Page 57 of The Wives of Hawthorne Lane
Lucas laughs and it’s as wild and free as the forest around them. “I take a girl out on a romantic walk through the woods and she’s sitting here thinking about her mom.”
Christina smiles, swatting him playfully on the arm. “Wasn’t what you had in mind?”
“Not exactly,” he replies. “But I think I can change that.”
He leans toward her, his eyes slowly closing, and then his lips are on hers. Christina relishes the softness of them, the gentle intention of his hand as it reaches out to hold hers, the moment as sweet as cotton candy on a summer night. This is how it always is between them: innocent, reverential. Lucas is the first boy she’s ever kissed, and though she’s never admitted that to him, she suspects he knowsit.
Christina is grateful that Lucas never complains when she pulls away from him, that he seems to understand and accept her unspoken boundaries. She wonders if it was the same with the other girls, the ones who came before her. Somehow she doubts the kinds of girls Lucas Corbin usually dates would cut him off at a kiss, and she hopes he’s not quietly growing bored of her. Hopes that one day soon he won’t be looking for someone willing to give him more than a chaste kiss on a fallen log.
The kiss grows more urgent, their tongues probing and exploring, as if they’re starving for each other. Christina feels a flutter of warmth low in her belly, her skin tingling with the aftershock of it, and she realizes that she wants more of him. So much more of him. She wants to know what his hands would feel like on her skin, what his body would feel like pressed against hers. Lucas must be feeling it too, losing himself in the heat of the moment, because his hand travels to the hem of her shirt; the tips of his fingers slip beneath it to graze the soft flesh of her stomach. A shudder rolls through her, and she wills his hand higher, feels like she will come undone if he doesn’t touch her.
But no. She can’t. She pulls away from him so abruptly that she nearly falls off the log, her lips plump and swollen from his kiss. “I…I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay,” he replies, wiping his lower lip with the pad of his thumb. “You don’t have to apologize.” He stretches out again, a picture of relaxed composure.
But Christina thinks again of the other girls, the ones who would have given him exactly what she knows he wants. “It’s just…my parents. Like, they have all these rules. About boys and stuff, and I think they got into my head about it, and, see, they have this thing about me not being allowed to date—” She realizes her mistake, her cheeks burning a crimson red. “Not that we’redating,necessarily. I didn’t mean to assume we were, like, officially together or anything.”
“Are we not?” Lucas smiles, and the heat it stirs in Christina’s belly is enough to melt the polar ice caps.
“I…I guess I wasn’t sure.” She adjusts her glasses, straightening them on her nose.
“Let me clear it up for you, then,” Lucas says, his smoky green eyes meeting hers. “I want to be with you. And you don’t need to explain yourself to me. If you’re not ready to go further, then you’re not ready.” He shrugs. “You’re worth the wait.”
She feels like she could cry, but she doesn’t know why. He’s saying all the right things, but she still feels like she’s messing this up.
“Besides,” Lucas adds, sparing her from having to find the words to respond, “I think it’s cool that you’re so close with your parents.”
Christina looks at the ground, tracing circles in the dirt with the toe of her sneaker. “I don’t know that I’d describe us as close, exactly…” She doesn’t know how to explain her relationship with her parents to Lucas, how to tell him that the idyllic version of her family that he sees, that everyone sees, feels like a performance to her. How can she put into words the cold detachment she’s always felt for her father, the way she can’t ignore his obvious preference for her brother? Or the way she loves her mother but doesn’t feel like she knows her, the woman she is under the flawless facade she wears like armor? “It’s complicated.”
There’s a beat of silence before she continues, eager to push the spotlight off her. “What about you, though? You and your mom always seemed super close.”
“We are. Were.” Lucas grows pensive, his eyes scanning the trees as he seems to search for an explanation among the branches. “I guess it’s complicated for us too lately. Ever since she and my dad split up, I’ve been kind of a dick to her.”
“Why?” Christina appreciates his honesty, recognizes that it’s a rare quality in a teenage boy, the ability to admit to his own shortcomings.
“I don’t know. I don’t blame her for their divorce or anything. Honestly, my dad is the one who deserves the blame. He just, like, walked out one day and decided he didn’t want to have any responsibilities anymore. I looked up to him before that, you know? And then suddenly I couldn’t anymore. I couldn’t respect him. What kind of man does that? And I was just so mad about it. Like, really pissed off all the time. And my mom was there, and, well, he wasn’t. She’s always there. So I kind of took it out on her. Like, I was afraid that if I took it out onhim,he’d just walk out of my life entirely. But my mom, she’s not like that. She’s solid.”
“I’m sure you guys will work through this.” Christina squeezes his hand. She loves that she gets to have this version of him. That the tough jock he is at school allows himself to be emotional, introspective when he’s with her.
“Yeah. We will.”
She leans toward him, this beautiful, vulnerable boy, and kisses him again. He seems surprised at first, his lips frozen against hers. But she feels him softening, opening to her as she parts them with her tongue.
She takes his hand, slides it under the hem of her shirt so his fingers are splayed against her bare stomach.
“Are you sure?” he breathes into her mouth. “We can just keep kissing…”
“I’m sure.”
“What the fuck is this?”
The sound of someone in the clearing shatters the moment as if it were glass.
Lucas whips his hand from beneath Christina’s shirt and both of them jump apart as if they were repelling magnets pushed too close.
“Are you fucking kidding me right now?” Sebastian stalks across the clearing, heading directly for Lucas.
Christina stands up and puts herself in Sebastian’s path so she’s positioned between the two boys, but it’s as if her brother doesn’t even see her. His eyes, as sharp and murderous as daggers, are trained on Lucas.
