Page 56 of Captivating Mr. Second Chance

“You too,” he said and pivoted around.

Outside, Laney was already waiting on the curb when Ethan pulled up. He rushed around to the passenger side of the car to hold the door for her.

She greeted him with a kiss on the cheek. “Hi.”

Before she could get away, he wrapped his hand around her hip. “Why didn’t you let me come to the door for you?”

But then his mouth was on hers, so she couldn’t answer. He caressed her lips with his tongue, and he gently pressed her against his car as his hands found their way under her jacket, so high his thumbs dragged along the wire of her bra. She angled her head, drawing him closer, nipping and sucking at his lips, but at that point, it was hard to tell who was pushing and pulling when they were wrapped up in each other.

With one last tiny kiss to the corner of her mouth, he cleared his throat and extracted his hands from where they were under her shirt. “Let me walk you to your door at the end of the night.”

“Why?”

“Because this is our firstrealdate, and I don’t want to screw it up.” He smiled like a young kid trying to impress his first girlfriend, and with his cowlick, graphic T-shirt, and zip-up hoodie, he may as well have been.

It was like they were starting from scratch.

“Okay,” she said and got into the passenger seat. He shut the door and rounded the hood with his long strides. His fashion may not have progressed far past high school, but her eyes snagged on those hands that had certainly learned a few things since then, and when he sat down behind the wheel, he elbowed her gently.

“You all right?”

“Mm-hmm.” She bit into the corner of her lip, and he nodded as if he knew she’d been thinking of what they’d done. Of what they still had yet to do.

He maneuvered the car onto the street and swiftly to the highway, where the traffic was bumper-to-bumper. He fiddled with the radio, tuning to some alternative station, but she smacked his hand away. He chuckled, letting her take over, even if that meant Adele. As she settled back into her seat with her hands in her lap, he linked their fingers together, and when she glanced over at him, his attention was on her thighs.

“They’re ripped,” he said, scratching over the distressed denim above her knee.

“I know.” She hitched her brow at him, but he was still staring down. He poked his finger through the hole, lightly tickling her skin, and she didn’t think he was giving her fashion advice. Especially when his mouth twisted into a half smile. “What?” she asked.

He focused on the road, slowly following behind the minivan in front of them. “Thinking about a memory. That’s all.”

“You can’t say something like that and not tell me.” When he still didn’t answer, she shook his hand, twined with hers. “We don’t have secrets, remember?”

She didn’t know if that was still true or not, although it used to be. There had never been secrets between them. They told each other anything and everything. Except how they really felt about each other. But it was different now. It had to be.

No secrets. At all.

“It’s stupid,” he said after a while.

“Tell me.”

“It was one time in your room,” he started, and he leaned his elbow on the console between them, moving his hand out of her grasp to rest it on her thigh. “A couple weeks after homecoming,” he said, and she understood his implied tone of voice. Homecoming was when it had all gone sideways. He’d thought she was with JT, so he started going out with Madison.

“You were doing something for student council. I don’t remember what, but I do remember I basically lost my mind because you grabbed my hand and pulled me down next to you on your bed to read it. You smelled so good, and when you smiled at me, I wanted to kiss you.” He angled his gaze to her, his eyes the color of molten honey. “So bad.”

Laney didn’t know what this had to do with her jeans, but she loved hearing his side of their story, and she wasn’t about to stop him.

“We talked a bit,” he continued, absently stroking her knee with his thumb. “You told me about the volleyball camp you went to every summer, and I tried to get you to listen to The White Stripes, but then you got a text. It was JT. I didn’t mean to look, but I saw that he asked you to come over to his house. He wanted you to wear the jeans with the rip in them.”

Laney furrowed her brow, having absolutely no recollection of this.

“I had no right to be jealous.” He briefly glanced at her before traffic finally started to let up. “Still, I was. I was the guy in your bedroom, but some other dude was trying to get you to wear jeans with a rip to his house because he said you looked hot in them. I went back downstairs so mad. I mean, I had assumed you two were together before then, but that text message made it obvious.”

“Huh.” Laney stared at his profile, reflecting on how she and JT had been together, occasionally flirting, but nothing had ever happened between them. A lot of people assumed things about Laney that weren’t true, so it was probably easy for Ethan, as the new kid, to believe she and JT hooked up since they were often physical with each other, hugging and kissing each other’s cheeks.

But she had never wanted JT. It had always been Ethan, her brother’s best friend and drummer in the marching band. The math genius with those adorably big ears and messy hair. Apparently, no one in school would have believed the homecoming queen wanted him. Not even Ethan.

“So, when you came back downstairs to leave and you weren’t in your ripped-up jeans, I was happy. Relieved. I didn’t want you to dress for him.” He played with the rip in her current jeans. “But now you’re wearing them for me, and you do look super hot in them. And yeah, I’m taking a perverse pleasure in it.”

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