Page 20 of The One

“It’s something I didn’t do with them. You’re different, remember?”

I wanted to feel relief, but it wasn’t there yet. “Why?”

He smiled as he moved his face toward mine. “When it comes to you, I want everything too.”

“Everything, everything?”

He nodded. “As much as you’re willing to give me. Whatever that is, I’ll take it all.” He brushed the hair out of my eye. “And this time, you’re not leaving me.”

I sighed. “How do you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Make me feel these wild, nutty things. Like, I can barely even breathe right now.”

“What if I kiss you?” His gaze dropped to my mouth. “Will that make it better or worse?”

I rubbed my lips together, as though his had just left mine. “Technically worse, but ultimately better.”

He slowly came closer until our mouths were pressed against each other, and his tongue slipped between my lips. I wasn’t just smelling the beer; I was tasting it, and for a drink I didn’t like at all, I loved it on him.

But there was more.

The way he was holding me. The way he was kissing me, like he was starving for me. The way he was exhaling, the sounds he made each time.

Or maybe those noises were coming from me.

Because the tingling wasn’t even tingling anymore. It was exploding. My insides felt electric. Rhett had flipped some kind of switch, and everything was on and blazing.

That was something I’d felt during the nights I was in New York, alone, thinking about Rhett and how badly I wanted to get back to him. And then again the first time his lips had touched mine. But none of those occasions were as strong as this.

This … had me breathless.

When he separated us, he stared into my eyes. “That right there is something I love about you.”

“What do you love?”

“That you look at me like it’s never enough. That when I pull back, you make me feel that too. That if you could, you’d kiss me forever.”

My smile returned. “It’s true. I would.” My fingers dived into the side of his dark hair before lowering to his neck and then his chest. There had been muscles there when we were younger; they just weren’t as defined or hard. They hadn’t made me want to unbutton his shirt and see what they looked like when uncovered. “You know what I love about you?”

“Tell me.”

“It doesn’t matter if you’re looking at me in class or we pass each other in the hallway or I’m walking into a party, your stare never changes. You look at me like I’m the prettiest girl in the room.”

“More than the room, Lainey. You’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen in my life.”

I turned into his hand when his palm shifted to my cheek. “You make me smile so hard. An obscene amount. Just thinking about you makes me smile. It’s like I can’t stop.”

“I don’t want you to. Not ever. Promise me that.”

“Promise I’ll never stop smiling?”

“Yeah, and when we’re old and gray, I want that smile on your lips to always be for me.”

I grabbed the back of his hand and laughed. “That’s an eternity from now. We have to make it through the rest of our junior year and the summer and our senior year and then college and …” I turned silent when I considered all the time ahead, like college, which could create more distance between us.

“You don’t need to worry about any of that.” He pulled at my waist, dragging me closer to him. “Or about us.”