Page 104 of Feels Like Forever

As she passes me, I spot a wet leaf between her shoulder blades. She doesn’t seem to have noticed it yet.

I wait for her to find it as we head up the elevator, all of our bags in our hands. And as we walk to her door and then get through it. And as we get all the other leaves off of us. And as Rae hurries away to get into dry clothes. And as Liv and I unload groceries. And as I run home and get into my own dry outfit.

I don’t want to have to point the thing out myself. I don’t want to risk having to touch her there, risk giving away that I think her uncovered skin is…well, mesmerizing. I don’t want to spook her.

But it’s still in place even after I come back and findherin different clothes, because she put on a thin-strapped top similar to the one she had on before, so the leaf didn’t get brushed off or discovered at all. The closest she comes to noticing it is twisting her shoulders and mumbling that she’s itchy, not actually trying to touch the offending leaf—I think she thinks her damp ponytail is the culprit.

I finally get up the nerve to mention it after Rae has drifted into a nap.

I blow out a breath and approach where Liv is writing on their kitchen calendar. She’s capping her pen when I get there, and I see she’s put,‘TRICK-OR-TREATING WITH LANDON!’on the Halloween box.

Be cool,I tell myself as my pulse skips.Don’t be an idiot.

“Hey,” I say to her.

She turns away from the calendar, smiles at me, and wiggles the pen in the air. “Not like I’d forget, but I had to write down our Halloween plans. I like my calendar.”

“Good idea.” I smile, too, for a second and then add, “I thought you should know, though, that you still have a…” I gesture over my shoulder, “…a wet leaf on you.”

She looks mildly surprised as she tries to look back at it. “Really? Where?”

Shit.

I steel myself. “It’s, uh…” at the press of my fingertips against her arm, she turns around, and I gently tap the leaf, “…here.”

Under the pad of my finger and through the leaf, I feel her tense up a bit.

Don’t freak out, Liv. Please don’t freak out on me.

Slowly, she breathes in.

I can’t help copying her.

After a moment, she says more softly than before, “Oh. Do you—do you mind getting it?” She doesn’tsoundlike she’s freaking out.

That means I’m doing a good job of being cool.

Andthathelps with my nervousness, resulting in me definitely not minding fulfilling her request.

I carefully lay my free hand on her shoulder, then use the other to peel the wet leaf away.

She gives a delicate shudder, and I watch chill bumps come up on her.

Christ.

As weakly as she did this morning, I say, “I’m sorry.”

And as breathlessly as I did, she says, “Don’t be.”

I wish she were thinking now what I was thinking then:‘You’re fucking amazing.’

I also wish I could lean down, press a kiss to where the leaf just was, suck the rest of the dampness off her skin, draw an equally breathless moan out of her.

It’s an image that makes my mouth water, makes my stomach do a backflip.

It’s an image I don’t dare attempt to bring to life.

On the off-chance I’d even get all the way through it, it wouldn’t end well for me. She would gasp, not moan, and then turn and slap the piss out of me, glare at me, kick me out of her house. She wouldn’t shiver again in delight, wouldn’t—

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