Page 72 of The Chemistry of Us

And I was going to lose.

It wasn’t because part of my heart healed a bit.

It wasn’t because he sought me out.

Or that he was trying to make it right, which people rarely did.

It was the weather.

And just to be sure—I did an internet search about smiling and the weather because I needed to make sure it wasn’t that I was falling for my enemy again.

For the one guy capable of breaking me in half a second time.

Four hours later, my phone buzzed just as I was walking in the front door of the house.

The lights were off, which they rarely were since the guys were always in the kitchen eating or watching TV in the living room.

I went to flick them on when a hand shot out and grabbed my wrist and turned me in their arms. His mouth was on mine before I could protest.

It wasn’t a deep kiss.

It was a tease.

It was debilitating in the quickness, the soft press of his lips.

The innocence of it all.

“Number one,” he whispered.

And left me in the dark with my lips buzzing, heart pounding, and brain screaming,Not again, don’t do it again.

Don’t fall.

But I knew as I took the stairs.

I was already halfway there, and all he’d done was acknowledged me as a human.

How sad.

CHAPTER 27

TRU

Then

I loved him,and while he hadn’t said it back, I saw it in his eyes and in the way he looked at me. I shook the dark thoughts away and looked at myself in the mirror. It was the last party of the Hamptons season before everyone went back to the city, and I started college.

It was everything.

And it finally felt like things were falling into place. Even Sandra was being nice, which was weird on one end; on the other, I really didn’t know her well enough to gauge any reaction except that time on the beach she’d suddenly been falling all over herself to help me.

It was nice.

Really nice.

I still had my guard up, but it was good to have her involved in things, nobody usually cared about my day, and while her husband was always reading on his phone, she at least acknowledged I was present at breakfast.

My hopes weren’t up, but my pessimism had started to dissipate. I never realized how dark things had truly gotten until I was given a few sips of water from the river of common human decency and drank like I’d been thirsty for years.

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