And really fucking young.
I scrubbed a hand over my face like it might rearrange the picture, then squinted at her. “What are you doing?” I finally managed to ask, my voice like gravel.
Her throat bobbed. Anxiously, her tongue darted out to wet her lips. She started to take a step forward, then seemed to decide against it. “I need to go,” she said, so quietly I could barely hear her.
My squinting eyes narrowed. “Why?”
“I have to get home,” she whispered, all nervous and agitated. “I’m already late…and if my dad…” She trailed off, leaving me to fill in the rest.
Motherfucker.
I shot all the way up, running both hands over the back of my head with my elbows propped on my knees.
The thin sheet just barely concealed the evidence of my naked body.
I turned my attention her way. “Tell me you’re not sayin’ what I think you’re sayin’.”
She winced, swallowed. “Last night…I…I don’t do that…I mean…I have before but it was with my ex-boyfriend…but you kept looking at me…”
She waved her hand at me. “And look at you…and I was drinking…and…”
Panic started to bubble up in her words, and she shifted on her feet.
Guilt got me in a chokehold.
What the hell did I get myself into?
She was innocent. Yet still a little bit wild. Couldn’t quite connect the dots between the two.
“Come here,” I finally said.
She hesitated.
“Come here,” I insisted again, softer, stretching out my hand, knowing doing so was just asking for all kinds of trouble. But I couldn’t stop myself. I wanted to wipe away the shame on her face.
Okay. And I wanted to touch her again.
Yeah.
I really wanted to touch her again.
Finally, she gave. She curled her soft hand in mine and let me pull her back onto the bed. She straddled me, knees supporting her on either side of my waist. She held onto my shoulders and I let my hands go to her hips.
All that long, long hair billowed down around us like a veil.
Hiding away what never should have been.
Us.
Finally got the secret she had planned on stealing away.
My throat felt raw when I finally spoke, not having the first clue how to phrase it. Because damn, this girl had caught me off guard. “Listen…I’m sorry if I took advantage of you in some way last night. I didn’t mean to hurt you. Had no clue you were…”
Clueless and a little bit scared of the answer, I looked up at her for help.
“Seventeen,” she supplied, biting at her bottom lip.
“Seventeen,” I repeated. I let that number roll around in my mind, coming to the conclusion the difference between that and twenty wasn’t really all that bad. Right?
I set my palm on the warmth of her neck, feeling the erratic thrum of her pulse, my fingertips gliding into her hair. “I’m sorry if you regret last night.”
She chewed at her lip a little more ferociously. “I don’t regret it. Not at all. It was—”
“Kinda perfect,” I said.
A breathy smile danced all over her mouth. Kind of like relief. Like she’d been wondering if she’d affected me the way I’d affected her.
If she only knew.
“Yeah,” she said, eyes downcast and shy and sweet.
She glanced toward the door. “I really should go.”
My eyes moved over her face as I made a decision. “What if I said I didn’t want you to go?”
Redness splashed her cheeks, and the words rushed from her like a secret. “Then I’d say I really, really want to come back.”
With a grin, I brushed the back of my hand down her cheek. “What’s your name?” I asked.
She gave me the softest smile. “Kenzie. My name is Kenzie.”
Kenzie snuck back into my bed the next night and the night after that, until it became routine. Until it felt strange when she wasn’t there. As if I was missing a piece of myself. That piece ached on the nights when she couldn’t slip out her window, when she had to hang low because the lies were mounting and her parents were becoming suspicious. The excuses and stories she spouted were beginning to do nothing more than point to our guilt.
She could only say she was staying over at her friend Tricia’s house so many times.
She slid right into the scene like she’d belonged there all along. Partying with the best of us. Up all night with me before she’d slink back to her place just before dawn, stealing into her bedroom window she’d broken out of eight hours before.
Most of the time, anyway. This morning I woke with her still wrapped around me. Her head was on my shoulder, all that hair bunched in my face. I pressed my face into it.
“Kenz, baby, what are you still doing here? You have school.”
Her head jerked up. Disoriented, she blinked. She looked at the clock on my nightstand. It read 11:48 a.m. At least we could still call it morning.
“Shit,” she muttered. Then she seemed to let the moment of panic go sliding by and she dropped her head back to my shoulder. “I can’t do it, Lyrik. It feels like I haven’t slept in days. I just want to stay right here…in this bed…all day.”