And I’ve never thought he had it in him to kill Simon.
“Tell me about your mom. For real, okay?” I ask. And he does. We talk for over an hour, but after the first fifteen minutes or so, we’re mainly covering old ground. I start feeling stiff from sitting so long, and lift my arms over my head in a stretch.
“Tired?” Nate asks, moving closer.
I wonder if he’s noticed that I’ve been staring at his mouth for the past ten minutes. “Not really.”
He reaches out and pulls my legs over his lap, tracing a circle on my left knee with his thumb. My legs tremble, and I press them together to make it stop. His eyes flick toward mine, then down. “My mother thought you were my girlfriend.”
Maybe if I do something with my hands I can manage to hold still. I reach up and tangle my fingers into the hair on the nape of his neck, smoothing the soft waves against his warm skin. “Well. I mean. Is that out of the question?”
Oh God. I actually said it. What if it is?
Nate’s hand moves down my leg, almost absently. Like he has no idea he’s turning my entire body into jelly. “You want a drug-dealing murder suspect who lied about his not-dead mother as your boyfriend?”
“Former drug dealer,” I correct. “And I’m not in a position to judge.”
He looks up with a half smile, but his eyes are wary. “I don’t know how to be with somebody like you, Bronwyn.” He must see my face fall, because he quickly adds, “I’m not saying I don’t want to. I’m saying I think I’d screw it up. I’ve only ever been … you know. Casual about this kind of thing.”
I don’t know. I pull my hands back and twist them in my lap, watching my pulse jump under the thin skin of my wrist. “Are you casual now? With somebody else?”
“No,” Nate says. “I was. When you and I first started talking. But not since then.”
“Well.” I’m quiet for a few seconds, weighing whether I’m about to make a giant mistake. Probably, but I plow ahead anyway. “I’d like to try. If you want to. Not because we’re thrown together in this weird situation and I think you’re hot, although I do. But because you’re smart, and funny, and you do the right thing more often than you give yourself credit for. I like your horrible taste in movies and the way you never sugarcoat anything and the fact that you have an actual lizard. I’d be proud to be your girlfriend, even in a nonofficial capacity while we’re, you know, being investigated for murder. Plus, I can’t go more than a few minutes without wanting to kiss you, so—there’s that.”
Nate doesn’t reply at first, and I worry I’ve blown it. Maybe that was too much information. But he’s still running his hand down my leg, and finally he says, “You’re doing better than me. I never stop thinking about kissing you.”
He takes off my glasses and folds them, putting them on the side table next to the couch. His hand on my face is featherlight as he leans in close and pulls my mouth toward his. I hold my breath as our lips connect, and the soft pressure sends a warm ache humming through my veins. It’s sweet and tender, different from the hot, needy kiss at Marshall’s Peak. But it still makes me dizzy. I’m shaking all over and press my hands against his chest to try to get that under control, feeling a hard plane of muscle through his thin shirt. Not helping.
My lips part in a sigh that turns into a small moan when Nate slides his tongue to meet mine. Our kisses grow deeper and more intense, our bodies so tangled I can’t tell where mine stops and his starts. I feel like I’m falling, floating, flying. All at once. We kiss until my lips are sore and my skin sparks like I’ve been lit by a fuse.
Nate’s hands are surprisingly PG. He touches my hair and face a lot, and eventually he slides a hand under my shirt and runs it over my back and oh God, I might have whimpered. His fingers dip into the waistband of my shorts and a shiver goes through me, but he stops there. The insecure side of me wonders if he’s not as attracted to me as I am to him, or as he is to other girls. Except … I’ve been pressed against him for half an hour and I know that’s not it.
He pulls back and looks at me, his thick dark lashes sweeping low. God, his eyes. They’re ridiculous. “I keep picturing your father walking in,” he murmurs. “He kinda scares me.” I sigh because, truth be told, that’s been in the back of my mind too. Even though there’s barely a five percent chance, it’s still too much.
Nate runs a finger over my lips. “Your mouth is so red. We should take a break before I do permanent damage. Plus, I need to, um, calm down a little.” He kisses my cheek and reaches for his jacket on the floor.
My heart drops. “Are you leaving?”
“No.” He takes his phone out of his pocket and pulls up Netflix, then hands me my glasses. “We can finally finish watching Ringu.”
“Damn it. I thought you’d forgotten about that.” My disappointment’s fake this time, though.
“Come on, this is perfect.” Nate stretches on the couch and I curl next to him with my head on his shoulder as he props his iPhone in the crook of his arm. “We’ll use my phone instead of that sixty-inch monster on your wall. You can’t be scared of anything on such a tiny screen.”
Honestly, I don’t care what we do. I just want to stay wrapped around him for as long as possible, fighting sleep and forgetting about the rest of the world.
Chapter Twenty
Cooper
Tuesday, October 16, 5:45 p.m.
“Pass the milk, would you, Cooperstown?” Pop jerks his chin at me during dinner, his eyes drifting toward the muted television in our living room, where college football scores scroll along the bottom of the screen. “So what’d you do with your night off?” He thinks it’s hilarious that Luis posed as me after the gym yesterday.
I hand over the carton and picture myself answering his question honestly. Hung out with Kris, the guy I’m in love with. Yeah, Pop, I said guy. No, Pop, I’m not kidding. He’s a premed freshman at UCSD who does modeling on the side. Total catch. You’d like him.
And then Pop’s head explodes. That’s how it always ends in my imagination.
“Just drove around for a while,” I say instead.
I’m not ashamed of Kris. I’m not. But it’s complicated.
Thing is, I didn’t realize I could feel that way about a guy till I met him. I mean, yeah, I suspected. Since I was eleven or so. But I buried those thoughts as far down as I could because I’m a Southern jock shooting for an MLB career and that’s not how we’re supposed to be wired.
I really did believe that for most of my life. I’ve always had a girlfriend. But it was never hard to hold off till marriage like I was raised. I only recently understood that was more of an excuse than a deeply held moral belief.
I’ve been lying to Keely for months, but I did tell her the truth about Kris. I met him through baseball, although he doesn’t play. He’s friends with another guy I made the exhibition rounds with, who invited us both to his birthday party. And he is German.
I just left out the part about being in love with him.
I can’t admit that to anybody yet. That it’s not a phase, or experimentation, or distraction from pressure. Nonny was right. My stomach does flips when Kris calls or texts me. Every single time. And when I’m with him I feel like a real person, not the robot Keely called me: programmed to perform as expected.
But Cooper-and-Kris only exists in the bubble of his apartment. Moving it anyplace else scares the hell out of me. For one thing, it’s hard enough making it in baseball when you’re a regular guy. The number of openly gay players who are part of a major league team stands at exactly one. And he’s still in the minors.