I turned to face him, but when it became clear that he wasn’t going to speak, it would be up to me to see this through. “I’m confused, Will. I thought maybe…”
“Maybe what?” His eyes searched mine, wary and hopeful and terrified all at once.
I didn’t know what to make of it, but I’d come this far. And I didn’t want to go another minute feeling so torn and confused. “I thought maybe you felt it too, that maybe there was a connection there or...or something.”
He didn’t answer. He just stood there watching me, his jaw working, the skin around his eyes tight.
“But maybe I’m wrong,” I said. “Maybe all kisses are like that.”
“They aren’t.”
Well, alright then.
I inhaled swiftly at the intensity in his eyes. This...this was new.
We stood there in silence for a few seconds, and I became acutely aware of my heart beating in my chest, of the way my skin burned where his hand still rested on my arm. I became incredibly aware of the air between us, or the way his eyes glinted with a dangerous look, his whole body seemed to vibrate with an energy I’d never witnessed before.
Not in him, at least.
His grip on my arm tightened, and he tugged me closer. My lips parted as my chest and head grew light with a fizzy sensation that made me feel like I might float away if he didn’t kiss me.
A door slammed open behind me, and I jumped. I jerked out of Will’s grip as I spun to face the direction the noise had come from.
“Hazel!”
Justin.
Of course.
Of course I’d run into Justin right here, right now. When Will had been this close to kissing me.
I glanced up at him, but his flippant grin was back in place as he returned a nod one of Justin’s buddies gave him.
That intensity was so thoroughly gone I wasn’t sure if it had ever been there.
Justin was upon us, and one of his arms was thrown around my shoulders. I waited for the reaction—that butterflies in motion sensation and the rapid heartbeat.
Maybe my butterflies had over-exhausted themselves over Will already, because I waited and I waited. I made the awkward small talk and waited some more.
“Looks like you two had an epic day yesterday,” Justin said looking from me to Will and back to me.
I couldn’t quite bring myself to look at Will because...epic?
Yeah, I’d kind of thought so.
“It was fun,” Will agreed easily. “Hazel here knows how to have a good time.”
He smirked at me, and I flinched. Maybe he hadn’t meant it the way it sounded, but all I could think of was that kiss.
And I had the sudden urge to shrug Justin’s arm off me.
I was confused, dang it. I needed air. Instead I was stuck between the daydream crush who’d only noticed me when he thought I was something that I wasn’t, and the guy who’d made me feel like I was something that I wasn’t.
Fun.
Funny, even. Will was the only person other than Emma who actually seemed to think I was funny.
“Yeah?” Justin looked down at me with a smile I’d never seen before.
It was the smile I’d been hoping to see for months. But unlike Will’s grins and his lopsided smiles and his smirks—all of which affected me in one way or another, for better or worse—the sight of Justin’s flirty smile did...nothing.
I took note of it and gave him an awkward little smile in return, and...that was it.
“You heading to the lockers?” Justin asked, already steering me that way. “We’ll walk you.”
I turned back to say...what? I had no idea.
But I turned just in time to see Will giving me an annoying little salute, a smirk that made me want to smack him, and then his back as he walked away.
12
Will
I should have just left school right then and there.
Looks like you two had an epic day yesterday.
He didn’t know the half of it.
I sneered down at the layout I was working on for the sports section. We were understaffed in the photography department, so I covered it all.
Why?
I sat back and looked up. The room was filled with reporters finishing up last-minute assignments before the next issue.
That was what I should be doing too, but right now I was too frustrated to even sit still.
Why was I busting my butt on this paper? We should get more staff. Or maybe I should just quit.
It wasn’t like I needed this paper to take pictures.
“You okay, Will?” Max was looking over at me from her desk at the back of the room.
I should quit.
Part of me wanted to, but I knew it wouldn’t make me feel better. And the thought of explaining to my parents why I couldn’t fulfill the one extracurricular they’d demanded of me kept my mouth shut.
Max sighed and pushed her chair back. “In my office,” she said. “Now.”
Her ‘office’ was the narrow room that separated the newspaper office from the yearbook office. It was a shared space that had doors on either side, but I’d never once seen anyone from the yearbook in here and at some point Max had commandeered the room for her own purposes. It was typically where she brought people to interview, or, on occasion, where she dragged one of her staff reporters to ream them out for shoddy reporting.
Max took her job as editor-in-chief very seriously.
She was almost as serious as a certain swimmer I knew.
“You look pissed,” she said the moment the door shut behind me.
“You think?” I arched my brows and nodded my head toward the other room. “I’m busting my butt out there, and I don’t have any help.”
“I’m trying to find you another photographer, you know that.”
I huffed and turned my face away. I wasn’t an angry guy. I didn’t really do anger. My default setting was to laugh things off, but right now…
Well, I didn’t feel like myself.
“I need you to cover the swim meet tonight.”
I clenched my jaw. I’d known this was coming. It was a big meet. I knew Hazel was stressing over it, even if she hid it well behind that oh-so-serious expression of hers.
Although, when I’d run into her earlier, she hadn’t seemed stressed. She’d seemed…
Hurt. Vulnerable. Sweet.
Beautiful.
Crap. I was so in over my head.
Max continued talking about the meet, which races to capture and all that. As if I hadn’t been paying extra special attention to the swim team lately. I was only half listening until she said, “...and while you’re there, I suggest you ask Hazel to homecoming.”
My head whipped around to face her, and I found her smirking at me.
I frowned. I was typically the smirker not the smirkee.
“What? Why? What?” I clamped my mouth shut before I could sputter anymore. I was already in danger of sounding like some neurotic cartoon character.
She pursed her lips for a second as if thinking her answer over. “Because I think you’re a good guy, and you genuinely like my friend.”
I kept my mouth shut. I was not about to confirm or deny.
“I think you have a lot of potential—”
I cut her off with a loud sigh, because she sounded so like my parents right now.