No.
I break the kiss, turning my face to the side even though it might actually kill me.
“Wait. Stop. We have to stop.”
“What?” She’s breathing hard against my neck, confusion and frustration in her voice. “Caleb?—”
“We have to stop,” I repeat, stronger this time. The words break through the haze, and suddenly, my brain is back online.
Firing on all cylinders. Every system rebooting at once.
Rules. I have rules for this. I wrote rules. Where are the rules?
Rule #— fuck, what number is it? I can’t remember. Somewhere in the 800s?
My hands are still on her waist—I can’t seem to let go—but I’m not pulling her closer anymore. I’m just... holding.
Counting her heartbeats against my palms. One-two-three-four. One-two-three-four.
She’s breathing hard. Four counts in. Three counts out. Uneven. My brain catches on to it. Tries to fix it. Make it match. Four in, four out. Four in, four out.
“This isn’t—I can’t?—”
“Are you serious right now?” Her voice goes sharp. Defensive. She tries to sit up, and I let her, my hands falling away even though it hurts to lose the contact. “Don’t give me that shit about being stepbrother-stepsister. In seven days, you’ll never see me again, so what does it even matter?”
The words hit like a fist to the gut.
What does it matter?
“It matters to me,” I say quietly. I wrap an arm around her and force myself to sit up so we’re face to face, even though my body is screaming at me with her still in my lap. “Harper. Look at me.”
She does, but there’s hurt flickering behind the anger now. Confusion. Like she genuinely doesn’t understand what I’m doing. Why I’d ever stop this when clearly our chemistry is off the charts.
“You’reokay with that?” I ask, my voice rough. “With never seeing me again?”
Seven days. The number keeps looping in my head. Seven days. 168 hours. 10,080 minutes.
I could spend every minute with her. If I skip sleep, that’s 168 waking hours. If I’m efficient—meal times, studying together, driving to school—I could probably get 120 hours of actual quality time.
No. Stop. That’s not the point.
The point is that seven days isn’t enough. Seven hundred days wouldn’t be enough. And not because she’s off-limits. But because it’sher.
I watch her. Search her face, trying to catch her gaze and hold it. She keeps looking away, bouncing between my eyes and over my shoulder and?—
“Yes,” she finally spits out. Defiant. Defensive as hell.
But I hold her gaze steady with both my hands on her face, gentle but firm, until the fire slowly banks into something that looks like pain. Like fear.
Finally, she breathes out. Softens.
“No,” she admits, so quiet I almost miss it. “But it has to be like this.”
“Why?” I pull her closer, desperate. “You know you have a home here. One I’m pretty sure you even like, no matter how much you pretend not to.”
She finally jerks off my lap like I’ve burned her.
“It’s not real!” She tosses her hands in the air as she twists back to look at me. “None of this is real! Helen.You. Dad’s going to betray you, and then you’ll hate us.”