Page 57 of A Not-So Holiday Paradise
“I know,” I say as my smile fades. “I’m aware.”
“I barely understand how I’m feeling. And—” He breaks off, and his hesitation hangs in the air around us, heavy on my skin.
“Just say it,” I say, resigning myself. “You won’t hurt my feelings.”
He sighs. “It’s just that…I think a lot of what I’m feeling has come from this situation. So I don’t…” He trails off. “I don’t know how sustainable my feelings for you are. That’s why I really can’t start anything right now.”
“I know,” I say again. “I told you I won’t push. I won’t kiss you again, either.”
“Sad,” he murmurs, “but probably for the best.”
I ignore my wilting heart and my desperate pulse, laughing instead. “Promise me one thing?” I say.
He only hesitates for a second before he nods. “Anything.”
“If you change your mind, will you let me know?”
A little smile carves itself over his lips. “You’ll be the first,” he says.
That will have to be good enough for me.
Seventeen
Beckett
Oh,how the mighty have fallen…
Me. It’s me.
I’m the mighty. And I have fallen.
Hard and fast.
Not in love—I haven’t fallen in love. There’s no way anyone falls in love over the course of two days. But…Molly O’Malley kissed me. She kissed me, and I pushed her away. Then I pulled her right back and kissed her again.
And now I can’t stop thinking about it.
Molly kisses with absolute abandon. She’s inexperienced—she told me as much—but she more than makes up for it with reckless passion. I wouldn’t have expected anything else from her, honestly. She was all lips and tongue and hands fisted in my shirt and—
“Snap out of it,” I mutter to myself. If I keep reliving that memory, it’s going to be impossible to stop myself from kissing her again—especially because I know she would probably welcome it.
Unbidden, Wes’s words ring through my mind.Look, I know you’ve had a crush on Beckett for pretty much your entire life.
How is that possible? How is it possible that she’s had feelings for me all these years? I haven’t seen her since I graduated from high school. She was barely a blip on my radar.
That’s another strike against us, one I have no choice but to acknowledge: whatever Molly feels for me probably isn’t based on who I actually am as a person. How could it be? She doesn’t know me—not really. Whatever version of me that’s been living in her brain for the last ten years—that’s the person she has feelings for. Some idealized version of me that she’s built up in her mind.
“You’re doing an awful lot of thinking over there.” Her voice snaps me out of my thoughts, and I turn to see her looking at me with one brow raised. “Want to share with the class?”
I sigh, leaning back into the cushions of the loveseat. We’ve dismantled our fort and settled for sitting here instead. It’s a departure from the O’Malley fort tradition, but it’s also more comfortable. Time is doing strange things in my mind; the rest of Molly’s family will arrive tomorrow, which means my time with her will be over. I don’t know what that will mean for us. I only know that things will change. That fact makes me want to pull her close and soak up every last second.
“Nah,” I say finally. I glance over at Molly, who’s still giving me that look. “Just thinking about what to do for the rest of the day.”
“How about we nap?” she says. She snuggles into the same corner of the loveseat she favored yesterday, yawning and making me yawn too. “Watching movies makes me sleepy.”
I can’t help the smile that tugs at my lips—she’s just so cute. I hesitate for just a second before patting my lap. “Lie down,” I say.
Her mouth forms a littleoof surprise. “I—is that okay?”
