“It should. You’re gorgeous.”
“I’m too big.”
It was the way she said it. So automatic, it was clear she hadn’t even thought twice.
He hated that she did that, hated that she believed it, and hearing her do it so casually lit the sweating fuse he’d been trying to keep in a cool, damp place. He pulled her into an alley, pushed her against the brick wall of the nearest building, bracketed her head between his hands.
“You are not too big.” He kept his voice low, but he knew he didn’t sound calm enough. Not even close. “You’re not too tall or too fat or too loud or too whatever the fuck else you think, so stop with that. Stop.”
When she opened her mouth to protest, he kissed her. He kissed her hard, tasting citrus and alcohol on her tongue, pouring all his frustration and desire into her. Her hands came up to his biceps, but she didn’t try to move him or stop him. She stroked his arms through the sleeves of his sweatshirt. He crowded her with his body, and she moaned and tilted her hips up, lifting her leg. He caught it behind her knee and sank between her thighs. He was already hard. Always already lost in her, from the beginning.
“I want you,” he said, pushing against her. “Exactly the way you are. I want you naked and panting and wet underneath me. You understand that? Am I being clear?”
“Yes.”
He licked a path along her throat, tasting the salt of her sweat, the warmth of her skin. “I don’t know what Einarsson ever said to you, if it was his fault or somebody else’s or just the whole goddamn world, but you’re sexy, all right? Your legs are sexy, your tits are sexy, your face is beautiful, you smile like the fucking sun coming up. Anybody who disagrees with me is an idiot, May. You got that? Are you hearing me?”
“Yes.”
“I want you. I want you with me.”
He kissed her again, trying to force the strength of his conviction under her skin, and she whimpered. He couldn’t tell if it was a sex-whimper or if he was actually hurting her. The bricks couldn’t feel good behind her head. She couldn’t want to be pushed into an alley and mauled by an angry, jealous dickhead.
He shoved himself away from her.
“I’m sorry.” He backed up a step. “I shouldn’t be doing this. I shouldn’t be like this.”
She grabbed him by the front of his jacket and yanked him to her. “Come here.”
“It’s really not okay.”
But he came anyway. She cupped the back of his head in one hand and guided his forehead to her neck.
“I’m a jerk,” he said. “I shouldn’t keep kissing you. I’m kind of hopeless, May, honestly.”
“Shut up.”
“All right.”
She pressed her fingers into his hair, pressed his head down and held him in place with her grip on his sweatshirt. Ben breathed against her sweater with her hair in his face, the strands catching against the rasp of his cheek.
“You’re right,” she said. “It’s not okay.”
“I know.”
“I said shut up.”
“Okay.”
She kept a steady pressure on his head, and it was the pressure that calmed him. The pressure and the smile he’d heard in her voice when she told him to shut up.
It was the message behind her flat palm and her clenching fingers.
Stay here. I’m not letting you go.
“You know, I feel like you need some really basic instructions,” she said. “So let’s call this a lesson on your swing.”
“Okay.”
“The thing is, it’s fine to yell sometimes,” she said. “Like, you can yell at shitty drivers, but only from inside the car. You can’t get out and punch them, right?”
“Right.”
“And you can hate the refs at a football game, and shout a few taunts at them, maybe, but you can’t walk down onto the field and give them a piece of your mind. You know this already.”
“I know this.”
Her fingers began stroking up and down the nape of his neck. “It’s fine to be jealous when some guy tries to make out with me right in front of you, and it’s fine to kiss me in an alley so hard that my lips sting, if I let you do it.” She tapped one finger on his neck. “If I let you, Ben. If I want you to. Which I did. I do. So it’s fine. You know that, too.”
He touched her fingers where they were clutching his sweatshirt, and she relaxed them. Her palm flattened over his chest. He covered her hand with his own.
“You’re allowed to be mad,” she said. “Everybody gets mad.”
“You don’t.”
“I’m working on it. But here’s the distinction, so listen up. It’s not fine to try to hurt me. Snap at me all you want about stuff that doesn’t matter, but if you try that bullshit from earlier again—if you tell me I’m a stray, or that you don’t give a shit, and you use all that anger to push me away like you’re so good at doing? If you do that one more time, I’ll go, and I won’t come back.”