“He got to kiss Candice,” Hunter explained, cheeks reddening now as he looked at me. “Why can’t we kiss each other?”
He was right.
“It won’t mean we’re together or anything,” Hunter added. “Like he said, it was nothing, and this would be nothing too. We’d just even the playing field.”
I crossed my arms as he waited for my response. I looked at his mouth again, envisioned kissing it—even felt a thrill at the thought—but I also thought of Leo’s mouth on another girl’s and my chest constricted.
When I agreed to kissing Hunter, it wasn’t so I could kiss a boy, I’d later realize. It was to sort of get back at Leo, as childish as it was, and Iwasa child. But more than that, it was also because I wanted to know what Hunter’s lips felt like.
“Okay,” I whispered nervously, playing it off with a shrug. “Tell me what to do.”
But Hunter didn’t know what to do. He was out of his element, too, coming closer to me, his arms coming around mine. His touch was familiar, but it felt out of place all of a sudden. I looked up at him, at the faint scar on his neck, at his red lips, at his uncertain eyes. He met my gaze and we looked at one another, drowning in each other’s gaze before my lips spread without meaning to and I let out a shrill laugh. His mouth split wide into a grin, too.
I felt him directing my body back, and I laughed again, asking, “What are you doing?”
“I don’t know,” he muttered. “I see it in movies. The girl has to be against a wall.”
“To be kissed?”
“I guess.”
“That’s silly.”
Before he responded, I felt the wall of my house at my back, felt his body crowd around mine, swallowing me whole. When I looked up at him, my smile faded at the look on his face.
“Ready?” he whispered; his voice strained.
I barely nodded from how tense I was.
Serious and nervous, Hunter dropped his face to mine and kissed me, pressing his lips against mine. A sudden thrill shot through my chest as I closed my eyes and felt his touch. I remembered thinking how soft his lips felt against my own. Unnaturally soft, actually. I didn’t expect it, didn’t consider a boy could be soft inanyway, especially Hunter.
I felt it was wrong—I was sure it was—but I wondered in that moment if Leo’s mouth was as soft as Hunter’s. Would it be like this? Would he have pressed me against the wall, too?
The kiss was quick, fleeting—it ended before it even began, but what I did feel was a strange urgency in Hunter. I felt his grip on my hip tighten, felt his trembling breath against my mouth, felt his deep affection for me before he withdrew, eyes still closed like he couldn’t bear to look at me straightaway.
It was a clumsy kiss, lips barely moving, breaths raggedly exchanged—but it wasourkiss.
Our cheeks were red, our smiles weak as he turned away and helped me through the window. He wouldn’t look me in the eye, but as I climbed back into my room, I quickly turned around and stuck my head back out, smiling shyly at him. “Good night, Hunter.”
Then I reached my hand out and he took it, smiling faintly at me. I squeezed his hand, and he squeezed my hand back. Our quiet language. Our way of easing one another.
Then we let go and he walked slowly back to his house. I watched him the entire way, taking peeks from behind my curtain. I smiled widely when I saw him trace his lips with the tip of his finger, like he was tracing our kiss.
I traced my lips, too, at the same time.
Hunter
He hadn’t told Skye that his entire body was raw and bruised. He’d held it in the entire night, for her sake, and for Leo’s, too.
He would never discuss the quiet man in the dark, waiting for him.
Him. Hunter. The savage.
“I’ve never seen a boy so broken,” the man had often said. “Do you even got a heart in that chest, boy?”
Hunter had a heart. Though he only felt it around Skye. It thumped around her, jumped when she looked at him, squeezed when she got too close.
Yeah, Hunter had a heart some of the time, but he reasoned he only felt it around her because she’d stolen it a long time ago.