Her mouth falls open. “What?”
“Come with me to Massachusetts. We’ll get an apartment.” The plan forms as I speak, each piece clicking into place with startling clarity. “Mom said you’re thinking about community colleges for your first year. Apply to one in the area. Or take a gap year while you figure out what you want to study. We’ll make it work.”
Her face is scrunched with indecision. “What about Z?”
The question hits like a cold shower. For a moment, I’d forgotten about Z entirely—busy picturing a future where it was just Harper and me, building something real together.
But if Z comes as part of the package... if that’s what it takes...
“All three of us can get an apartment.” The words taste like sawdust, but I force them out anyway, nodding. “I’ll learn to love him like family, too.”
And I will.
Mom’s friends are always talking about toxic masculinity and how jealousy is just insecurity wearing a different mask. I can be better than that.
For Harper, I can face my own insecurities and whatever attacking thoughts come with it.
She’s staring at me like I’ve grown a second head. “You don’t mean that.”
“For you, I’ll do anything. I do mean it. Every word.”
“Stop being crazy.” She pulls away, looking angry, but I can still see the longing in her eyes, and her hands arestill fisted in my shirt. I close mine around hers, locking gazes with her. Intensity burns between us in an infinite loop.
“I’m not crazy. I know we’re young and we just met.” Her green eyes flick back and forth between mine as I talk. Like she’s terrified. And hopeful. And terrified of being hopeful. “But when you know, you know. And I know you’re it for me, Harper.”
She throws her arms around my neck again and kisses me madly.
I’ve barely started kissing her back, the singing feeling of connection striking like lightning down my spine. A car whizzes by on the road behind us, but I can’t even care with Harper’s arms around me and her lips on mine.
But maybe she does because a half-second later she’s pulling back and grabbing my hand. Then she’s yanking me forward so abruptly I stumble in my hurry to follow her.
“Where are we going?” I laugh when she drags me past the hood of the car and toward the woods beyond the edge of the road.
“You’ll see,” is all she singsongs over her shoulder.
“We’ll be late for school.”
“You’ll get over ruining your perfect attendance record, Boy Scout,” she giggles, sliding out of her leather jacket as she skips ahead through the underbrush before finally spinning around and dropping the jacket to the ground.
She’s right. I will.
Because this—her hand in mine, leading me into thewoods, her jacket dropping to the ground—this is worth more than any record.
New rule.
Rule #917: Some rules are meant to be broken
“Unless you want to go back to the car and skip getting a blow-job before second period. Because it’s going to be awfully embarrassing walking around campus with that hard-on.”
Then she drops to her knees beside a large cedar tree and reaches for me, tugging me in by my pants leg.
I can only stare down at her, mouth dropped open. But I do step closer when she reaches for my belt and undoes the clasp.
I’m dumbstruck at her ease with sexuality. And embarrassed, frankly, when she reaches into my unzipped pants and pulls out my hard cock.
We’reoutside, for Christ’s sake, in the open air. I look over my shoulder. I can still glimpse the car through the break in the trees.
But then I feel her mouth close over the head of my cock, and I choke a little with how good it feels. I tip forward with my hand out to balance myself against the trunk of the cedar because I’m not sure I could stay upright otherwise.