Page 9 of Older

Rippled, corded arms and flexing muscle. Long legs attached to heavy black boots. A tousle of dark hair, thicker on top and shorter on the sides—not brown, but not quite black either. Overgrown bangs hung over his eyes in careless waves, and he pushed them back as he approached. There was even a tattoo roped around his right bicep that hinted at a past I was curious to uncover. Something that ventured beyond self-defense training and domesticated Dad life.

Reed tossed his leather jacket on the bed and took a seat beside me against the couch, his hand fisted around a beer bottle. I folded my arms as our shoulders brushed, my golden-blonde hair contrasting the jet-black color of his T-shirt. His scent finally traveled over to me, making me think of fresh grass, open skies, and bonfires in the fall. A hint of amber, too.

It was just as seductive as I’d imagined.

“Are you still lost?” He looked my way, pinning me with the prettiest pale-green eyes I’d ever seen.

I dipped my gaze to his mouth to avoid getting consumed by those eyes, but that wasn’t any safer. “Not anymore.” My tongue poked out to wet my lips. “Why? Are you here to save me?”

Reed brought the nozzle of the beer to his lips and took a lazy pull. “Saving you would imply you’re in peril,” he noted, stretching out his infinitely long legs. “Are you?”

“Maybe.” I shrugged, glancing at his legs. They were cased in distressed dark-gray jeans, tapered to fit properly, unlike the dumb baggy kind that most boys wore. “See the guy in the overalls over there?” I jutted my pinkie finger out at the open door, pointing toward the edge of the living room, while hanging on to the red Solo cup. “He came over to me earlier and said, ‘You got a real pretty mouth’ in a Deliverance voice, and then he gave me a wink like his eyeball was trying to make a break for it.”

“Unsettling.”

“I know. You got here just in time.”

The truth was, I was in peril.

Father had locked me out of the house, making this party three blocks down the road sound more appealing than sleeping in the backyard. The summer had been so blistering hot, we hardly had any grass. It was nothing but naked patches of dry straw. My twenty-something neighbor, Marnie, had mentioned the party earlier while speaking ten octaves above normal to her roommate on her front porch, and I’d made a mental note of the address belonging to Jay Jennings.

But I kept that truth from Reed.

He stared out the doorway to where Unsettling Overalls was doing a terrible job of pouring beer into his glass as liquid sloshed over the rim. “Good thing I came back when I did.”

I blinked at him, curious. “Why did you?”

“Why did I come back?”

A nod.

Reed shifted beside me on the floor as our shoulders grazed, and then he gave me a look as undecipherable as his response. “Don’t know.”

“Same reason I stuck around, I guess.”

“You’re still wet.” His gaze flitted down my body and met with my soaked-through denim skirt that touched mid-thigh.

“Hazardous side effect of sitting in a lake. I’ve made a mental note of it for future bouts of spontaneity.” I flicked my finger in the air, mimicking a check mark. “Always bring a change of clothes.”

A chuckle vibrated through him as he took another swig of beer. The way his lips parted to wrap around the nozzle was momentarily mesmerizing, so I took a weak sip from my own cup, leaving a berry kiss behind.

“I feel like we haven’t been formally introduced,” I said on a thinning breath.

Running a tongue over his top teeth, he skimmed my face. “No?” A slight frown wrinkled his browline. “I know your name, your hopes and dreams, and your favorite song. Not a terrible start.”

“I have a lot of favorite songs.” I glanced across the room at a giant speaker, as if trying to see the chords and notes pouring out of it. “This is one of them.”

He followed my gaze. “Pearl Jam is good. This one’s kind of depressing.”

“You say depressing, I say expressive. It makes you feel…right here.” I pressed a curled fist to the space between my ribs where my heart pounded with mournful beats. My eyelids fluttered closed as I savored the closing lyrics, then I sucked in a breath and twisted toward Reed to extend a hand. “I’m Halley. Like the comet.”

He glanced at my hand with a confused expression. “I think we did this already.”

“Nope. We never shook hands before.”

“Is that how we make this introduction official?”

“Yes.” I bit back a smile.

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