Page 47

“Flush it?”

“Do you want to risk it stopping up the toilet? I don’t know about you, but that’s not something I want to explain.”

I frown. “Guess it’s going in your pocket then.”

“I…Shit.” He grimaces, pulling it off and knotting it, then wrapping it up in some toilet paper. I look away while he works, straightening my dress. “I cannot go back out there and talk to your dad with a used condom in my pocket.”

“No one asked you to get all chummy with my dad,” I snort.

I can hear the rustle of denim, and I turn back just as he starts to button his pants, wearing a sly grin. “I can’t help it that everyone finds me so charming.”

“Right,” I deadpan. “Sure they do.”

He leans in, and even though my first instinct is to pull away, I find myself rooted to the spot as his lips brush against mine. “I think you find me charming, Dani.”

“As if I would—”

We both startle as loud popping sounds begin to go off outside, jolting apart as I try to place them.

“Fireworks,” I say after a beat. “I’d better go check on them before Dad blows a hand off.” Ezra is still smiling that shit-eating grin, and I shoot him a wary look. “What?”

“You and I make sparks fly,” he says, looking proud of himself.

I groan. “That was awful.”

“You’ll laugh about it later.”

“I absolutely will not.” I frown at the floor, fussing over my dress. “Where’s my underwear?”

It takes me a second to look up and catch his grin, and only seconds more to follow the line of his arm to see my underwear hanging from his finger. “These?”

“Give them to me,” I grouse, holding out my hand.

“Mm. No.” He winds them around his fingers, haphazardly folding them into a little square. “I think I’ll keep these.”

“You will not.”

“Need a memento,” he says slyly. “Otherwise I’ll wake up tomorrow thinking I dreamed this.”

I could protest harder, probably, as I watch him stuff my panties into the same pocket he just stowed the knotted condom in, I know that. I’ll never admit that watching him do it sets off a flood of warmth in my belly.

“You’re an ass,” I mutter instead.

He leans in when he has my underwear tucked safely away, pressing a kiss to my cheek that leaves a tingling behind in its wake. “I know.”

I clear my throat as I pull away from him, checking myself over in the mirror. My dress is straight and my hair looks less sex-mussed, and I realize I don’t know what else to say. I’m not stupid enough to pretend that something didn’t…happen here, I just don’t know yet exactly what it was. So, like a coward, I reach for the door.

“Dani,” he says, stopping me.

I turn with my hand on the knob, biting my lip as his eyes meet mine. “Yeah?”

“You didn’t say this was the last time,” he points out, his voice uncharacteristically soft.

I swallow, my mouth dry. “I…” I take in a breath just to let it out. “I didn’t.”

His answering smile only elicits more fluttering beneath my ribs, so much so that it threatens to steal my breath. I wait for him to say more, no idea what I’ll do if he does—so maybe it’s a giftfrom Ezra that he doesn’t. That he just nods and lets me leave through the bathroom door to escape. If I stay, we’ll have to talk about what just happened, what itmeant—and I’m not sure I can do that. At least not yet.

We don’t talk for the rest of the party—in large part because of me, I think—as Ezra seems content to give me space while I work through the conflicting feelings I’m experiencing. But I feel his eyes on me the rest of the party, our gazes catching too many times to count as he mingles and I chaperone my increasingly hammered parents.