The Arrangement Anthology 2(180)

Sean reveals another version of him, one long buried. I’m drawn to him, pulled to his mouth. I want his arms to hold me tight, but there’s nothing harsh or hurried. His breath washes over my mouth, and my lips part slightly, wanting him, waiting for him to kiss me.

Sean’s dark lashes flutter closed, and he leans in, gently brushing his lips against mine. The butterflies wiz through me as his touch sets off a shower of sparks. The smoothness of his bottom lip against mine, the way he moves surely and gently sets every inch of me on fire. I want more, but he doesn’t deepen the kiss. Instead, he slowly slides his lips closed before pressing them to mine, and then pulls away.

I’m breathless. The kiss feels like it froze time, but it passes too quickly. It’s an enigma I don’t understand. I blink wildly, and try to fathom why that affected me so much.

Sean doesn’t smile or say any of the assy things he usually does. He doesn’t try to own me, make me, or command me. He just pulls away, as if he didn’t know what he did to me. How can one kiss do that?

After a moment, I manage to catch his eye. The corner of his mouth pulls up, and he quickly looks away. My chest tightens as my heart beats harder. My impulse is telling me to jump him, but there’s something so fragile about him that I can’t.

My chest rises and falls, as I suck in way too much air. I can’t hide what that did to me, how it made me feel. I finally breathe his name.

“Sean?” He glances at me from the corner of his eye.

“Yeah?”

What do I say? I want to ask him why he doesn’t love me like that, but how can I? He mentions his first kiss and sugar, then gives me this orgasmically mind-blowing kiss. What the fuck? I can’t say any of it though, so I just sit there gaping, my mouth hanging open. He smirks.

“So I suppose you like sweet kisses, now?”

“I like your kisses, all of them. I like how you surprise me, how there’s always another side of you that I haven’t seen before. You literally took my breath away. Do you know how rare that is?” I stare at him and think that he honestly doesn’t know.

“It’s not something I like to do.” He looks down at his hands, and I swear he’s sitting like a teenager, shoulders slumped forward, his back curved, and lowers his head into his hands. “It’s too--” He sucks in a shaky breath and finishes, “invasive.”

That’s not the word I thought he was going to say.

“How so?”

“It reveals something about you, about me," he says without looking at me. "It’s vulnerability and weakness wrapped in pleasure. Pleasure has a way of stripping everything else away and making decisions we normally wouldn’t make. I swore I’d never kiss someone like that again.”

I don’t know what to say. It feels like he just told me a big secret--I can feel the weight of it--but I can’t see how he got there. I touch his knee.

“We can’t change who we are, Sean. Kisses like that are rare. It lasted forever, but not long enough. Sean, I’ve had sweet kisses before. That’s not it. It’s not that I’m a candy fang banger, either.” He smiles and looks over at me. “It’s you. It’s when you let yourself be seen--that’s the difference.”

His lips part like he wants to say something, but he closes his eyes and looks away. Tipping his head against the wall, he opens those dark eyes and looks at the starry sky.

“I have trouble with that. I know that’s an understatement, but it’s hard to give someone a piece of your heart willingly only to have it torn away. A person can only do that so many times.”

“Yeah, but you still have a heart to give.” I bump his knees with mine. “Even after everything you’ve experienced. Sean, you’re not normal, and I think that’s great.” I smile at him.

He swallows hard and looks over at me. “Another piece of me died today. When I saw my mother’s hand on the teacup, I thought she was dead. Then we found her. Avery, I thought we could pull her out. I thought... I wanted her to be somehow still alive.”

I press my lips together and drape my arm over his shoulder.

“So did I.”

“I know you did.” Sean smiles weakly at me and takes a deep breath. His chest fills and slowly rises before he lets it out. “I keep making the mistake of thinking everything will work out, that I have time to fix my mistakes.”

“She can still hear you. I’m pretty sure you know that, otherwise I wouldn’t have seen you talking to a headstone. Unless crazy is contagious because I do it all the time.” I smile at him for a brief moment. “It’s never too late.” He looks over at me, surprised.