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“Yes. Be honest. You’re right about guilt being the worst stage so far. I hate feeling so bad all the time. If you have any ideas, I’ll do whatever you think I need.”
“Okay.” Grayson’s eyes locked on mine. “I think you should kiss me.”
My heart stopped. “Um . . .”
You would think that after dancing together and almost kissing him then I would be able to control my blushing and anxiety, but as I lay there on his bed with him gazing intently down at me, my breathing became really shallow. I had to look away from him.
“How will that help?”
“I think you’re too close to the project right now. You’re so attached to the idea of these stages that you’re like a self-fulfilling prophecy. You know you’re in the guilt stage, so you keep feeling it. You’re obsessing over it and making it worse. You also know anger is coming next, but you’re scared of being angry, so subconsciously you’re not allowing yourself to feel the anger.”
“Okay. I suppose I can see that, but . . .” I had to forcibly slow my breathing down. “How will kissing you change that?”
I finally managed to look at Grayson, but it didn’t matter because his eyes were trained on my lips. I bit the bottom one nervously, and the action made him swallow really hard in response.
He wet his lips and forced himself to answer my question. It clearly took him effort to pull his focus back to the conversation. “It’s something unexpected. It’ll take the steps out of order. You’re not supposed to be at a kissing-someone-new stage yet. You’ll feel things your brain doesn’t think you should be feeling. I’m hoping it might throw your mind off enough to sort of hit the reset button, you know? Maybe it will make your heart take point for a while instead of your head. Then you’ll react to things more naturally and get back on track.”
I tried to find a way to argue but couldn’t come up with anything. Maybe I didn’t want to. “Actually, your logic is pretty solid.”
One corner of Grayson’s mouth curved up. “I thought it sounded good.”
We sat there for a heartbeat in silence. His eyes were still focused on my lips, and I could swear he was just a tiny bit closer than he had been before.
“But it would be my first kiss,” I said. My voice wouldn’t work above a whisper anymore.
“Even better. Twice as distracting.”
“Shouldn’t my first kiss be special, with someone I care for instead of as part of a scientific experiment?”
Grayson’s eyes finally snapped back to mine. “Someone you care for? I’m hurt, Aves,” he teased. “Are you saying you don’t care for me?”
I rolled my eyes, grateful for the return of his playfulness. That was a lot easier to deal with than his intensity. “Of course I care about you. You know I do.” I was able to smile and tease him back. “You’re my unofficial gross older brother, remember?”
“You think I’m gross? You consider me a brother, but you still kissed me anyway. That is gross.”
“What are you talking about? I didn’t kiss you.”
He came at me fast, but when his lips pressed down on mine, his movements slowed to a near stop, as if he were savoring every second of this moment.
For years I’d imagined what a kiss would feel like. It turns out my imagination is severely lacking. I figured it would feel soft and warm and maybe tingly, but I didn’t really understand what soft, warm, and tingly actually felt like until Grayson Ke
The kiss was short, but so delicate and tender. Not at all the fire and passion and mess of tangled tongues you read about in books. In fact, there was no tongue. It was just two pairs of lips meeting for the first time.
It felt like he was being careful with me, and I really appreciated that. Instead of panicking, as I’d assumed would happen, his touch calmed me, and I was able to simply experience it. My mouth opened instinctively, and he immediately caught my bottom lip in his. He lingered only long enough to give me the chance to react with a small kiss of my own. When I finally did, he smiled against my lips and leaned back.
“Now you’ve kissed me,” he said, his eyes alight with more than just mischief. “Still think I’m gross?”
“I . . . I . . .” I was flustered but also still somewhat up in the clouds—the peace and panic inside me were at war with one another. “I don’t know what I’m feeling right now.”
Grayson gri
“Again?”
“We need to make sure we really test this theory as thoroughly as possible.”
“We do?”
“Yes, Avery. I hereby demand as a completely impartial outside observer with absolutely no personal interest in the outcome of this experiment that you need to kiss me again. Right now. For purely scientific purposes, of course.”
“For science?”
“Yes! In the name of science!”
He gave me a questioning look, and I blushed of course, but I surprised us both when I giggled. “I suppose I did give you permission to run this experiment however you deemed necessary.”
Grayson gri
The second kiss was nothing like the first. I thought that one had been amazing—it had been the perfect first kiss—but this second kiss was mind-blowing in an entirely different way. This one was heat and passion, and a certain sense of impatience that suggested he’d waited way too long for it.
Grayson rolled forward slightly so that our bodies were pressed together, and I felt that familiar explosion of heat that had overcome me when we’d danced. As he rested his hand on my cheek, my arms found their way around his neck.
After a moment Grayson pulled back and teasingly asked, “Gross?”
For the first time in my life I didn’t feel shy. “Definitely,” I said, pulling his face back down to mine. “Very, very gross.”
Grayson laughed and then brushed my new bangs back and kissed me again. This time I was pretty sure he wasn’t going to stop anytime soon. I was okay with that.
He’d just slipped his tongue into my mouth, and I’d just decided that french kissing rocks when Aiden’s voice broke through the bubble we were in. As per house rules, we’d left Grayson’s bedroom door open. We’d both forgotten about that, seeing as how neither of us ever suspected we might want the privacy, so there was no time to pull apart before Aiden walked in.
“Hey, Grayson, I just thought you’d be happy to know that I broke up with—” He broke off midsentence with a gasp.
I shot up to a sitting position. This time instead of the blood rushing too my face, it drained from it.
Grayson sighed and pulled himself into a sitting position as well. “Aves, you were doing so well, don’t freak out now.” He looked at his brother, and in a dry voice said, “About time. Would you mind shutting the door on your way out?”
Aiden didn’t leave. His face flushed an angry red. “How dare you take advantage of her! It’s Avery, Grayson! Of all the girls in the world, how could you screw with her?”
I could hear the forced control in Grayson’s reply. “I wasn’t screwing with her.”
“No,” Aiden spat. “You were just trying to screw her.”
I couldn’t believe he’d just said that. “Aiden!”
At the sound of my voice, Aiden turned his fury on me. “How could you fall for it, Aves? As many times as you’ve seen him do this to other girls?”
I gasped. His disappointment and disgust cut me all the way to my bones.
“I thought you were smarter than that, but I guess you’re just like every other girl after all. Congratulations. How does it feel to be Grayson Ke
There was no stopping the tidal wave of tears that flooded from my eyes. I scrambled off the bed and ran past them out the door. I hoped Grayson would bring my backpack to school for me tomorrow, because there was no way I was going to go back for it.