Page 15 of Your Fault

“They shouldn’t have bought you this damn car,” he complained between clenched teeth. I rolled my eyes and slowed down.

“You happy now, Grandma?”

“You’re still over the speed limit,” he said earnestly.

I ignored him. No way I was slowing down to seventy. Seventy-five was fine. Anyway, everyone in that city drove like a maniac.

“This isn’t NASCAR… You want to chill?” he said. He was joking, but the remark made my smile freeze, then slowly fade away.

I had tried as hard as I could not to think about my father, and I definitely didn’t want to remember him just then. But something brought him insistently into my thoughts. Maybe it was seeing all my friends with their dads on that special occasion. I kept asking myself what it would have felt like if he’d been there, if he hadn’t been crazy…or dead. In that alternate universe, Nick wouldn’t be the one beside me just then, and he sure as hell wouldn’t be telling me to slow down.

But what kind of stupid thought was that? My father was a drunk, a criminal with a killer’s instincts, he had tried to murder me… What the hell was going on with me? How could I be missing him? How could I be sitting there imagining a life that never had existed and never would?

“Noah?” Nick called to me. Without realizing it, I’d slowed down to forty-five, and cars were honking and passing me. I shook my head. I’d gotten lost in myself again.

“I’m okay,” I said, trying to get back to that state of euphoria I’d been in just a few minutes before. I stomped on the accelerator and ignored the nagging feeling in my heart.

Soon we were at the restaurant. It was gorgeous inside. I’d never been there, and I was excited to try the food. I’d told my mother I didn’t care where we went, as long as they had the best chocolate cake. That was my one request.

Mom and Will must have been right behind us. I got out of the car, and Nick did, too, walking around to see me. He looked fantastic in those dark pants, with a white shirt and gray tie. I fell in love with him all over again every time I saw him in businessman mode, as I called it. He smiled the way he only did with me and smirked as I looked down and realized I still hadn’t stripped off my gown. I pulled it off, giving him a view of thepink dress I was wearing, with the patterned lace back. It fit me like a glove.

“You look incredible,” he said, pulling me close. Even in my heels, I felt minuscule next to him. My eyes were level with his lips, which were tempting, the way every inch of him was.

“You, too,” I said, tickled because I knew how much he hated compliments. I didn’t know why, but he always got really uncomfortable whenever I called him handsome. It wasn’t a secret—we’d only been parked there three minutes, and five women had already turned their heads to give him a slow, shameless once-over.

He kissed me before I could say anything else, and after a moment, I pushed him away.

“Easy, we’ve got the whole night ahead of us,” I said.

“I’m on the verge of taking you to my apartment and forcing you to live there all summer,” he blurted out.

That idea, the two of us living there with no parents to bother us, made my heart swell… but obviously it couldn’t happen.

“I wouldn’t say no,” I told him.

“Really?” he said, pushing me into the car. I wrapped my arms around him and tried to give him a kiss, but he jerked back, clearly expecting an answer. That allured me, and I wanted to keep playing.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t mind spending the night with you, naked, in your bed…” I admitted, digging my fingers into his hair.

In his eyes, there was hunger. I was seducing him. I’d figured out I had a talent for it.

“Don’t start what you can’t finish,” he warned me, now ready to kiss. But this time, I was the one who turned away. I was toying with him, but his expression promised passion and danger. I’d realized by then that the slightest contact with my lips was enough to completely disarm him.

I knew I couldn’t take it too far. We were in the middle of aparking lot, and our parents were about to arrive. But I wanted him so bad…

“Tonight,” I said, kissing his chin, his throat, his neck. “Make me yours, Nick.”

He held my waist with one hand, while the other forced my head back.

“I don’t need to make you mine—you are mine,” he replied before kissing me the way he’d been wanting to do since before we arrived. His tongue pushed into my mouth immodestly, wrapped around mine, tasted me, maybe punished me—I wasn’t yet sure.

Just being with him, just touching him, was enough to make me lose control. It didn’t matter how much time passed; it didn’t matter that we’d spent the whole previous day together. I never got tired of him, never lost that painful attraction that brought us together like two magnets.

But before my body could melt in his arms, or else undergo spontaneous combustion, a horn honked, startling us and making us step back from each other.

“Your mother,” he said with a frown.

“Your father,” I counterattacked.

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