Page 65 of Reckless at Westbrook High

“Shut up and eat your food,” he orders, unwrapping his own burger to take a big ass bite out of it.

I blink and he smirks to himself, taking his phone out from his pocket to open the Netflix app. I let him off for daring to speak to me like that and lean back on his chest, lifting my feet up on the seat while I look out at the view through the passenger side window. We’re parked on the edge off the cliff a few miles from Ryan’s house, right above the spot where we used to ride our parents’ jet skis when we were kids. It’s quiet and secluded out here, the perfect spot to hang out without getting caught, and I can’t help but wonder how many other guys he’s brought up here for dinner and a movie.

“You come out here a lot?” I ask, speaking around my food.

“Sometimes,” he nods, still scrolling through his phone to find something to watch.

“On your own?”

He nods again, grinning at the screen like he can read my mind without even looking at me, the cocky fucker.

“Shut the fuck up.”

He laughs at me and reaches over to prop his phone up on the center console, wrapping one arm around my waist while he uses his free hand to eat. We watch the first fifteen minutes in silence and I do my best to pay attention to the movie, but it’s a lot harder than it looks with his hot body pressed up against mine like this.

“Lev?”

“Yeah?”

“When did you know you wanted me?”

“What?”

“The first time you ever thought about me like this,” I explain, tipping my head back on his shoulder to look at him. “When was it?”

He licks his lips and grabs a napkin to clean his hands, tossing it down into the takeaway bag in the footwell. “You want the truth?”

I nod and he bounces his eyes between mine, locking his arms around my waist like he’s afraid I’ll make a run for it once he tells me.

“Remember the day after Damon’s fourteenth birthday party when we almost burned the penthouse down?”

I nod again, laughing lightly at the memory. It was Friday and Damon was sick, hungover from all the vodka shots we’d made him do the night before. Ryan was the only other one of us who knew how to cook anything other than dry toast but the lazy bastard refused to move his ass off the couch, so I decided it’d be a good idea for me, Kai and Levi to make the pancakes that morning.

It didn’t go well.

“That was the first time I’d seen you laugh for real since your mom died.”

The sound of his quiet voice brings me back and I look up at him, swallowing the emotion creeping up my throat when I catch the look in his eyes.

“What?”

“You were so fuckin’ sad all the time, man,” he whispers, speaking over my lips. “I didn’t know why it cut me up so much but it did. Even back when we were kids, every time I was around you something inside me felt off, like I was different or obsessed with you or some shit, but then you bust up laughing on the kitchen floor and it hit me like a train. I was gay and I wanted to make you laugh like that again more than I’d ever wanted anything in my life.”

A long silence follows and I stare at him, opening and closing my mouth a couple times while I attempt to process that.

“You..” I trail off, frowning. “You’ve felt this way about me since we were kids?”

He nods, gently brushing his thumb over my bottom lip.

“Why the fuck didn’t you say anything?”

“Because I was scared,” he says quietly, still playing with my mouth like he needs it to keep his hands busy. “Scared of what my parents would say if they found out I didn’t want girls like every other fucker did, scared of what you would say when you found out I wanted you. I talked to Ryan about it the summer before freshman year and he told me to stop bein’ a pussy and just fuckin’ go for it, but then we started high school and..”

“And then I met Freya.”

“And then you met Freya,” he echoes, dropping his head back on the door to stare at the roof a while.

My chest tightens with guilt and I can’t think of a single thing to say that’ll make him feel better, but I’m not about to sit here and say nothing.

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