Page 38 of Beneath the Hood

Her cheeks bloom the most beautiful shade of pink.

“We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do, Blake. I just want to spend time with you.” Not able to help myself, I lean down again, pressing my mouth to hers, a thousand fireflies lighting up my chest.

I have no clue what I’m doing. There’s no reasoning to my actions. No thought of what tomorrow will bring, or how we’ll handle what’s inevitably going to come if we decide to be together. Her father. The public.

My heart skips at the thought, my stomach jumping into my throat as I realize that’s what I want.

I want to be with her.

I want to try.

Now, I just have to hope she wants that, too.

19

Blakely

My lips are still tingling with the memory of Jackson’s kiss. Closing the front door, I lean against it, the wood cool against my overheated skin. My fingertips trace along the tops of my chapped mouth, stomach flipping as I replay the feel of his tongue tangling with mine.

What in the world just happened?

My heart flutters as I think about how everything just shifted and how surprisingly, even though it was completely unexpected, I’m okay with it. Now that I’ve had a taste of him, I don’t know if I can let him go. A grin spreads across my face, butterflies bursting from my stomach as I squeal, spinning off the door and skipping to the stairs.

“We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”

He’s so much more than I ever expected. Not that I have a lot of experience to pull from. My life has been far too busy—too career focused—to have time for a boyfriend. So even though my body was screaming at me to climb him like a tree—let him devour me whole, my nerves wouldn’t let me, terrified of being a disappointment.

Even thinking the word sends my brain into overdrive, making the anxiety that lies dormant perk up and come alive inside me.

I never thought he’d want me. Never realized that maybe all the joking and the forward advances were harder to resist than he showed. Now that I know there’s a chance, I can’t help but wonder how we’re supposed to navigate everything. Our lives are polar opposites, both of us having a million different reasons for why we shouldn’t be together. Why we shouldn’t explore these feelings that have come out of nowhere and slapped me upside the head.

My dad would kill him.

Sierra would kill me.

But he also makes me happy. Safe.Grounded. And I don’t have much of that in my life, so I’ll do everything in my power to keep him—even if it has to be in secret.

The uncertainty of our situation bears down on me, the adrenaline from earlier wearing off, allowing the reality of the unknown to fill me up, overflowing with ‘what-ifs.’

My stomach turns, the wine from earlier teasing the back of my throat, reminding me I indulged when I shouldn’t have.

Why did I do that? And why didn’t I add it in my tracker?

Pausing on the stairs, I pull up my calorie tracker, inputting the glass of merlot and trying to remember if Jackson said what type of cheese we were eating. Racking my brain for minutes and coming up blank, I Google “cheese”, my fingers pressing against the screen firmly while I scroll, searching for something familiar. But there are so many options and my memory is muddled from the wine. Unease chomps away at my gut, splitting a pit open inside of me, burning with the need to figure it out so I can know my final nutrition stats for the day.

One. Two. Three. Deep breath out.

I jog up the stairs, passing by the eternal beauty of my mother’s face and changing into my workout gear.

It’s okay. It’s just a few pieces of cheese.I say the words like a mantra, trying to keep the focus on my breath, instead of the loathing that’s scratching under the surface of my skin.

With every set of weights, I repeat the phrase—It’s just a few pieces of cheese—pleading with my body to find satisfaction in the sweat, hoping the hours I’ll spend here tonight will be enough to stop the clawing of the unknown numbers that are tearing up my mind.

I shouldn’t have had the cheese.

Stupid, Blakely.

* * *

---