Page 42 of Love Me Boldly

“Yeah, Holly. I think I might.”

“Oh.” It fell from my lips on a heavy exhale, and I shifted on my feet. “Well…that’s a surprise. What do we do now?”

His lips curled at the corners. “Now, you kiss me good night. Like you mean it. Like you hate the idea of me walking away.”

Now that he mentioned it and gave me that speck of a dream to hope for, I kind of did hate that idea. I rolled to my toes and gave him exactly what he wanted.

TWELVE

HOLLY

“Don’t get lost or arrested.” I slapped at the bill of Graham’s NCWU hat.

His smile matched mine as he laughed. “Funny. We’ll see the hotel and the hockey arena. That’s about it.”

“You’ll sneak out.”

“I’ll leave that one to Tanner. You gonna miss me?”

Graham had taken to asking that question every night we went our separate ways after the night at The Grille, which was most of them. We spent most of the nights curled on his couch watching movies until I had to head back to Deer Creek. Sometimes we spent the night with his friends and Tracey.

He was getting ready to leave for the team’s trip to Pennsylvania for spring break, where they were finishing the regular season games before playoffs began. We were waiting outside the science building for Eli’s last class to finish up so they could head out together. This was always his longest trip of the season, and he wouldn’t get back to school until late Saturday night before classes resumed after break. We had plans to spend Sunday together. Probably at his place, catching up on all his laundry.

He’d be playing the game he loved and doing it with his friends. I’d be slaving away at The Grille and meeting with a career counselor to start applying for jobs post-graduation.

“I might,” I teased, because we both knew it was a lie. I’d taken to texting Graham as much as he reached out to me.

“You’ll miss me. I know it.” Graham bent down, swiveled his hat around backward, and kissed me. Like every time his lips pressed to mine, my bones turned to jelly and my heart turned to a puddle of mush. If this was what falling for someone felt like, it was all warm and gooey and comfortable and terrifying at the same time, and yet that ship had sailed.

I was falling, starting to dream those dreams he’d put in my mind weeks ago.

Maybe wecoulddo this.

My phone buzzed in my coat pocket, and I ignored it, focusing on the way his mouth pressed to mine, the way his tongue teased at the seam of my lips.

“Gross,” Eli groaned. “You’re supposed to keep it PG around me.”

He flung his arm across my shoulders and yanked me away from Graham. Before I could get too far away, Graham grabbed my arm and pulled me back until I was facing Eli and tucked securely to Graham’s side. “And she’s mine,” he grunted. “Hands off.”

“Jealous?” I rolled to my toes and kissed the side of his neck.

“Yes.” There wasn’t a hint of that teasing tone I liked so much.

What a silly man. Eli was his best friend. “How was the test?” I asked him.

“A killer,” Eli groaned. “It’s a good thing I love science, or I’d be rethinking my dreams of med school.”

I’d recently learned Eli was heading to Chapel Hill in the fall for medical school.

He traveled constantly for hockey. He was graduating with a 4.0 in chemistry, treated life like it was one giant game of fun, never seemed stressed, and beneath all his jokes and laughter, was also one of the nicest guys I’d ever met in my life. At least, outside Graham, anyway. I’d also learned he was only playing hockey in order to keep a scholarship after being raised by a single dad most of his life. Eli Howell was impressive indeed.

“That bad?” I asked, because the man had to be close to genius IQ levels, if not surpassing them.

He groaned again. “If I hear the word immunopathology again, I’m going to stab someone.”

“Yeah, pretty sure you’ll never hear that word around me.”

Both guys laughed at me.

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