Page 27 of False Start

“Out, Robbins.”

“I’ll be good, I promise,” he added, clutching the champagne flute under his chin in a prayer motion. “I’ll close my eyes and everything.”

I tapped one foot, folding my arms and giving him one slow blink that I hoped would get my point across.

His smile knocked my next breath loose in a rattle, the way it spread so wide and effortless across his too-stupidly-handsome face. He sighed, standing, and then tilted the flute toward me. “Fine. But it’s your loss. I’m great with zippers. Bra clasps, too.”

He winked, and I rolled my eyes hard enough to make my lids flutter. “Get out before I call this whole thing off.”

His hands went up in surrender at that, and once he was outside the dressing room, I let out a puff of a laugh, shaking my head.

He was just as infuriating as he had been as a bratty kid.

I couldn’t help but think about that time in my life as I undressed and pulled the first dress from its hanger, the brown one I’d been admiring. It felt like a mixture of silk and the highest thread count of Egyptian cotton as I slipped into it, and all the while, I thought about that summer nine years ago.

I’d been excited about the job, one my mom had told me about after talking to Kyle’s mom. They were good friends back then, ran in the same circle, and when Mom told me what they were paying for babysitting their son, I had jumped at the chance.

I was saving for college, just like my older brother had to do. Our parents took great care of us, but they didn’t have the kind of money to pay for tuition for two kids.

Of course, I had been a bit surprised when Mom originally told me about it all. I’d laughed, actually. I knew Kyle. We went to school together. Sure, he was younger than I was, but I knew him. Add on the fact that our parents were friends, there’d been more than a couple parties where we’d been at the same place at the same time.

Because of that, I knew he was fifteen. He wasn’t a baby.

Although, he sure acted like one that first day I showed up at his house.

I could still remember his scowl, could recall exactly how much of a brat he’d acted like until I proved to him that I wasn’t deterred. The more he acted like a child, the more I treated him like one. And somewhere along the way, he went from trying to get me to quit, to trying to get under my skin for another reason.

He had a crush on me. It was easy to see it.

What wasn’t easy was admitting that I had a crush on him, too.

It was embarrassing. His pestering turned into flirting, and I’d go home every night groaning and trying to slap some sense into myself. I was going into my senior year. He was asophomore. His stupid jokes shouldn’t have made me laugh. His messy hair and goofy, lopsided grin shouldn’t have made my stomach tie into knots.

But they did.

When the school year started back up, I wasn’t his babysitter anymore. We were just two kids at school. He turned sixteen, kept growing even taller than he already was, and filled out that lanky body with muscles that made my teenage-brain short circuit.

The more that year went on, the more the joking between us drifted into something more.

At first, it was just hanging out after school. Sometimes, he’d walk me home after he got done with football practice and I finished up with yearbook. Sometimes, he’d text or call me when my parents thought I was asleep.

And sometimes, he’d show up at my window, a new mark on his body and a somber, haunting look in his eyes.

I never asked questions, not on nights like that. I’d just open my window and let him inside, tossing a pillow and blanket onto my floor without a word.

Fall turned to winter, and Kyle turned into my best friend.

Then, on a cold winter night when we were just two kids getting into trouble and sneaking into an empty house, he turned into something more.

I blinked, holding my eyes shut and shaking my head to clear the memory. Hastily, I pulled on the dress, not so much as giving myself a once-over in the mirror before I ripped the dressing room door open. I was desperate to get out of my head and focus on the task at hand.

Larissa buzzed over to me the moment the door was open, clapping her hands together and fussing over how beautiful I looked. She immediately ran in to grab shoes, and my eyes drifted to Kyle.

Just in time to watch his Adam’s apple bob hard in his throat.

His eyes washed over me, slowly, trailing a heated blaze from where Larissa was carefully strapping my ankles into a glittering pair of heels up to where the fabric gaped between my breasts. It showed a healthy amount of my chest, my collarbone framed with the delicate straps, and I saw Kyle’s gaze snatch there before his eyes flicked up to meet mine.

“Do we need to get you a bib?” I tried to joke, though my voice was softer than I would have preferred. “You’re drooling a bit there.”