long sleeve and cheerleading vest.
“What the hell was that?” I spit, rage making the shivers quake even harder.
Everett runs a hand through his hair, but fire burns in his eyes. “If you think I’m going to sit back and watch while he puts his hands all over you—”
“He wasn’t putting his hands all over me!” I shout back.
“You had his goddamn varsity jacket slung over your shoulders. We both know what that means, Kennedy.” Everett’s finger comes in, pointing at me, accusing me.
I’m so exasperated, I can barely get my thoughts together, though I try. “So what? You don’t even know what that was because you didn’t bother to ask, not that you’ve staked any claim. You don’t want me, remember? Besides all that, you think that was a good way to stop what might or might not be happening between Logan and me? Stealing our very first kiss in the freaking diner in front of everyone?”
His body is strung tight, every muscle bulging with barely-held restraint. “Yeah, maybe it was a good plan. Got you out here with me, didn’t it?”