Page 33 of Our Secrets and Scars

He tries to fight it, but a laugh breaks through his stony façade and lights up his entire face like a thousand suns are beaming down on him. It’s incredible. And I can’t tear my eyes away. His deep throaty laugh is so light, yet somehow so masculine, making me thrum with nervous energy.

He catches me watching him, my eyes dark and my pupils blown, as I wet my lips unconsciously. His grip on my thigh grows tighter, his fingertips turning white as they dig into my skin. It makes heat spread through me like wildfire, mixing with the light shivers dancing across my skin and culminating in a pulsing ache between my legs.

And when he clears his throat and shifts in his seat, I know for a fact that I’m affecting him too.

“You make it hard for me to keep being a gentleman, little one.” His voice is tight, his jaw tense, like he’s struggling to speak the words.

“Then don’t be one.”

The car veers into an empty aggregate parking lot and stops suddenly in a spot overlooking the city. I imagine the view up here is incredible, but I don’t turn to look at it.

Instead, my gaze is fixed firmly on the man beside me. The piercing in his eyebrow winks at me when the sunlight hits it, as does the one in his tongue when he darts it out to run along the length of his full bottom lip. That tiny crescent moon tattoo below his eye begs for me to lean over and press my mouth to it, but I don’t.

Even though every atom in my body screams at me to leap across the center console and show him with my kisses how much I crave his attention, how little I care about the baggage and secrets we both carry, and how I ache to feel the touch of his hands on my skin, I stay rooted in my seat.

Because despite all I’m feeling, the prospect of his rejection is terrifying. What if I throw myself at him only for him to push me away? I think it might just be the straw that breaks my self-esteem’s back, because there’s only so much rejection a girl can take in life.

So, I just look at him.

And with a hurricane storming in my heart, I wait. For a sign, for a hint, for even the slightest inclination that he wants from me what I want from him right now. To get lost in each other and forget about our caseloads of baggage for just a moment.

He doesn’t give anything away though. His hand is still on my thigh, his thumb stroking slowly back and forth across my skin, but that’s the only signal he gives me that he even knows I’m here at all. Because he’s staring out the window to the view beyond, unblinking.

It truly is magnificent, I must admit. Everything seems so small up here, even the high-rises reaching for the sky are dwarfed in comparison to the mountains that surround the city. It rained last night, and everything is still a little damp, so when the late morning light beats down, I swear the city sparkles like stars beneath it. It’s breathtaking.

But I’d rather look at Holden.

“Owen brought me here once,” he says finally, though his gaze stays fixed on the view. “He’s older than me, you know? By about eighteen months. We lived on the same street as kids and were like brothers for a long time. He got held back in school, so we were in the same class and everything.”

He trails off, as if telling me about this is paining him. I’m not sure why he is, but I’ve been so curious about what happened between them that I’m not about to stop him.

“The last time I came here, on my sixteenth birthday, he drove us up in his car and gave me my first ever blunt. It was stupid,” he shakes his head, “but I took it because I looked up to him so much and I wanted him to think I was cool. It messed me up. Suddenly, I could see shit that wasn’t there and the whole time he was just laughing at me and filming it on his phone. I don’t know what was in that rollup, but I swear it wasn’t weed.”

I blink, scared to make a noise or a sudden movement in case I spook him and he stops talking.

“Anyway, when I got home that night, Uncle Mack was waiting up for me and he knew instantly that I was high on something. It was one of thoseI’m not mad, I’m disappointedmoments that make you feel like utter shit. He didn’t yell or anything, just told me that Owen was bad news. He said that I’d be better off making other friends, ones who I could trust not to get me into worse shit than Owen already had.”

He stops for a moment, his jaw clenched, his entire body rigid. I cover the hand he has resting on my thigh with my own and draw lazy circles over his knuckles with my thumb. It’s barely noticeable, but he relaxes a little.

“I wish I’d listened to him,” he finishes.

I let the silence stretch out between us for a while. It’s not uncomfortable, not really, but it does feel kind of heavy. And when the weight of it grows too much, I ask, “What happened between you two?”

He blows out a long breath and turns his head to look at me. And when I finally see his face front on,my heart plummets at what I find.There’s so much pain marring his features that I can’t help but reach out to cup his cheek in my palm.

And suddenly, I don’t give a shit that this morning was supposed to be about having fun and letting loose. All I care about is chasing away the ghosts currently haunting him, to take that tortured look out of his eyes.

As if my body has a mind of its own, I climb across the center division of the car and slip into Holden’s lap, straddling him.

His eyes go wide, almost startled, but when I stroke a hand through his hair, soothing him with every caress of my fingers, he lets out a breath, and his body relaxes. Then, as if we’ve done this a thousand times before, his hands run up my legs to my waist, the size of them so vast he can almost fit the entire circumference of my body between them. It’s a fact that makes me shiver.

“You don’t have to tell me,” I whisper.

I feel his sigh of relief. Not just physically, with his chest expanding against mine, but in my soul too.

It’s weird.

There’s this draw I have to him that goes deeper than just attraction. I don’t understand it, but it’s there. I know it is because when I’m in his presence, it’s like all I can see, all I can feel, all I can breathe is him.

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