Page 106 of The Hardest Fall

“To sleep. I heard you already. Are you angry at me?”

“Why would I be angry at you?”

“If you’re not, why am I being punished?”

I relaxed and chuckled. “You want me here that bad?”

“Yes.”

I hadn’t thought she would answer, so when she did, it threw me for a loop. “I…okay. Okay, you got me then.”

“Okay. Good. If we’re going to be miserable, we might as well do it together.”

“That’s the only reason?”

She pulled her hand out from under the covers and gave my shoulder a light punch, and then another. Silently, I waited for an answer.

“No,” she replied with a sigh. “Dylan, I…”

I reached between us and laced our fingers together. Lifting her chin, she peered up at me.

“I have this…thing for you,” she said quietly, letting out a breath as if relieved to say it out loud. Did she think she had been hiding it from me all this time? Did she think I didn’t know, didn’t feel the same…thing?

After resting our hands on her hip, I leaned down so I could speak into her ear.

“I have a thing for you, too, Flash.”

She groaned and tried to let go of my hand, but I held her tighter. “I’m not joking, Dylan. I really have a big thing for you.”

“How big?” I asked, having trouble keeping the smile out of my voice. There was another tug on my hand, so this time I let her go.

“I’m trying to tell you how I—”

My hand free, I caught her chin between my thumb and index finger and tilted her head up so she could look into my eyes. There wasn’t quite enough light for her to make out my expression, but I was hoping hearing it in my voice would help.

“It was after the second time I saw you, the time you tried to run away from me and crashed into that building. Remember that?”

“I wasn’t trying to run away fr—by the way, it was just a model. It’s not like I ran into an actual bu—”

“I looked for you,” I whispered over her. “To be honest, I didn’t ask around to try to find you, wouldn’t have even known where to start to do that, but I was hoping to see you again. So, I think without even realizing what I was doing, I was searching for you. I remember this time when a girl walked around a corner, holding her books to her chest just like you were doing when you saw me that second time. She was laughing with her friends, and I just stopped walking. Her face was turned so I couldn’t see her enough to recognize you, but she had the same hair color”—I tucked Zoe’s hair behind her ear—“same pale skin. She stopped me right in my tracks, Zoe, because I thought, There she is. There she is again. Then she turned around and she wasn’t you. I remember feeling so disappointed. It happened a few times, not to that extent, but I thought I saw you and you were never there.”

She took a deep breath and waited for more.

“Now…now I couldn’t possibly not recognize you. Now you’re everywhere, always on my mind. I close my eyes and I can see you, right there.” My focus dropped low as I brushed her bottom lip with my thumb and her lips parted. “Now, I could never mistake you for someone else. Your shy little smile, your big happy smile, the shape of your eyes…you’re all I think about, Zoe. When I wake up, I can’t wait to work out because I know you’ll be up only minutes after me. I’ll hear your footsteps, you’ll come into the kitchen still half asleep and so beautiful, and then you’ll innocently perv on me while acting like you’re having breakfast.”

She groaned and I laughed.

“Don’t be mean to me,” she muttered in a serious voice, but the quiet laughter that came after gave her away. “And I wasn’t perving on you. I was just…”

“I don’t care what you call it. I like it. I like having your eyes on me. I love it even more when you look into my eyes and give me your biggest smile. Every time I see you smiling at me like that, like after the game in Tucson, it feels like you’re handing me your world. Even in the dark, I can feel your—”

Before I could finish my sentence, her head shot up and her lips found mine. Not prepared for it, I couldn’t soften the kiss, and our teeth clashed. She immediately drew her head back. I knew she was blushing; I didn’t need any light to know that. She covered her mouth with her hand.

“I’m sorry. I just—”

This time I didn’t wait to hear the rest. As far as I was concerned, even though it had lasted only one second, that brief kiss was the best kiss of my life.