Love You Better (Better Love 1)

Ivy still isn’t looking at me. She’s picked up her purse from the floor and she’s running her fingers through her hair to fix where I mussed it up, and I want to stop her. I want to tell her to leave her hair alone—to stop erasing the evidence that just moments ago my fingers were there, buried in those golden strands, massaging her scalp and making her breathless.

I blink hard and look away, focusing back on the music from the dance pounding through the phone.

“Yeah, okay. Be right there.”

“Yay! Hurry!”

I put the phone back in my pocket and watch as Ivy walks to the door.

“We should go,” she says, voice still devoid of emotions. “Shelby is waiting for you, and I’m sure my boyfriend is wondering where I went.”

My teeth grit at boyfriend.

“Ivy—”

“No, Kelley. We’re dating other people, and this could have been really, really bad. We’re not these people, Kell. So, let’s just go back to our dates and forget this happened.”

Fat fucking chance I’ll ever forget this.

“But, Ivy... You almost kissed me back. You told me to kiss you. Don’t you think that means you shouldn’t...ya know...tonight?”

She looks at me like I’m speaking Pig Latin. She doesn’t know what I’m saying but she is pretty sure it’s offensive.

I take a deep breath and try again.

“I saw the condoms in your little purse thingy. Ivy, you can’t lose your virginity to Tyler. You don’t love him. You wouldn’t have been okay with me kissing you if you were in love with Tyler.”

Her soft face goes from shocked, to hurt, to straight pissed the fuck off within seconds, and I know I said something very, very wrong. When she opens her mouth, I flinch, expecting to be hit with an explosion of rage.

Instead, what I get is calm, steady, and vicious.

I’d rather have the rage.

“Is that what this was about?” she asks, and her cold, calculating stare studies my face. My heart is now racing for an entirely different reason, and I start to sweat under her scrutiny. “The condoms. Is that why you tried to kiss me? As some sort of a trap? A test?”

That’s what she thinks?

“What? No. That’s not why I tried to kiss you.” She lifts her eyebrow and hits me with a glare. “It’s not! But you can’t have sex with him!”

“Excuse you? I can do whatever the heck I want, Kelley Allen Pierce.”

Shit. I fucked up again.

“No, of course, I know. That’s not what I meant.”

“It’s what you said, is it not?”

“No. I mean it is what I said, but I didn’t say it how I meant to say it.”

“Just spit it out, Kelley.” Her hands are on her hips, her blue eyes are glacial, and I have one more chance to get her to hear me.

“I just meant that, well, don’t you think that if you wanted me to kiss you that you shouldn’t be losing your virginity to Tyler? You wanted me just now, not him. You wanted me, Ivy.”

“So, I should lose my virginity to you, then? Is that what you’re saying?”

“No! I mean...no? I don’t know. But it shouldn’t be Tyler.”

God how the fuck did we get here? How the hell do I fix this?