Page 73 of Forget Me Twice

“Oh, shit, now it’s a fucking party,” I say gleefully, accepting the stolen joint. I light them for us with my lighter, before returning it to my pocket with a flourish.

“What’s with the Zippo? I see you fidgeting with it all the time. Is it a stimming thing?” Sabine asks on a languid exhale, smoke leaking into the space between us like a slow-moving fog.

“It was my grandpa’s,” I offer. “And yeah, gives me something to do with my hands when everything gets too…loud.”

She shifts, and even with the smell of the weed filling my nostrils, I still catch undercurrents of her unique musky scent. When I look at her face, I’m surprised to see something there that looks like understanding.

I raise an eyebrow. “Why do I get the feeling you know what I’m talking about?” There’s a weird tug in my guts. Almost like if someone had sewn a thread through my navel and started yanking on it.

Sabine takes another hit before tilting her head so that the sun slanting in through from the observation deck highlights the angry-looking scar along her left temple. “There’s a reason sobriety and me are not the best of friends. My head’s a bit loud some days, as well.”

There’s no makeup covering it and her hair is styled away from her face. She hasn’t even tried to hide it. It’s fierce. Just like her.

I must be feeling the effects of the weed starting to kick in, because before I can think, I’m leaning up and running my tongue along the length of it again.

Her lids—already at half-mast—fall shut with an almost inaudible moan. Just like that first time at her locker, her skin feels warm and tastes so sweet. “Saturday night?” I ask her quietly.

She opens her eyes again, silently taking in my open expression. Despite the haze hanging in the air, her gaze is bright. Finally, with a resigned sigh, she mumbles, “I was there to buy from Axel. I got caught with my pants down and Walker took the opportunity to stick me with a hot shot ofAsh.”

I rear back, coughing. Disbelief claws at my throat, along with the smoke from my last pull. My subtle high starts to slip away. “What the fuck? What was it cut with?”

“I actually have no idea. Luckily, I have a pretty high tolerance, so I was only laid up for a couple of hours. Took me the rest of the weekend to ride the whole thing out though.”

Then something else about her words cuts through the fog and I’m feeling murderous all over again. “Wait? With your pants down?Were you fucking King?” I’m hissing like a cat whose tail was just stepped on, but I don’t fucking care right now.

The last thing I expect to hear is her laughter. Or to feel her delicate hand sliding over the front of my shorts.

“Downboy, it was a figure of speech. She had a couple of her guard dogs with her and they got the jump on me,” Sabine soothes in that sultry voice. “I should have been more careful,” she adds darkly, like she’s chastising herself.

Fuck everything about this. Fuck those cunts for touching her, and fuck her blaming herself.

Between one breath and the next, I’m hovering over her, pushing her shoulders back against the cushion she’s propped against. I snatch the mostly-smoked joint she’s holding from between her two fingers, dropping both into the closest jar to burn out.

I’m diving down, ready to take her mouth with mine, when Sabine makes a weird noise in the back of her throat. I stop, pulling back, confusion and apprehension clouding in once again.

Is now the moment she rejects me?

She must see the agony playing out on my face, because she’s talking to me again in those reassuring tones.

“Hermes, hey, look at me.”

It takes everything I have not to just jump up and walk straight into the ocean. I drag my gaze back to hers.

“I’m sorry, okay?” Her voice sounds almost strained, like she’s the one who’s embarrassed here. “It’s not you. I just don’t…kiss.”

“What?” Her confession only serves to deepen my confusion. I feel like my brain is short circuiting.

“Uh, it’s kind of stupid.”

“Try me.”

Sabine shifts her hips beneath me, reminding me that I’m still really fucking hard and my heart rate isstillthrough the fucking roof, and that I really, really just need to be inside her.

She blows out a breath that’s still tinged with smoke. When I focus in on her face, I expect there to be a pretty blush across her cheeks, but she doesn’t look flustered…just a little uncertain?

“Kissing means feelings.” She starts, all her usual confidence bleeding out of her.

“Yeah, I guess?” I mean, I get not wanting to make out with random hookups. They’re usually quick in and outs.

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