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The way his eyes pierce mine makes this feel like so much more than sex. It’s not a causal lay or simply physical.

And that…that scares me a little.

Because I can feel my heart grow. I can feel it beating a little faster. Alex has always had the ability to make me react. Sometimes in good ways, and sometimes in bad ones. I’m incapable of being rational whenever he’s nearby.

“Look at me Olive,” he says, when I start to look away when his gaze is too much.

I meet his eyes and feelit—an invisible string attaching us together. The same feeling I had when I was naked in his apartment in Lindon right before he graduated. I’d been buzzing from the emotions that had built over our time together until I couldn’t keep them in anymore.

But I don’t tell him I love him this time.

I don’t tell him that I ache for him.

Burn for him.

That I see a future together, no matter how it turns out.

Because there are still so many things I don’t know. Too many uncertainties that make me swallow the words, and inevitably, my heart.

“You are the one thing in my life that has always made me feel like being myself is enough,” he tells me, brushing his lips against one corner of my mouth, then the other. “You’ve made me feel like Alex O’Conner. The boy, not the hockey player. And if I have to remind you every day that you’re Olive Henderson, the girl, not Sebastian Henderson’s little sister, not the daughter of an asshole who doesn’t see what he fucking has in front of him, then I’ll do it. I’ll strip every piece of clothing off of you and show you how much I—”

He stops himself, burying his mouth into my neck and peppering kisses along my pulse.

He doesn’t need to tell me.

I know.

He knows I know.

And he knows I feel the same.

One day, those words will have to be spoken.

Maybe by then, neither of us will be too scared to speak them.

“Everything about you,” he concludes, “is what gets me by. Your pep talks. Your banter. Your honesty. Your brutal truths. All of it. Everything.”

The way he’s moving, the way he’s talking, is too much. It’s too intimate. Too…everything.

I can feel the orgasm building as he holds my attention, making sure I don’t look away. He’s close too. I see it in his eyes, in the way his lips form into a small O as his hips pick up.

We don’t fuck.

It’s not sloppy or fast or hard.

But we don’t call it what it is.

Alex cusses, claiming my mouth right before he lets go, and the sound of his drawn-out moan as he pulls out is what makes me come for a second time until my head is fuzzy, my body is buzzing, and my heart is at risk of exploding.

Right before we start drifting off with our hands interwoven, I hear his whisper, “You are everything I didn’t know I needed.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Olive

I’m in themiddle of Hershey Park with a giant chocolate bar mascot staring at me when my phone starts blowing up. At first it’s two messages, but that turns into four, which turns into eight. And then my social media notifications start multiplying like the bunnies that used to live in our backyard growing up.

“What the…?” When I open one of the apps, my face is the first thing I see. Well, not just mine. Mine and Alex’s. Then I scroll down and see an image of me with the team walking into Belle’s Place.