Page 312 of Forbidden Billionaires: Vol 4

I could feel the tears welling in my eyes again. I thought I’d shed all of them this weekend, but apparently not. “He thinks you’re a bad influence on me.” It was such a joke. Isabella and Charlotte tortured me for sport. And Matt went around pulling me into dark spaces and making me kiss him despite the fact that we were probably related. And I wasn’t forbidden from seeing any of them. Just Felix.

“Is that what you want? To stop hanging out with me?”

I thought about the kiss lie. The lie that I was a scholarship student. I was so tired of lying. My tears started to fall down my cheeks. I didn’t want to have to give him up. “Of course not.”

He stepped forward and pulled me into his arms. “Don’t cry. We’ll figure it out. I’ll talk to him…”

“He hates you.”

“I doubt he hates me. He’s just worried about you.”

I wasn’t sure that was true. From our conversation Saturday night, I was pretty sure my uncle was just annoyed by me. Annoyed I was here. Annoyed by my presence. I was an inconvenience and he was finally fed up. He didn’t want me here anymore. That much was clear.

“The answer is pretty simple,” Felix said. “We just keep hanging out anyway. At least at school.”

I looked up at him. “It’s not that simple. He’ll see us. He…”

“And what? He’ll ground you again? He’s already played all his cards.”

That was true. What could be worse than being grounded for the rest of the semester?Grounded for life.But that wasn’t possible. I’d turn 18 in a few years and he couldn’t ground me then. “I guess you’re right.” I glanced at the school in the distance. Could he see me now? Was he already pissed?

“So he thinks I’m a bad influence, huh?” Felix whispered in my ear.

The way he said it made my heart beat faster.

“We’ve barely even done anything, newb.” His hands slid down my back, stopping right above my ass. “Just one kiss.” His breath was hot in my ear.

His words seemed to echo in my head.Just one kiss.If I was going to keep seeing him, I needed to pull off the Band-Aid. He deserved to know the truth. “It wasn’t my first kiss,” I said. The words came out by themselves. I probably could have thought of a more ceremonious way to confess, but there it was. The truth was out there. It was like I could feel it settle between us.

There was a smile on his face that I didn’t quite understand. “Yeah, it was a little hard to believe that someone like you hadn’t been kissed before. I don’t know why you thought you needed to lie about that.”

“I didn’t lie.” I pressed my lips together. “It was true. When I told you.”

“Oh. Fair enough. Who’d you kiss?” He looked more curious than upset. Actually, he didn’t really seem upset at all.

“It doesn’t matter. It’s over.”

He shrugged. “Okay.”

“Are you mad?”

“No. It’s fine. We’re not exclusive or anything.”

Felix hadn’t asked me to be his girlfriend yet. I knew that. But the way he said “we’re not exclusive” made my stomach churn. Did that mean he was seeing someone else? This whole time I’dfelt awful about kissing Matt. And he…what? What had he been doing?

He smiled like nothing I’d said mattered. “Maybe you can save me one of your other firsts then?”

I thought about what Matt had said in the auditorium.“I’m going to be all your firsts, Brooklyn.”I tried to shove away the thought, but it still sent a chill down my spine. “Yeah,” was the only response I could muster.

“Like…your first kiss on the track.”

I laughed.

He leaned down and kissed me. “And your first kiss during gym class.” He kissed me again.

I’d kissed Felix a total of three times now. That was one more time than I had kissed Matt. And I felt relieved. I stood on my tiptoes and kissed Felix again. I wanted to keep kissing him until the two kisses with Matt were a distant memory.

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