Because I was already standing on shaky legs, and they might give out completely if she kept kissing me like this for much longer.
“There’s a bench just inside the gates,” she said, sounding breathless—like she was feeling the same things I was right now.
“Take me there.”
Without second-guessing anything, she grabbed my hand, pulled me through the gates, and led me to a bench that had thankfully been placed in just the right spot that there was almost no snow covering it.
I immediately sat down and pulled on Scarlett’s arm so she could sit sideways across my lap.
“Is this okay?” she asked, looking down at her legs, like she was worried it might be uncomfortable for me to have her sitting there.
“It’s perfect,” I said, before pulling her mouth to mine and kissing her again.
We kissed slow, we kissed fast. We clung to each other and kissed until my heart felt like it would explode.
We told each other with our kisses what we couldn’t say out loud.
That the feelings were still there.
They hadn’t disappeared when her father broke us apart.
That even though we were really good at being best friends, we were even better at being more.
And what could be better than being best friends with your soulmate?
I didn’t know.
Probably because such a thing didn’t exist.
Not in my world, anyway.
I didn’t know how long we sat there, wrapped around each other on that bench, but my toes were just beginning to feel numb when something started sniffing at my legs.
I pulled away from Scarlett long enough to see the creature who had joined us and found the Caldwell’s Pembroke Welsh Corgi standing on his hind legs to greet me in his favorite way—by humping my leg.
“Archie!” Scarlett said in a hushed tone. “Stop that!” She glanced at me with an apologetic look and said, “Sorry my dog is so weird.”
“He just missed me, that’s all.” I chuckled and bent over to pet the little fur ball. “Right, Archie? You missed me so much.”
I used to come to Scarlett’s house every time we were home from school, but tonight was the first time I’d actually been on the church grounds since my last interview with her dad.
“I wond—” Scarlett started to say when the light on her house’s front porch turned on.
A second later, Pastor Caldwell appeared in the door and called out, “Come back here, Archie! Time for bed.”
“Crap!”Scarlett jumped off my lap. “My dad and Megan must have just gotten back from the Morris’s house.” She smoothed her hands over her hair, as if attempting to tame the tangled mess I’d made of it. “You need to get out of here before Archie rats us out to my dad.”
“Right.”I glanced around the church yard, not wanting to come face to face with Pastor Caldwell quite yet.
The exit through the archway was about twenty feet away, and while the path over there was layered in trees that I could dart behind, her dad would probably notice something if he looked this way.
“Just hide in that corner.” Scarlett pointed to a spot behind us. “I’ll take Archie with me, and hopefully, my dad will think I was just late getting back from the movie.”
“Okay.”
I was about to step behind the bench to hide when Scarlett gripped my arm and said, “Thank you again for tonight. It was amazing.”
“Yes, it was,” I said, the high I’d been feeling all night coming right back.
