“Make me embarrass myself.”
He studies me for a long moment, and then he says, “I told you I wanted you. You think that wasn’t embarrassing?”
“What does that even mean?”
“What do you mean, ‘what does that even mean?’ It means I want to be with you.” A subtle blush creeps onto his cheeks, but I still can’t believe Shawn is saying what I think he is.
“Be with me how?”
He laughs and shakes his head. “Christ, Kit, do you not see how into you I am? I’m saying I don’t want us seeing other people, okay? I want you for myself. I want to see where we might be five years from now.”
The smile that consumes my face turns night to day, pushes the dark into tomorrow. “Ask me.”
“Ask you what?”
“Ask me,” I press again, and he chuckles as he picks apart a thread in my jeans.
“You’re the worst, you know that?” When I just keep smiling at him, he can’t help smiling back. “I swear, if you say no—”
“Ask me.”
He takes his time, inhales a deep breath . . . and then, he asks me. “Will you go out with me?”
“Can you be more specific?”
When he starts to argue, I laugh and kiss him, silencing him with my answer. I kiss him until his arms are circling around my waist, until I’m his and we both know it. “Okay,” I say when I part my lips from his. “But if I’m yours, you’re mine.”
My thumb traces the curve of his jaw, memorizing the brush of his stubble, the way his eyes look in this moment, the way his voice sounds when he says, “I’ve been yours for a while.”
When I kiss him again, it’s the seal to a promise. It’s telling him that I want this. That I want him.
It’s telling him where I want to be in five years. In six.
Chapter Seventeen
I WAKE UP with an ache in my back, the sun in my eyes, and I smile. I turn my face into Shawn’s hard chest, breathing into his fabric-softened T-shirt and loving the way his arms tighten around me like he’s never going to let me go.
We talked all night, until we curled up under the stars and fell asleep where we lay. He told me about meeting Mike and Joel, about starting the band with them, about discovering Mayhem for the first time. I learned about his mom, his dad, an older stepsister he has. We told each other our favorite colors, our favorite places, our favorite songs. We shared childhood stories, and all the crazy things we want to do before we get old. We laughed and smiled and held each other, and this morning, nothing’s changed.
What happened between us last night was real. It still is.
“Dude,” says a voice, and I jerk myself awake. Mike is standing over us, kicking the sole of Shawn’s shoe, and I remember in a daze that the click of the steel hotel door is what woke me in the first place. I shield my eyes from the sun and attempt to sit up, shrinking under Mike’s gaze. I feel like I’ve been caught red-handed—because in Shawn’s arms, I have been. But he’s my boyfriend. He fell asleep holding me. There’s no need to hide it anymore.
Nervous butterflies flutter wildly in my belly, and I manage a pathetic, “Hey.”
My entire body gets jostled when Shawn sits up in a rush, a curse word already flying from his lips. “Shit. What time is it?”
Mike’s eyes slowly swing to the disheveled boy next to me. Shawn’s hair is poking out everywhere, mussed by the sleep and the way my fingers twirled in it as we both drifted off last night. “Half past nine.”
“You’re kidding.” Shawn is already pushing to his feet, and I’m left sitting on my sore ass, rubbing my sore back, looking like a sore mess.
“Everyone is looking for you,” Mike tells him, and I don’t doubt it. We were supposed to leave for the next city before the sun broke the horizon this morning, but now it’s high in the sky, casting light over a secret Shawn and I have been keeping for weeks. Mike’s gaze swings down until I’m shrinking again. “And for you.”
Under the sun and our drummer’s scrutiny, last night suddenly seems a little less real, a little further away. It’s not just Shawn and me anymore. It’s not just us in the dark.
When calloused fingers drop in front of my face, both Shawn and Mike watch me, waiting to see if I take Shawn’s hand. My palm is clammy when I do, but I hold on tight and let him help me up.
The contact is broken as soon as I’m on my feet—by me, by Shawn, by habit. I brush myself off while trying to think of what I can possibly say to Mike.
But Shawn beats me to it.
“Hey,” he says as he combs his fingers through his hair, “don’t say anything to the guys about this, okay?”