Page 91 of Lines

“‘Don’t worry. We can hang out next time’, that’s what she said before she kissed me and turned around to leave.” He laughs, but there is nothing funny. The sound is bitter and filled with anger and frustration. “And there you were, just in time to see everything.”

“You didn’t kiss her?” I ask with trembling voice.

I return to that day. I remember getting out of the car. I was lost in my thoughts—thinking about the differences between Derek’s life and mine, about his parents and the strange, yet familiar car standing in the driveway.

Just as I came close enough, the door opened and they got out. In a split second, the girl turned around and was kissing him. I was shocked and I was hurt. I remember how my heart squeezed painfully and how for a moment I couldn’t breathe or think.

It hurt so much.

But now, when my mind isn’t foggy with all the hurt feelings I remember that her hands were on him, but his were stuck in the air. Was he trying to push her away? And his blue eyes were wide open. They weren’t closed or looking down at her with heat in them like they did sometimes when he kissed me.

“I swear.” Derek looks me straight in the eyes, sincerity shining in his azure depths. “She kissed me. Everything happened so fast. I didn’t expect it, and in those few seconds my brain needed to process everything and push her away, you were already running away.”

With his thumbs, rough from all the time spent on the cold ice, he wipes the tears under my eyes. “From the beginning of the school year, there hasn’t been anyone but you.”

“Did you mean what you said before?” I put my hands over his. “About the line between love and hate being thin?”

His lips slowly curl into one of his famous sexy, boyish smiles. “You can hate me all you want, little one. I’ll stand on the other side of the line and love you with the same strength and fierceness.”

My hand touches his face, the tip of my finger slowly sliding over his lower lip. “Kiss me?”

Derek moves in closer, so close that our breaths are mingling together. “When you tell me you are mine.”

“I’m yours.”

There is no hesitation, no doubt.

“Do you hate me, little one?”

“With all I’ve got.”

“I love you too.”

Then his lips are on mine, and we don’t talk. The only sound in the room is our hard breathing, my low moans, and his rough groans as we devour each other.

Derek’s hands are all over me like he wants to reassure himself that I’m still here, that I didn’t go away.

I know that’s what I’m trying to do. I want to know every part of this boy. I want him to be mine because I’m his.

Even when I didn’t want to.

Even when I hated him.

Even when my heart was broken.

Maybe even all this time, from the time he broke my heart for the first time and I promised myself I’ll never forgive him, I was just waiting for him on the other side of the line.

One week later

Amelia

“I promised I would take you skating.”

“This is not skating,” I whine, trying my hardest to control my wobbly legs. “This is you trying to kill me.”

“Don’t be a baby, Lia. You’ve been on the ice for all of five minutes, not even that much.” Derek’s laugh fills the empty rink. “You’ll get better at it.”

“There is no way you are getting me on the ice ever again if I survive this.”

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