We Are Us

Chapter 8 Sackett, Co

Fall, Senior Year, High School

“Happy birthday,” Gavin says with a beaming smile, meeting me at the clearing where we played our very first game of Gin Rummy. Except that today, instead of a deck of cards, he’s holding a small, wrapped box.

I don’t take it right away. In my world, birthday presents aren’t expected. At least, not the kind bought in a store.

Last year, Gavin surprised me with a bouquet of wildflowers. And this year, what I’ve been hoping for can’t be wrapped with a bow.

“Does this mean you don’t want…” me, is the word that comes to mind. I manage to hold it back, although the hot sting of disappointed tears pricks my eyes.

I am so in love with Gavin that it almost hurts… and I’ve been hoping this would be the day we finally…

I have an unsettling sense that time is ru

Usually, I can shake it off. We’ve spent hours pla

We leave for college at the end of summer. Thankfully, we both got into Worthington University. We’ll still be together, but so much will be different. There will be other people around. Other girls. We’ll be living on the same campus, where we can see each other anytime we want. That’s a good thing, it’s what I want …

But I’m scared of losing what’s made us special.

Sometimes, like now, the urgency vibrating through my bones is impossible to ignore. I want to lose my virginity to Gavin now.

Before we leave for college.

Before the next phase of our lives begins.

Before what we have right now, here in our very own enchanted forest, slips away.

He shakes his head at me. “I promise, tonight you’ll have everything you want.” The grin stretched across Gavin’s face, coupled with his familiar low laugh, breaks up some of the tightness curving around my ribcage. “And so will I.”

But not all of it. I’m still not entirely reassured. “I only want you.”

His eyes crinkle at their corners, his voice lowering like he’s sharing a secret. “Poppy, trust me. Open your present.”

I take the box as if it might explode in my hands, carefully plucking at the tape so the paper comes apart in one piece. But my stare shoots back to him when a jewelry box is revealed. “You shouldn’t have spent—”

“I wanted to,” he reassures me.

I told Gavin not to buy me anything. He’s been working so much these past few months, and I don’t want him spending his hard-earned money on me. Not when I know he’s trying to save every pe

I’m working every spare second too, just like Gavin. I na

Gavin and I don’t see each other nearly as much as we’d like. But sometimes, like today, we make the time.

I give him a last stern look, but when I lift the lid, all my reservations evaporate as suddenly as morning mist on a su

“It’s moonstone,” Gavin tells me, “one of the birthstones for June.”

Gavin’s birthday is June twenty-eighth. Tears spring to my eyes. In my seventeen years, I’ve never received such an extraordinary, extravagant gift. “I’ll have a reminder of you with me, always.”

His cheeks are tinged pink, and he shifts nervously from foot to foot. “Yeah… but if you don’t like it—”

“I love it,” I interrupt, overwhelmed by his thoughtfulness and generosity. Gently, I remove the necklace from the box and hand it to Gavin. “Will you help me?”

Lifting my hair up, I spin around and close my eyes. After he fastens the clasp at the back of my neck, he kisses my skin, sending a bolt of electricity racing down my spine. My head lolls forward as I moan, savoring the scrape of his teeth and the swipe of his tongue. Gavin’s kisses are a gift, too. There is nowhere I don’t want to feel his mouth on my body.

Gavin’s touch makes me feel like I’m at the precipice of something magical and dangerous.

But with him, I am safe. I have no doubts about that.

I am the luckiest girl in the world.

Slowly, so slowly, I turn in his arms, my head thrown back, my neck exposed and vulnerable. A supplicant embracing her salvation.

Gavin’s lips track up my neck, drawing my earlobe between his teeth and nibbling on it. “You taste so good, Poppy,” he murmurs, his warm breath sending goose bumps skating over my skin. “You always taste so damn good.”

My body responds to his words, and to the need threaded through each syllable. His sexy rasp sends a flood of heat between my thighs, a craving for friction, an aching to be filled.

Proof of Gavin’s lust, the bulge in his jeans pressing against me, compounds my own. A lit match tossed onto an oil slick.

He brushes his lips against mine, releasing a shuddering breath. I swallow his exhale, filling my lungs with his minty warmth.

“Let’s go to our cave.”

“Close your eyes.”

I slant a curious look at Gavin, taking in his kiss-swollen lips and flushed skin, his untamable mop of hair and the blaze of excitement lighting up the blue of his corneas.

Gavin squeezes my hand reassuringly as I do what he’s asked, then slowly walks me the remaining few steps toward our cave. Without vision, my other senses are heightened. The cry of birds sounds closer, like they are perched just overhead instead of on branches thirty or forty feet above. The bite of the breeze on my skin is sharper, each gust sending a chill racing along already sensitive nerve endings. The smell of ripe earth and rich evergreen and the clean, bracing scent of Gavin himself is downright intoxicating, my head swimming as I pull breaths deep into my lungs.

Most of all, the moonstone pendant laying against my collarbone is making my chest tingle, my heart fluttering against my ribcage.

“Okay, open them.”

I do, immediately gasping in surprise at what Gavin’s done to our little cave. There are candles burning and scattered rose petals—no, poppy petals—and a basket filled with drinks and snacks. A pile of blankets and pillows.

“You did all this for me?” I ask, my voice sounding whispery and weird.

I feel whispery and weird.

I’ve never had a birthday like this. I’ve never even imagined a birthday like this. First the necklace and now, seeing the lengths Gavin has gone for me…

Beneath the surface of my skin, I’m a chaotic mess of emotions. I don’t know what to say, how to act. This is uncharted territory for me.

“Of course,” he says, as if it’s nothing. But it’s not nothing. It’s everything.

Before I dissolve into a teary puddle, Gavin reaches into his pocket and pulls out a deck of cards. “You taught me how to play gin rummy—how about I teach you to play poker?”