Page 23 of The Pucking Kiss

We said goodbye to everyone at the party, and Bryan began to drive me home. During the car ride, I felt a bittersweet feeling tug at my heart. I didn’t want to say goodbye to him just yet.

But as he pulled over in my driveway, I gathered myself and opened my mouth to bid him farewell before he interrupted me.

“Hey, Romai?” he said, his voice laced with an urgency I hadn’t heard from him all night. Could it be possible that he didn’t want this night to end either?

“What?”

“Is it cool if…” he rubbed the back of his neck, a hint of nervousness in his actions. “Is it cool if I can borrow your physics notes?”

“My physics notes?” I eyed him, wondering if he had been replaced by a Bryan decoy. “At this hour?”

“Yeah,” he shrugged. “Why not? I’m already here, and we might as well hit two birds with one stone.”

“Sure,” I said, trying to hide the disappointment in my voice. So, he didn’t want the night to end, but only because he was thinking of my damn physics notes. “You can come in, and I’ll give them to you.”

“Sweet,” his face lit up.

“But you have to be really quiet, okay? My grandparents are asleep, and I don’t want to disturb them.”

“You never told me you lived with your grandparents,” he cocked his face in curiosity.

“I do,” I said quickly. “Let’s go now. And remember, you have to be really quiet.”

Sheepishly, he followed me into the house, and we both tip-toed our way down the hallway until we reached my room. As I closed the door behind me, I breathed a large sigh of relief.

“Finally,” I said. “I’m glad that we didn’t wake them up.”

“You worry so much, Romai,” he laughed. “Sometimes you just need to let things go and go with the flow. You know?”

“My anxiety says otherwise,” I said, rolling my eyes slightly.

“Have you always been so careful?” he said, eyeing me curiously and then going over to my bed and jumping on it.

“Hey,” I reprimanded him, “You can’t do that. You’re only here to get the notes, remember?”

I began to rummage through my bag to pull out the file that had the notes, but Bryan seemed to have other ideas.

“What’s the rush?” he said in his usual nonchalant tone. “I’m already here, and we didn’t wake anyone up.”

I looked up at him, “Wait, you want to stay?”

“Well,” he sighed. “I was thinking we could spend a little more time together.”

I walked over to the bed and took a seat at the edge of it. “Since when do you want to spend time with me? I thought you were only doing this to fix your grades.”

“I am,” he clarified. “But I think we both know you need more help than me.”

“Debatable,” I said. But before I could give him another snarky comment, he sat up and moved his face close to me so that he was inches away from me. I froze, feeling his hot breath on me.

“I thought it was pretty cool how you took initiative with the kiss today,” he said, still really close to my face. “That was hot.”

Never in my wildest dreams did I ever imagine Bryan would be referring to something I did as hot.

“Well,” I admitted shyly. “I knew I couldn’t back down when everyone was watching.”

“If you didn’t tell me, I would have never guessed that was your first kiss,” he continued, bringing his hands to the side of my face now. He began slowly caressing my skin, and I felt myself melting away under his touch.

God, the effect this man had on me.

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