Someone to Love(28)

“Three, two—one!” The crowd breaks out in cheers and screams.

Cruise softens into me, molding his body to mine. He latches onto my gaze, and we meditate on one another for a brief moment. Cruise dips in with a grin. Our lips crash together in one hot, delicious kiss. His tongue maneuvers through my mouth, slow and deliberate. He holds the slight taste of beer and spearmint, and his warm, familiar cologne springs my senses to life. This was no frat boy trying to pick me up for the night. This isn’t Pennington from whose touch I would repel. This is Cruise, and something about the way he kisses me, the way our bodies sway in time—it’s as if we were meant to do this all along.

Happy New Year, Cruise. But I don’t say it.

I don’t ever want this special brand of magic to end.





Cruise races us home at speeds that exceed the sound barrier. I’m positive this measly cloth seatbelt is not going to prevent me from testing the dexterity of the windshield once centripetal force insists I meet my untimely demise.

He lands us in his driveway and whisks around to my side before I can ever get out of the truck. Cruise helps me along every inch of the way as if I’ve morphed into a hopeless geriatric.

I race him to the door, completely smitten with this playful side of him.

“Are you drunk?” I giggle into him as he unlocks the door. I turn on the light and bounce inside still reeling from the heavenly kiss he graced my New Year’s with.

“Nope. Not drunk. I’m hopped up on something all together different,” he says as he follows me in and bolts the door behind him.

Oh God, he’s thinking with his little head—and as much as I find this exciting, I’m scared to freaking death.

“Aren’t you going to ask what I’m hopped up on?” He lowers his chin and approaches me with a seductive prowess I haven’t seen in him before. Well, maybe that first night when I was still a prospect, but I thought I took that off the table in a roundabout way. Didn’t I? Weren’t we saving my deflowering for some nebulous point in the future? I was sort of hoping heart shaped boxes and sappy greeting cards would somehow be involved. Perhaps an “I love you,” but I don’t really believe in that. Do I?

“I’m pretty sure I can guess what you’re hopped up on,” I say, rounding out the coffee table as he hedges in on me from the other side.

“I’m pretty sure you can’t.” A wicked grin slides up his cheek. His brows dip in a sharp V, and he looks beyond gorgeous in a demented I’m-going-to-chase-you-around-the-furniture kind of way. He darts in my direction, and I retract. “Every one of those guys tonight wanted to do just this.”

“Well then, aren’t you the lucky one?” I squeal as he pulls me in by the waist, landing us both on the couch.

“I guess I am the lucky one.” His chest rises and falls in a dramatic fashion, and I can feel his breath gently caressing my chest.

I wonder if this is what it would feel like to be lying next to him, his body writhing over mine in a fit of passion then nothing but the afterglow, the breathing that commences as we stare into one another’s eyes.

“Kenny?” Cruise doesn’t move. He simply drinks me in with those watery pools, and I melt at the sight of him.

“Yes?”

“What do you want from me?” There’s an earnestness in his tone that I haven’t heard before, something far more honest than the playboy that perennially resides inside him.

For a moment, I consider telling him I want only him and that I think we should get to know one another because I think we could have something special… but chicken out. I seriously doubt happily ever after is in the cards for me or anybody else for that matter.

“Teach me how to use my body.” In all of my twenty years, that single sentiment is perhaps the saddest to ever pass through these lips. Although, I have no intention of prostituting my mortal instrument to every, and any, male at Garrison, those very words only seem to highlight the fact how immune I pretend to be from love. The concept itself might be alien, sure, I may not have had the greatest examples, but something is brewing in me, and it’s all for Cruise. An entire volcano of wanting is percolating deep down inside of me, and I only want to experience it with the wonderful person holding me right this very minute.

I gaze into him and run my finger down his cheek while his stubble tickles my flesh.

I want to tell him that I’m bubbling—ready to burst to life for the very first time—that everything is new again in this strange springtime in my heart. I’m falling, and it feels so very right.

Cruise brings my hand to his lips with a forlorn expression.