Page 56 of First Puck

It really was my fault for having expectations.

“And your best way to go about it is kissing me?” I hissed.

“I wasn’t thinking.” He dipped his head, his grip loosening as his thumb made the smallest of circles on the softest part of my arm.

His touch was so familiar that I softened, leaning back into the seat with a heavy sigh as I rolled my eyes at myself.

I loved him, but the problem with loving him for so long was there were things I had no illusions about.

Like how I’d already forgiven him. Like I always did.

When I almost drowned rescuing him from a riptide when he swore he could surf, when he snuck out one night at my house and trapped a bat in the garage that bit my mom, or when he thought he was an animal psychic and nearly got trampled by a horse. Those were just some of the major things.

But I gave in, every single time. Because I loved him, because he was my friend, because it hurt more to be angry at him than it did to be near him and lie.

With my chest tight, I tried to restrain myself.

Out of all the ways he could have responded to learning I was with someone else, he kissed me.

But still… He kissed me.

“You weren’t,” I replied slowly. I was attempting to be logical about it and think about it from his crazy point of view, but I couldn’t figure it out.

I leaned in even closer to him. “Brad, why did you kiss me?” I had to ask it as quietly as possible, even though the only one paying even the slightest bit of attention to us was Lance.

It was on the tip of my tongue to ask Brad if he liked me. I could just throw it out there, get it over with, then stay trapped on a bus with him for six hours before sharing a room with him for the week, and then drown in a whirlpool of regret.

“Alex…” Brad’s voice shifted to the same tone he used when he had his cock against mine. “Alex, listen. I… I really don’t want…” His breath shuddered as his gaze fell to my lips, staring at me for too long.

Something shifted in him, changing, emerging as his look grew heated and my heart froze.

Suddenly, it wasn’t my friend Brad in front of me. It was someone who was hungry, someone who wanted more from me, and there was a silent question hanging in the familiar tension I needed to answer.

And my response was to move away.

I pushed myself against the cheap plastic wall of the bus, the glass cold against the back of my head. But it wasn’t enough to get away. All he had to do was move toward me.

Inch-by-inch. The closer he came, the closer I was to fighting through my fear. I could clutch at him, pull him to me, and return his first kiss.

With his apologetic look and the strength of his presence as he drew nearer, I wouldn’t resist if he tried.

Whether it was because he wanted me or for some stupid reason like Lance, I’d still let him just to feel him again.

I held his gaze, wide-eyed, letting out a trembling breath as his other hand shifted. One hand on my arm, the other hovered over my knee, and it would be so easy for him to cover his body with mine.

He didn’t seem to care about the people around us as his hand rounded my knee and my stomach flipped.

His eyes half-lidded, his fingers crept up my thigh. The hand on my arm became a firm grip, and he stretched toward me, his cheeks dusted pink.

Was he actually doing it? Did he really think this was the best place to have that kind of conversation?

I softened for him, prepared for anything. I couldn’t resist him when he needed me, especially when his apologetic look burned with heat as he continued.

“Alex,” he croaked. “I swear, I just wanted to know if you really—”

Like piercing a balloon, Lance’s voice burst through the moment.

“Alex? You okay?”

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