Page 46 of The Break-Up Pact

“We’ll be deciding that dare, kiddos,” says Pam.

“Mercy,” says Levi, turning to her with crinkling eyes. “Haven’t we been through enough?”

Pam relents the way I’m pretty sure anyone in the world might under a full Levi smile. “Fine,” she says. “Dare’s simple. Give your gal a kiss and we’ll call it even.”

“Fair enough,” says Levi. He moves in easily, and even though I anticipate the kiss on the cheek before it happens, it doesn’t stop my breath from catching in my throat—his lips graze so close to my ear that I can feel the fine hair tingling from the warmth of him.

“Aw, come on,” says another one of them. “That’s no kiss.”

“Yeah, Levi,” I tease, leaning in close. “That’s no kiss.”

Something shifts between us then. That same air that felt fragile between us earlier tonight is suddenly charged. All at once there’s no teasing glint in our eyes. There’s a challenge in mine, and something else in his—a heat I’ve seen in them before that isn’t just simmering, but burning.

“Do you want me to kiss you?” he asks, leaning in farther to meet me.

My tongue skims my lower lip, my eyes catching on his mouth and then meeting his again. He’s not just asking for show. He’s asking sincerely.

The way he’s looking at me, I feel something warm curl low in my stomach, something equal parts dangerous and irresistible—a feeling that demands to be followed all the way down. It shifts me forward in my seat, never once breaking my gaze.

I’ve been walking at the edge of this line with Levi for so long, and if I don’t take the chance to cross it now, I never will. He’s going to leave for New York soon. Everything’s going to fall back into its regular rhythms, and this entire Revenge Ex scheme will be nothing but a funny story we talk about one day. But right now—right now we’re squarely in the in-between. Right now is just ours. And right now, I don’t want to just pretend at this feeling, don’t want to press up against the glass of it anymore. I want to feel it, all of it, just once before we have to let it go.

So I give him a sincere answer: “Yes, Levi. I want you to kiss me.”

Levi braces his hand against the back of my neck, warm and steady. We lean into the kiss, and there is nothing slow or searching about it. Nothing close to the way I imagined it, in the times I let my heart get away from me. It is all heat, all impatience, somehow achingly sweet and reckless at the same time. It’s so much, but not nearly enough—whatever satisfaction I feel right now has only doubled the demand for him, widened some cavern in me that wants as much of him as I can have.

I’m so lost in the rush of his mouth on mine, the heat of his lean arms taut against my fingers, that it feels like we’ve been plucked right out of the current of the world. There is no background noise, no past, no future. It’s singular and undiluted and Levi and June, heady like its own drug.

We break the kiss only because breathing demands it. The world slams back into place like a boomerang, leaving us right where we started, but with something entirely new.

I’m so dizzy in the aftermath that the first thought that manages to crystallize in my brain is Oh. That’s what it’s supposed to feel like. Because not once in all the years I’ve been alive have I felt anything close.

I have no idea how many seconds have passed, but it’s enough that everyone around us has moved on. Nobody is watching by the time Levi’s fingers tighten around the hair at the base of my neck ever so slightly before pulling away; nobody is watching as I unwind my leg from Levi’s stool and pull my hands out from where they wandered, unbidden, under his shirt sleeves. Nobody is watching as we stare deliriously at each other, breathing like we just finished another ridiculous beach race.

I should break the tension. But I’m too far gone to do anything but stare at his mouth, feeling the heat of it radiating through me like aftershocks, trying desperately not to let myself imagine other places he could put it. Other places I’d love to put mine.

Levi’s expression is every bit as rapt as mine, and all at once, I understand that my little plan didn’t work. The kiss didn’t end anything. It opened up an entire world, one that stretches far beyond this place, past the parking lot and every road it will take to get us home. One with enough potential to spill into the ocean, into the night stars, and all of it hinges on what one of us says next.

Levi settles a hand on my thigh, squeezing over my jeans. Every muscle in my body quivers under that one touch, and the sound of his voice saying so low that only I can hear it, “Do you want to get out of here?”

I’m already halfway off the stool when I breathe out the word “Yes.”

Chapter Fourteen

The earlier heat has been tamed by the darkness and a slight breeze, the parking lot all balmy and sweet with the kind of midsummer warmth that borders on magic. I close my eyes and breathe it in, a little lighter on my feet than I thought I’d be, enough that I almost lose my balance and end up grazing Levi’s arm with my own.

I straighten up to play it off but can’t quite wipe the stupid grin off my face, the aftermath of the kiss still humming in my lips. I can’t remember the last time I felt this electric, buzzing with so much energy it feels like I am outside the edges of myself, soaking in everyone else’s happiness right along with mine.

“Safe to say we can never show our faces at a single trivia night on the Eastern Seaboard again,” says Levi.

“Yeah.” This time I lean into him on purpose, and he seamlessly reaches his hand out and puts it in mine.

That potential is still thrumming between us, unspoken under the words we’re actually saying, but so loud that I’m barely registering anything else. Levi’s eyes catch mine again, and as he leans in, I feel a thrill that starts in my stomach and slides all the way up, arching in my back in anticipation of another kiss.

But instead he says quietly, “What if I didn’t go back to New York?”

The thrill goes flat in me before the words can settle. I blink up at him.

“You mean… what if you stayed in Benson Beach?” I ask.

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