Knowing my mom was coming to visit in less than two weeks made it feel like time was standing still. Each day moved by at a painfully slow pace, and not even throwing myself into my schoolwork helped. The only upside was that Noah kept his distance from me. It was so much easier to feel like I was making progress moving on from him when we didn’t fight and when we didn’t share heated moments.
Anna and Cress took this as a sign that they should make more heavy hints about Wes and I getting together.
“You guys even look perfect together,” Cress said as we walked back to Esher Hall after PE on Wednesday. Wes and I had been partners for squash, which must have triggered this latest attempt by the girls to convince me to date him.
“Yeah, like two golden deities walking amongst us,” Anna added.
“I don’t know where you come up with this stuff, Anna, but we’re just friends.”
“Friends with sexual tension,” Anna said. “I bet if we locked you in a room together you wouldn’t be saying the same thing. You guys definitely wouldn’t be able to resist one another.”
I laughed uncomfortably. “Why are we getting locked in a room together?”
“Uh…there’s a pandemic, and you both get exposed to the virus and are thrown into quarantine?” she suggested.
“Pretty sure that’s not going to happen.” I laughed. “Besides, we spend plenty of time alone together and we manage to resist each other.” Most of the time, at least. I was choosing to ignore that time on the sidewalk in New York and that time in Wes’s room.
“Aha!” Cress shouted, her voice filled with victory. “So, you admit it. You do have to try and resist him.”
I rolled my eyes. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Sure, you didn’t.”
“I didn’t.” I let out a sigh. “But if anything changes, you guys will be the first to know.”
“We better be,” Anna grumbled.
Thankfully, the girls let it drop over lunch. It would have been super awkward otherwise since both Wes and Sawyer sat with us. It didn’t stop them from shooting me knowing looks whenever Wes glanced my way. And it really didn’t help that he did it frequently, often smiling so sweetly it practically made Anna and Cress explode silently in their seats.
I had economics with Wes after lunch, so we left the room together. We were literally just walking to class together, yet Anna wiggled her eyebrows suggestively at me as we left.
I scoffed as I turned away from her.
“What?” Wes asked.
“You really don’t want to know,” I said.
“Try me.”
“It’s embarrassing and stupid.”
“Well, now I really want to know.” He grinned.
I shook my head, wishing I hadn’t said anything at all.
“Come on, I won’t make fun of you, I promise,” he said.
“Ugh, fine.”
His smile only grew. “So…”
“Anna and Cress have been not so subtly hinting that you and I should be more than friends.”
“Really?” He didn’t sound all that surprised, which made me feel like they’d probably been giving him the same crap they’d been giving me.
“Yeah. Anna thinks there’s so much tension between us that if we were ever locked in a room alone together we wouldn’t be able to resist each other.”
“That sounds like something Anna would say.”
“I told you it was stupid.”
Wes looked thoughtful.
“What?” I asked him.
“Do you think she’s right?”
“Of course, she’s not.”
“You sure about that?”
“Uh…” The way he was looking at me made me question my resolve. I’d kissed Wes three times now, which probably indicated my ability to resist him wasn’t as strong as I thought.
“I say we test it,” he said.
“What? Wes…”
He grabbed hold of my hand and started to pull me in the opposite direction of our classroom.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
He was too busy looking up and down the corridor to answer me. Once the coast was clear, he opened the nearest door and pulled me after him into a room. As he closed the door behind us, he spun me round, and my back bumped gently against it. It was pitch-black, so I had no idea where we were. Wes was standing right in front of me, and there was barely room to move. A moment later, the light flicked on.
When my eyes adjusted and I looked around, I couldn’t help but laugh. “The janitor’s closet. Really, Wes?”
He grinned as he looked down at me. “What better place to test whether you can resist me?”
“Oh, so it’s just me that needs to be tested?”
“I already know I can’t resist you,” he replied. His voice was playful but had a serious edge to it, and I was suddenly very aware of just how small this closet was. Especially with Wes pressed up against me and my back against the door. He was far too big for such a small space. His shoulders practically brushed the stacks of shelves that stood against the walls on either side of him.
“I’m sure that’s not true.” I tried to swallow down my nerves and did my best not to look directly at him, which was pretty much impossible given that he was everywhere in here. “So, how long do I have to resist you to prove Anna wrong?”
“Hmm, how about until the bell for class rings?”
“That’s in like two minutes.” I scoffed as I glanced up at him. “You think I can’t last two minutes?”
“I’m sure you could,” he said. “I guess the question is, do you want to…”
My eyes drifted to his lips and then down to where my hands were pressed against his chest. I didn’t remember placing them there and wondered if I was already failing the test.
“What about you?” I whispered. “What do you want?” After I asked the question, I realized just how dangerous it was, because as I peered up and into Wes’s eyes, I found his expression had changed. It wasn’t hard to guess what he wanted as he looked at me with a hunger I’d never seen in him before.
He leaned in closer, placing his hands against the door behind my head. “I think you know what I want,” he said. My heart clashed against my ribs in response, and when I felt his breath against my cheek, my body flushed hot with need.
The bell sounded through the door and I didn’t know whether to feel relieved or disappointed. The test was over, but I couldn’t seem to relax. I also couldn’t seem to bring myself to open the door and leave the room either.
“I guess we proved Anna wrong,” I said, my voice sounding far too breathy for someone who was totally in control.
“I guess so,” he agreed. He hadn’t moved back to give me space, and he hadn’t opened the door. Instead, he stayed where he was, his body pressed against me, his lips so close to mine. The tension sparking in the air between us was impossible to ignore.
The longer we stood there, the more the pressure between us seemed to build. It didn’t help when he shifted slightly, his leg rubbing against mine, and I struggled to withhold a groan. Yes, I’d proven I could resist Wes, but I was very quickly realizing that wasn’t what my body wanted.
At some point, I must have closed my eyes, and when I opened them, Wes was practically devouring me with his gaze. Whatever line I’d tried to draw between us was nowhere to be found. It certainly hadn’t entered the closet with us.
“Screw Anna’s test.” I gripped him by the tie and pulled him to me, wrapping my arms around his neck as our lips met. He pressed me against the door, his kiss filled with desperation and relief. I wanted Wes. I needed him. And in the heat of that moment, I hated myself for even trying to resist him. Our previous kisses had been amazing, but this one was so hot it put them all to shame.
A loud clatter sounded as one of us knocked something off a shelf and onto the floor. We froze and glanced at the door. The sounds of students walking out in the corridor reached my ears. I don’t know how I hadn’t noticed them before. Luckily, no one seemed to have noticed the noise coming from the closet, and after several seconds passed, Wes and I both managed to breathe again.
I was still wrapped in Wes’s arms, but he slowly disentangled them, and I knew the moment was over. He smiled at me , his eyes sparkling in the dimly lit closet.
“So, apparently Anna knows what she’s talking about,” I said.
He chuckled. “Apparently.”
“I feel like we’re blurring the lines between…” I trailed off, feeling suddenly worried I was going to sabotage whatever was developing between us by talking too much. I liked Wes’s kisses, but I also liked our friendship. Did there have to be a line in the sand between those two things?
“I’m kind of enjoying the blurred lines,” he said.
“What does that mean?”
“I’m not sure yet, but I want to find out.” His eyes were sincere, and a small smile curved the corner of his lips. His words seemed to touch a part of my heart I was so sure I’d lost.
“I think I do too,” I murmured. But then I shook my head, trying to clear the haze that had fogged my brain while looking into Wes’s eyes. “But what if this doesn’t work? I’ve been through too much heartbreak recently. So have you. I don’t want to lose you as a friend as well.”
His gaze turned more serious as he nodded in reply. “You’re right, and I feel the same, but I think we could be something amazing.”
I rubbed a hand against my face as I tried to process what he was saying. “You’re still into Sarah…”
“Not as much as you might think,” he said. “It took me some time to realize, but things between us had been over long before she broke up with me. And I know you still have feelings for Noah, but I can see you letting go of him a little more each day.”
I started to object but then stopped as I considered what he’d said. Maybe Wes was right. Letting go of Noah had been hard. It was still hard, but I was in a very different place than I had been in the days after the ball. I’d come to accept we were over, but it still didn’t stop the small pieces of my fractured heart from leaping whenever he was near.
I think Wes must have realized how confused I was because he nodded at the door. “We should probably get to class,” he said. “Or we’re going to be late.”
“Yeah, of course.”
I wrapped my hand around the handle and cracked open the door to take a look outside. The hallway was clear of students, so I was guessing we were already late. I went to leave, but Wes took hold of my hand, stopping me.
“Just think about it,” Wes said. “About us.”
“I will.”
His smile was so bright and filled with hope it was hard not to just fall into a relationship with him here and now. But Wes was right. I needed to think about this. We both did.
“So, on a scale of one to a thousand, how much do you think Anna will gloat when she hears she was right?” I asked as we made our way to class.
Wes laughed. “It’s probably in our best interest she never knows.”
“Probably,” I agreed, but I had a feeling she’d somehow only need to take one look at me to figure out I made out with Wes in a janitor’s closet. She had a sixth sense for these things, and it didn’t help that my cheeks flushed just thinking about it.
Anna’s reaction was the least of my worries. No, I had a far bigger problem. I somehow had to figure out what the hell I was going to do about the sweet, gorgeous guy beside me. The guy that deserved all of my heart when I only had small fractions left to give.
