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“I have a crush on you too. I’m not even going to minimize it.”

She snorted. “You can’t have a crush on me.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re Kaylee’s little sister and because I’m…mean.” She didn’t sound like she was so sure about that.

I rolled my eyes. “You’re not as mean as you want people to think you are. Reid, you’re gorgeous and you’re smart and you’re funny and yeah, you’re a little bit of a grump but I like that too. When I talk, you actually listen to me. You don’t tell me that I’m being annoying. You see me.” How could I make her believe that I could be more myself with her than with just about anyone else? That being myself with her was freedom?

“Shit, Sophie. That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me. How could I not like you? You’re beautiful, first of all, and you’re kind and you’re optimistic. You make me see things differently. I tend to be kind of negative and when you’re around, I do that a lot less. I’m so ready to see the worst in people. You’re just…you’re good, Sophie. You make me feel good too.”

God, I wanted to kiss her again. Kiss her and hold her and make her repeat what she’d just said over and over again.

“That’s the nicest thing anyone has said to me.”

“You’re easy to compliment, Soph,” she said, gripping my chin and running her thumb along my bottom lip.

“I asked you to kiss me because I didn’t want anyone else to be the first woman I’d kissed. I wanted it to be you. So I lied, a little. Forgive me?”

Reid laughed. “I mean, I lied when I acted like it would just be to test and see if you were a good kisser. I wanted to kiss you.”

Oh thank god. It hadn’t been a pity kiss.

I pretended to gasp. “You lying liar.”

Reid nodded slowly. “It’s true. I’m a lying liar who lies.”

“Like how you lied earlier about the size of your crush on me? Because it doesn’t sound so tiny.”

“Yeah, fine, okay. It’s not as small as I initially reported.” That made me giggle. She was such a dork sometimes and I loved that I got to see it. That I got to see so many different sides of her that other people didn’t.

“Is that so?” I asked, touching her sides and pulling her closer.

Reid shuffled closer to me. “You can’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?” I asked.

“Like you’re going to kiss me again. It makes me forget the things that I shouldn’t be forgetting.”

“Like what?”

She inhaled sharply through her nose and I knew I wasn’t going to like what he said next.

“Like the fact that you’re Kaylee’s younger sister. And you look like her. And everything that happened with her.”

“Are you saying that I make you think of her?” I asked. She’d mentioned that when I’d gotten locked out of my apartment, but I’d been trying to forget about it. There wasn’t anything I could do about being Kaylee’s sister or looking like her. But I thought that Reid had moved past it.

“At first? Yeah. But not so much now. I know you’re separate people. What she put me through, though, Sophie? She wrecked a lot of things. I know it was years ago, but that doesn’t mean that I’ve moved on. I haven’t. Maybe that’s wrong, I don’t really care. I think I’m allowed to feel about it however I want to feel about it.” Her tone grew defensive, as if I was attacking her.

“Hey,” I said, slightly squeezing her sides. “I’m not asking you to feel any way about my sister. I haven’t told her that I’ve seen you. That’s probably wrong, but I don’t care. What’s between us is between us.”

“Fuck, Sophie. This is a bad idea, ohhhh, this is a bad idea.” She put her hands up and backed away from me.

“Because of Kaylee? Or because you’re scared?” I asked.

“I can’t do this,” she said, gesturing back and forth between us. “I did it once and it almost killed me, and I can’t do it again. I can’t do it again, okay? I can’t.”She was panicking.

Her voice caught and then she let out a painful sob.