Page 28 of The Fight

I see Shay shrug from the corner of my eye. “You tell me, Dollface.”

My stomach flutters at the name he calls me. For once, it isn’t something insulting or rude. It’s actually… cute.

“I mean, everything with our parents complicates things, doesn’t it?”

I turn just in time to see Shay smile wickedly. “Well, I’ve never been scared of a fight or a challenge. Guess this just makes things more interesting…” He trails off like he’s thinking, needing a little time to formulate his next statement.

I let his words sink into my skin. Everything in my life since moving to Saint Bipal has moved at one hundred miles an hour. There has been no break, no moment to take anything in. And everything with Shay is no different. One minute, we hated each other, now the next, we’re…

“What does this make us exactly, then?” I ask, voicing the very thought as it came.

He chuckles lowly, then lies back into the sand, closing his eyes to shield them from the sun. “It makes us whatever we want to be. I fight all the time, you know? And sometimes, I don’t want to. And I don’t want to fight with you. Not anymore.”

I’m not sure how to even respond to what he’s saying. A part of me agrees and knows this is how it will always be, but another part of me is scared. What about our parents? What will people say? How does this work? I have more questions than answers, but I don’t want to ruin the moment either.

Shay is finally opening up and laying himself bare in front of me. He’s being real—raw.

“What if I like fighting, though?” I roll my eyes and laugh, almost kicking myself.Why did I say that?

In one swift motion, Shay’s arm wraps around my stomach and pulls me back into the sand with him. As soon as my back hits the warm ground, his fingers lock around my wrists, and he crawls on top of me, straddling my hips, and raises my hands above my head.

Unlike other times, my first instinct isn’t to hit him or try and fight and get away. Instead, my breath picks up, and my cheststarts to pound with excitement. He leans down, his nose only a hair away from mine. I can smell the alcohol on his mouth from the drink he must have had earlier and feel his breath on my lips.

I stare into his icy blue eyes, not knowing what to say or what to do. I just pause and let myself bask in his figure and the feelings stirring in my stomach.

“Tell me to stop and I will,” he whispers, moving at a snail’s pace to close the gap between us.

But I don’t tell him to stop. His lips press into mine softly. Such a harsh contrast to the normal we once had. There is nothing violent or fierce about how he kisses me this time. Instead, he moves his mouth against mine slowly, savoring every taste I’m giving him. His tongue juts out and swipes across the seam of my lips slowly, and I open greedily, ready to take every single sweet lap.

He unleashes my wrists and plants his hands into the sand by my head. I move mine and cup his face, scraping the pads of my fingers across the slight stubble on his cheeks, then crawl them up his jaw and into his hair. His silky strands feel like they belong there, tangled in my fingers, just like it feels right to have him pressed against me so tightly. Our breaths start to synchronize, and my heart slows.

Everything is so warm and easy. So right.

He breaks his lips from mine, then stares down at me. “I think that’s better than fighting.”

I smile and shake my head. “Finally, one thing we can agree on.”

Shay rolls his eyes, then moves from on top of me, taking his position beside me back.

“Maybe we will get some backlash,” he continues his thought from earlier. “But I think we can handle it. I mean, since my mom died, I’ve dealt with worse things.”

I nod and wrap my arms around my center. “What happened to her? Your mom.”

Shay sucks in a deep breath. “She just had a bad heart. Doctors thought they had caught it soon enough, but there wasn’t as much time as they thought. Treatments and all of that helped some, but we knew what the outcome could be in the end.”

“I’m sorry.”

He shakes his head. “Don’t be. Anywhere life happens, so does death. It’s a hard pill to swallow, but it’s reality. I miss her, but I’m thankful for the time I got with her, you know?”

I nod because I do understand, although I can’t imagine knowing death was coming soon. I didn’t get that with my dad. One day, he was here, healthy as a horse, then the next, he was gone. No signs. No warning. No goodbye. He was just gone.

“And your dad?” Shay asks, dragging me from my thoughts.

“Car accident.”

“Damn.”

I nod again. “Yeah. How it all played out is still a mystery, but I don’t think I care to know. It’s not like it’ll bring him back.”

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