Page 38 of Late Nights

Shoot. I shouldn’t have said that.

My eyes searched hers before glancing down at her parted lips. My heart beat in my chest, like I was doing cardio, not just standing in a kitchen. It was in moments like this when I couldn’t find it in me to care about the consequences of my actions. I was falling into her brown eyes again, getting lost as they lured me in, deeper and deeper.

Her eyes flickered to my mouth, and that was all it took to erase the remaining threads of my self-control.

Slowly I lowered my head to hers, giving her time to pull away if this wasn’t what she wanted. My lips inched closer to hers, the anticipation of feeling her mouth on mine, to finally feel just how soft those lips were, all-encompassing.

“Cannon and Demi,” West called out from the living room.

We jumped apart as if we’d been electrocuted.

“You guys almost done? We’re going to play a game.”

I rubbed a hand down my face, putting as much space as I could between Demi and me in the large kitchen.

What was I thinking? Had I really been about to kiss Demi? What if West had come in here to see if we were almost done cleaning instead of yelling at us from the living room? He probably would have punched me in the face. Heck, I wanted to punch me in the face.

This was Demi we were talking about. I couldn’t hurt her. No matter how much I wanted to kiss her, I had to stay strong. If I kissed her, I would hurt her. End of story. There was no other possible result. Pushing all the other reasons aside—West and Victor—I was not in a place where I could be anything more to her than a friend. I wasn’t even sure how great of a friend I could really be.

“Yeah,” her voice squeaked out in response. She cleared her throat. “Just need to start the dishwasher.” She rushed to put the last few dishes in before putting in a detergent tablet and pushing start.

She paused to look at me, her reddened cheeks now barely pink. I wasn’t sure what she saw when she looked at me, but we both knew we’d almost been caught doing something that could have been disastrous. She must have seen something in my face—fear maybe—because all she did was give me a nod, as if she understood that what we’d almost done was a mistake, before she walked out of the kitchen.

I tried to not feel hurt or offended by her quick dismissal of how we’d almost kissed, that it hadn’t seemed to affect her as much as it had me, but the feelings were there all the same. Was she glad we had been interrupted? Was she relieved I hadn’t had the chance to kiss her?

I didn’t have time to dissect it now. If I didn’t join everyone in the living room, they’d wonder why I was hanging out by myself in the kitchen.

I took a big breath, letting it all out before going to play a game and pretending that I hadn’t almost kissed my best friend’s sister.

Playing games had gone fine. I’d miraculously never looked at Demi unless I had to for the game. But then again, I wasn’t sure if that made me look even more guilty, but I had been too nervous that one wrong look at her and everyone would know what had almost gone down in the kitchen.

We were now all in our respective bedrooms, supposed to be sleeping, but sleep was the farthest thing from my mind. Every time I closed my eyes, a beautiful and spunky blonde with chocolatey brown eyes would play across the back of my lids. Staring at the ceiling was preferable. Blinking was overrated.

It didn’t help that she was in her bedroom, directly across the hall from mine. She was probably already fast asleep.

Or she could be thinking about our almost-kiss too. I just didn’t know if she was thinking about it in a positive or negative light. A part of me wanted to ask her. But would that make things even more awkward?

Before I could think of a good reason to stop myself, I reached for my phone.

I clicked on my contacts and scrolled down until Demi’s name appeared. Tapping on her name, I pulled up a text thread.

12

Demi

Images of Cannon standing close to me in the kitchen, his face moving toward mine, kept replaying in my mind over and over. He’d been so close to kissing me, and I’d been so close to letting him. I should probably be grateful we had been interrupted. A kiss from Cannon was sure to wreck me for all future kisses. And a kiss from Cannon would be just a kiss, nothing more behind it. As badly as I wanted to kiss him, did I really want it to not mean anything?

Cannon was as locked down as the White House. Just because he wanted to kiss me didn’t mean I was getting a VIP pass to walk through the many doors he kept closed at all times.

For a second today, when he’d gone somewhere else in his mind, I had hoped he might open up to me, but that thought had left before it could fully form. All I could do was continue to be his friend, keep assuring him I wasn’t going anywhere. West had had to prove himself, and I assumed I would have to do the same. If it was going to take who-knows-how-long to get to the point when we were the type of friends who shared the darkest parts of us, the hidden parts, the parts we only whispered about in our minds, then I had no hope of us ever moving on anywhere past friendship.

My phone lit up, illuminating the dark room in a soft white glow from where it sat charging on the nightstand.

It was almost midnight, and I couldn’t think of any reason for me to be receiving notifications at this hour. I sat up and checked the screen to see that I had a text from Cannon.

I stared at the screen, reading his name over and over, as if it might eventually disappear.

He never texted me.

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