Page 105 of Rewind It Back

“Happy birthday, Hal,” Rio says, kissing down my neck.

Smiling, I run my fingers through his hair. “Thank you.”

Hovering over me, he continues his path of kisses down my chest and stomach, over my shirt. His own shirt is long gone, discarded somewhere on my floor.

We’re in my room, on my bed. Rio snuck over here after my birthday dinner with both of our families. I love my parents, my brother, and the DeLucas, but this is all I wanted to do today. To be with him.

I run my hands down his back, curving around his waist.

Rio sucks in a sharp breath, eyes locked on my exploring fingers, trailing over the smooth skin of his stomach, toying with the waistband of his pants.

“Rio, please.”

He hesitates, for longer than he ever has. He usually shuts this conversation down fairly quickly. We’ve been fooling around for a year now, but we haven’t had sex.

And that’s one hundred percent due to the guilt he feels about hiding our relationship from my brother.

His eyes bounce between mine, rolling it over in his mind. “I want to, Hallie. God, I want to so badly—”

My locked door handle jiggles, cutting off his answer.

Both our wide eyes turn to look in that direction. Neither of us says a word, holding our breath while we stare at the shadow of two feet under the crack of my bedroom door.

“Hallie,” Luke says with a knock. “Are you asleep already?”

Rio’s attention whips back in my direction and his panic is so evident. He throws himself off me, frantically grabbing his shirt from the floor and slipping it over his head.

I’m trying my hardest not to laugh as he attempts to shove his feet back into his shoes, tripping himself up and nearly falling over.

Luke knocks again and Rio bolts to the window.

Okay, now I can’t help it. I burst a laugh and slap my hand over my mouth in an attempt to keep quiet.

“Don’t laugh at me, Hart,” he whisper-shouts as he climbs out the window, but I watch as that playful smile lifts, trying to keep himself from laughing too. “Meet me out here when you can.”

I want to tell Luke about us. I want to tell everyone about us. But even though Luke would eventually forgive me for keeping our relationship from him, it wouldn’t be that simple regarding his friendship with Rio.

It’s nearing the end of their senior year, and neither Rio nor I want to ruin these last few months for either of them.

Eventually, though, we will tell him.

Keeping the bedroom light off, I crack the door open. “Hey, what’s up?”

“Are you going to bed already?” Luke asks.

“I was planning to. Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I just wanted to hang out. I’m not going to be home for your birthday next year, so this kind of feels like the last one I get to celebrate with you.”

I tilt my head. “Aww. Luke, you’re getting sappy on me.”

“Shut up. I’m going to miss you is all.”

“I’m going to miss you too, but we still have five months until you leave for college.”

“I know, but maybe tomorrow we can hang out? We could go see a movie, just us. Well, we’ll invite Rio obviously.”

“Yeah. Yeah, that sounds great. But how about we go just the two of us? Like a brother-sister thing. We could grab dinner beforehand.”

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