Page 15 of Don’t Say You’re Sorry (Hawthorne University #2)
EASTON
FOUR YEARS AGO
“ W hat the hell happened to you?” Adam asks as I fall into the passenger seat of his car.
I dragged him to a party last night, and I was still a little drunk when we woke up this morning, so he gave me a ride to school and waited in the parking lot for me to finish practice.
“Suicides,” I rasp, closing my eyes, my entire body spent.
“Seriously? Again?”
I shrug. “Coach is a sadist, but I deserved it today. He knew I was hungover. But hey.” I hold up a hand. “I didn’t puke this time.”
He chuckles and high-fives me. “Good job, superstar.”
“Thanks.” I smile. “What are you drawing?”
Sliding his iPad into the compartment of his door, he opens his mouth, then closes it again.
“It’s me again, isn’t it?” I tease.
He huffs. “Get over yourself. It’s not always you.”
“But it is mostly.” I lean in closer, lowering my voice even though there’s no one here to hear me. “Admit it. I’m your favorite person, aren’t I?”
He turns his head to look at me properly. “Yeah. You are,” he says seriously, and I damn near preen.
Rolling his eyes, he playfully shoves my head away. “You want something greasy and disgusting to eat to make up for the suicides?”
I groan at the thought. “Fuckin’ right.”
I keep my eyes closed and relax while he drives, taking us to a drive-thru and getting our food to go.
Instead of taking it home, we park in the parking lot and eat in the car, watching a movie on his iPad balanced on the dash.
He wouldn’t let me peek at his drawing, but he’ll show it to me when it’s finished. He always does.
“Can I have some of that?” I ask around the last mouthful of my cheeseburger.
Adam looks over at me, the hot dog paused halfway to his mouth. “You just ate two cheeseburgers and two slices of pizza.”
“And a whole bag of chips.” I mimic his adorable British accent, waving the empty bag of fries at him.
He laughs, handing me his one and only slice of pizza. “Here. You can have this.”
I hand it back to him, tipping my chin at his hot dog. “Gimme a bite of that.”
“No.” He pulls it back. “If you wanted a hot dog, you should have gotten one of your own.”
“I want yours.”
He raises a brow, still not giving it to me.
Before he can say anything else, I snatch his wrist, lean over the inner console, and bring it to my mouth.
He splutters, gaping at me as I close my lips around his hot dog and take a bite out of it.
I look up at him as I swallow and lick the sauce from the corner of my mouth, just like he did a minute ago.
His nostrils flare, his chest expanding with a long inhale. “Are you fucking with me?” he rasps on the exhale, his eyes flaring with heat.
“Are you ?”
He frowns, and I wait, holding his gaze. His brows perk as it hits him, proving what I already knew. He’s not fucking with me. He has no idea how fucking hot he looks wrapping his goddamn lips around that hot dog right in front of me.
I uncurl my fingers from around his wrist, wiping the sauce from my mouth and sucking it off my finger. His eyes darken, and I smirk, enjoying the look on his face.
“Now you know how it feels when y—” I pause, pulling my head back to look at him properly. There’s a bruise on the outer corner of his left eye. I didn’t notice it until now. It’s small, but it looks fresh. “What happened to your eye?”
“What?” He pulls his brows in, touching the spot with his fingertip.
“Oh, I forgot about that. Two guys got into a fight over some girl in the car park after school. I took an elbow to the face.” When he sees the way my face falls, my jaw tightening with rage, he shakes his head at me with a light laugh. “Down, boy. It was an accident.”
“Give me a name.”
“No.”
“Adam.”
“Dude, will you relax? He said he was sorry.”
“I don’t care how sorry he was.” I scoot closer to his face to inspect the bruise, my nose brushing his. “I’m gonna find out who did this to you and beat his ass.”
“Stop.”
“No one lays a fucking hand on y?—”
Before I can finish, his fingers dig into the back of my head, and he yanks me into him, his mouth pressed to mine.
I freeze, but only for a second. My hand that’s hovering next to his eye finds his cheek, and I tilt his head to the right, changing the angle until my lips fit perfectly over his. Fucking perfect.
Just as my fingers slide up into his hair, he pulls away, pressing his back into the seat as he stares at me with wide, terrified eyes. “I’m sorry,” he croaks. “I don’t know why I did that.”
I smile. “To shut me up?”
He breathes a shaky laugh. “Yeah. That.”
I shrug, picking up the hot dog he dropped on his lap and sitting in my own seat. “I’m still gonna find out who did it,” I say as I eat. I don’t try to make it look like I’m eating a dick this time.
Adam says nothing.
“You wanna talk about it?”
Looking ahead through the windshield, he sucks his bottom lip, and all I can think about is taking that lip between my teeth.
I think about opening him up, sliding my tongue over his, and sucking on it.
I imagine the way I’d make him moan, and I wish he’d have let me just now.
If he had let it be for just a few more seconds, I would have been able to get my first proper taste of him.
It’s not the first time I’ve thought about kissing him.
I don’t think it’s the first time he’s thought about kissing me either, but we don’t talk about it.
The knowing looks we share when no one’s watching, the subtle flirting, the small touches that are passed off as innocent.
Friendly. Brotherly . We don’t talk about any of it.
It’s like a constant, invisible thing, quietly buzzing in the air around us.
It’s always there, but we never dare to acknowledge it.
“No,” he finally says. “If we talk about it, everything changes. I don’t want anything to change.”
I cock my head. “Don’t you?”
He closes his eyes briefly before rolling his head on the seat to look at me. “I don’t want to lose you, E.”
“You won’t.” I take another bite, then add, “Next time you wanna ask me a question you already know the answer to, remember that. I’m not going anywhere. I promise. I’m gonna be sleeping at your house and stealing all your food when we’re sixty. You’re gonna be sick of me.”
He grins, the light returning to his eyes. “It’s a little late for that, sunshine.” He snatches the last bite of his hot dog from me and shoves it into his mouth.
I pretend to swoon. “So sexy.”
He chokes on a laugh, and we both crack up as he puts his iPad away and turns the car back on.
“I promise too,” he says, smiling at me.