Page 109 of The Cost of Forgetting You

He smiles. “Also you.”

My jaw slackens. “No way. You said you had kissed girls during spin the bottle.”

“I lied.”

My stomach flips over. I circle a small hole in the hem of the shirt he gave me with the pad of my thumb, trying to process that information. “Wow, no wonder you wanted practice for your date.”

“Also lied about that.” He pushes a hand through his hair, this time having the decency to at least look sheepish. “And I’m sorry, for what it’s worth. I didn’t know how to bridge that gap between being your friend and being more.”

I try to blink away my confusion, but it’s stubborn. “What else did you lie about?”

“That’s it.” He places a hand gently over mine and squeezes, his callouses scraping my skin. “I promise. My turn?”

“Yeah,” I answer breathily. “Your turn.”

“Who did you lose your virginity to?”

My eyes widen. “Oh my God, you did not just ask that! No one asks that on a first date!”

He shrugs. “I do.”

“And now I understand why you’re still single.” I shake my head at him, but he’s not letting up. He stares, unblinking, until I finally relent. “Someone from college. Not anyone you would know. Why?”

His gaze is open, and so deep I’m afraid I might drown in it.

“I always thought it’d be me.”

It hits me like a blow to the chest, knocking the air from my lungs. “Honestly?” I croak, my gaze trained on his hand where it rests over mine. “I did, too.”

He absorbs that with an equal amount of shock. He studies me like I’m brand-new, and I feel like I might be. We thought we knew everything about each other, but it turns out, we didn’t know the half of it.

“We can pretend it’s the first time.” He smooths his thumb over my knuckles, then flips my hand and begins tracing the latticework of veins beneath my skin. “None of the people who came before matter, not to me. Not compared to you.”

A wave of desire flows through me, settling deep in my core. I bite down on the inside of my cheek. The pain pulls me back from the brink, if only slightly. Enough to rasp, “No more pretending, Tru. Pretending’s what got us here in the first place.” I grimace. “Unless you lost yours to Jessica Mathias, in which case I can never forgive you.”

His hand releases mine to clamp down on my thigh, and he throws his head back, laughing so loud my ears hurt in the best way. “No,” he manages between quick breaths. “Definitely not the girl who caught our parents hooking up.”

I bite the inside of my cheek, mulling over how to say this without sounding utterly pathetic. Turns out there’s no cool way to ask for reassurance, but I forge ahead anyway. “So you’ve thought of me then? Like… well, like that?”

The laughter dissipates, leaving us in a quiet cocoon of awareness. I sense his proximity to me like a bloodhound. His nostrils flare when I tuck my hair behind my ear. There’s so much to focus on that I can’t focus on any of it. Only that there is him, and there is me, and the distance between us is too far. And yet not far enough.

The hand that was resting on my thigh slides to my hip. He watches its path like he can’t really believe it’s his hand on my body. “Delilah, the amount of times I’ve thought of you naked in my bed is downright sinful. And yet I’ve never been able to feel the least bit ashamed of it.”

My skin heats; my stomach flips. I lick my lips to buy a little time, because I’m not sure I still have the ability to speak. Instead of words, a scoff escapes me. My absolute shock manifested.

His gaze pops up to mine in a flash. “Why is that so hard to believe?”

I glance at my hands where they rest in my lap, itching to touch him but so, so afraid to shatter the fragility of this moment. I shake my head. A half-laugh, half-cry kind of thing scratches my throat. “If I tell you, you’re going to say you don’t like it when I talk about myself like that. Again.”

“And I’d be right. Again.” His free hand pinches my chin, pulling my gaze back to his. When they meet, his brow furrows. “I hate that you think so little of my favorite person in the whole world. You’re a remarkable little thing, Delilah, and you can’t even see it.”

My pulse roars to life in my ears. The fire is everywhere, smoldering beneath my skin. I brace myself internally, everything cinched up tight. Ignore the weight of my insecurities and whisper, “Why don’t you show me, then?”

His gaze heats. The hand at my chin drops to frame my other hip, and then both slip under the waistband of my sweats. “And how would you like me to do that?” The rough pads of his thumbs scrape the crest of my hip bones while his fingers press into the soft flesh of my ass. “Tell me what you want, and I’ll give it to you on a silver platter.”

My spine straightens, allowing that heat to rise within me uninhibited, all the way to my head, which spins, dizzy with the headiness of it. Breathless, and without much thought for once in my life, I say, “You.”

A groan rips from his throat. It’s guttural. Almost threatening. Those fingers press harder into my ass, and I surge forward, bracing my hands on the warm skin of his chest. A light dusting of chest hair scrapes my palms, and then it’s my turn to groan.

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