Page 96 of Up All Night

Our mouths continued to explore as my fingers skimmed underneath her shirt, my hands splayed against her lower back. Her skin was warm and soft, and I had to remind myself to take it slow, which was proving to be difficult as we moved together in rhythm with the kiss and the desire I felt to have my hands roaming over her body.

Minutes or an hour could have passed when my self-control started to wear thin. I didn’t want to stop kissing her, but I knew I needed to.

I wrapped my arms around her and gently rolled us onto our sides, finally breaking the kiss and resting my forehead against hers.

We lay there for a few minutes in silence, letting our breathing come back to normal.

Now that the hormones from making out and the adrenaline from our paint fight were wearing off, I remembered how this had all started. Halle had been mistreated by someone. Someone whom she had cared about and who had hurt her.

“I’m so sorry about what happened with Jeremy,” I said, then placed a kiss on her forehead, avoiding the paint I’d put there earlier. “No one should ever be treated like that. And especially not you.” I tipped her chin up so she could look at me, to see the truth behind my words. “You’re the most amazing woman I’ve ever met. You’re smart and kind, you’re fun and positive, you’re sweet and tenderhearted. You put yourself on the back burner to help others, like Mr. Farnsworth and your mother. You’ve been brave and fearless as you’ve taken this world on by yourself. You’re ambitious and you dream big, working hard to make those dreams a reality.”

A tear escaped down her cheek, and I gently wiped it away with my thumb.

Hugging her a little closer to me, I added, “You’re like a ball of sunshine that I wish I could carry around with me all the time.”

She let out a half laugh, half cry. “I’m pretty sure you’d get sick of me,” she sniffed.

I shook my head. “Not possible.”

She smiled up at me, the kind of smile that would light up her face, the one that I dreamed about when I thought of her.

She reached up and kissed me on the cheek and said softly, “Thanks, West.”

I pulled us up so we could sit. “Now let’s get you fed.”

We opened all the containers, picking out our favorites as we sat crossed legged on the floor. We talked and ate and didn’t care that the food had gone cold. Her opening up to me about Jeremy, us covering one another in paint, and then having a make-out session I was sure to be thinking about for days and nights ahead, made tonight feel like a first for me.

I had never felt this way about a woman before. I had never wanted to be there for someone like I did her. I had never wanted to protect a person as much as I wanted to protect her. And I had never wanted to put someone’s happiness above my own.

But as I sat across from this beautiful human, both of us covered in gray paint as we ate orange chicken and lo mein together on a concrete floor, there was nowhere else I’d rather be.

Wherever Halle was? I wanted to be right there with her.

27

Halle

“Ican’t believe you and West are dating,” Kate said as she leaned against the bathroom door frame watching me finish styling my hair.

“We’re not dating,” I corrected her.

She rolled her eyes. “You might not be officially calling it that, but this is going to be your fourth date.”

“What? No, it’s not. This will be our first.”

She gave me a look that could only be described as, oh please. “Your first date was his planned day, your second date was your unplanned day—”

“Those were not dates,” I insisted. “We were competing to see whose way of doing things was better.”

“Whatever.” She wasn’t buying what I was saying. “You two just masked it as that, but we all know you were itching to go out and spend time together, which makes it…a date.”

She might have had a point, but I wasn’t going to agree with her.

“Your third date,” she continued, “was when he showed up at your dance studio and brought dinner with a side of an extremely hot make-out session.”

I ignored her, hating that she made sense, and kept looking in the mirror as I spritzed hair spray to finalize my look.

“And now you are on datefour, where he’s going to whisk you away for a romantic day together. See? Fourth date.”

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