Page 67 of The Last Key
He takes a big breath in and lets it out. “I love you. Even when you give me blue balls.”
I laugh at that. “Well, you’ve given me lady blue balls plenty of times over the years. Still, if there’s somewhere you want to sneak off to…”
“You’re going to kill me.”
He plants a steamy kiss on my lips, pulling away tantalizingly slowly. “We should get in there.” Then he swings his door open. God, he’s such a clit tease.
A moment later, he appears at my door and opens it for me, extending his hand like he’s the prince taking the princess to the ball. And just like that my horniness is replaced by swooning. Mostly.
“So, plane tickets are bad, huh?”
“Not the worst ever, but they’re not great.”
“Good thing I’ve done nothing but save for the last three years. It’ll be fine.”
We walk hand in hand to the entrance of the school. As soon as we walk in, there’s a table for us to sign in. We get our name badges, which we’ll need for tomorrow night as well. The meet and greet tonight is being held in the gym, so we head there, finding tables set up around the perimeter with pictures all over them.
Hands intertwined, we walk around the gym, stopping to chat with former classmates here and there. More than a few point out how unsurprising it is that we’re a couple. Were we really that blind to each other’s feelings?
“Hey,” Devon says, pointing to a picture of the two of us.
We stop, and I pick it up, getting the answer to my question.
Yep, we were very blind.
In the picture, we’re standing, facing each other, leaning against the lockers as we talk. His head is tipped down toward me, and I’m looking up at him. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think we were a couple in that picture. He looks like he’s about to kiss me, and I look like a giggly girl in love.
Maybe I always was.
“Did you ever think we’d end up together?” I ask him. In a complete fantasy sense, I dreamed we would, but I never let myself believe it.
“Come with me,” he says, leading me out of the gym and over to the lockers. He searches for a minute until he finds mine. “Do you remember Troy?”
I snort at the mention of his name. “Uh, yeah. I think I remember my douchey boyfriend from junior year who broke up with me because he needed to focus on football. Even though football season was over. I didn’t realize at the time how awful he was, and I was heartbroken.”
He nods slowly. “You stood there against your locker trying not to cry.”
“I hate crying in public.”
“I know. And I knew all you wanted to do was fall apart, so rather than hug you—which I knew would make you sob—I listened to and encouraged your rant about him. Unfortunately, it eventually veered into hysterical territory and you went off on a tangent about how you must be unlovable and you’d end up alone and would probably be the only single person at our high school reunion.”
My eyes grow wider as I remember the moment. “And you told me that would never be the case. I was too amazing to end up alone. Then you told me that worst case, we’d go to the reunion together and pretend to be a couple.” Looking into his eyes, I softly shake my head. “Did you think it would be for real?”
“I hoped it would be.” He tucks a strand of hair behind my ear and looks down into my eyes, just like he was in that picture. “Most of the time, that felt like a longshot. But for that moment, it felt like a possibility. A part of me held onto it. Now here we are.”
“Here we are,” I breathe. Pressing onto my toes, I wrap my hand around the back of his neck and crush my lips against his in a sloppy, passionate kiss. He pulls me closer, his hands on my ass as his tongue tangles with mine. At the sound of clattering in the hallway, he pulls away, softly kissing my lips one more time as I sigh. “Isn’t there a room around here where people used to go to have sex?”
He chuckles, resting his forehead against mine. “How about we just go home? We’ll have all of tomorrow to hang out with everyone.”
A smile grows on my face as warmth spreads through me.
“What?” he asks.
“Home.I love that it’s my home now, too.”
“And it always will be.” He squeezes my hand, then kisses my cheek before leading me out of the school.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
