Page 79 of The Matchmaker Club
Like worlds collided and crashed and came together to make something more incredible than they once were.
“The truth is, it doesn’t matter what I felt.”
“It does matter.”
I stood up. “No, it doesn’t. You’re just rebounding. You said it yourself, maybe you just miss the feeling of being in love.”
He shook his head. “If you felt anything I did, then you know this was different.” He stood up, facing me. “My turn. Truth or dare?”
“Dare.” I’d had enough of truth.
“I dare you to kiss me again.” He stepped closer, his hand cupping the side of my face. “Just once more, to see if…”
I slid my fingers over his jawline and pressed my lips to his. It was like a raging fire consumed every part of me, and I couldn’t get enough. His lips, his tongue, the softness of his hair as I slid my fingers up the back of his neck. Every nerve ending buzzed with need and want and desire.
My back thrust against the wall, and Lucas pressed into me. I felt him wanting me, and my legs wrapped around his waist. I couldn’t think of anything but this moment and the overwhelming need to be as close to him as possible.
The sound of glass breaking snapped me out of my temporary insanity, and I lowered my legs to the floor. “Lucas, stop.”
He instantly pulled away, his chest heaving with long breaths as if he’d just ran a marathon.
I looked down to see my lamp shattered in pieces across the floor. Tears rimmed my eyes. “That was my mother’s lamp.” I fell down to my knees, but Lucas caught me before I hit the floor.
He lifted me in his arms. “You have bare feet. You’ll cut yourself.”
Lainey burst through my door. “What hap—” She looked down at the shards of glass around us. “Oh, Taylor, I’m so sorry.” She watched Lucas as he set me down on the bed. “I’ll get the broom.”
Lucas covered his mouth with a hand and shook his head. I looked down at the glass scattered everywhere, and the tears fell whether I wanted them to or not.
“Taylor, I’m so sorry.”
“I’d like to be alone for a bit, if you don’t mind.”
“I understand.” He left the room, and my aunt was soon back with broom and dustpan in hand.
“Do want to keep the pieces or throw them away?”
“Keep,” I said and laid my head against my pillow.
* * *
I woke from my nap to find the pieces of my mother’s broken lamp beside my bed. I gently reached down and grazed my fingertips over the glass and said out loud, “What does this mean, Mom? It has to be a sign. Is he the wrong one for me? Are you the one who stopped that kiss?”
The wind blew through my window, knocking the blue bottle onto the floor.
Why is there love, when all it does is break your heart?
My mother had wanted to write back to her.
I got up and looked out the screen of my window. “What would you have written back to her?”
It was then I noticed Lucas crossing the yard, heading toward one of the trails into the woods that led to Marlena’s cedar tree.
“Or maybe it wasn’t a her. Maybe it was a man who wrote that.”
I ran out of my room and down the stairs, the first song of my mother’s Eureka! tape playing in my head: Beethoven’s Ode to Joy.
Lainey stopped me before I had a chance to get out the back door. “Taylor, are you okay?”
