“Hey! Wait!”

  What am I doing? What am I shouting? My body jerks itself out of the cold freeze and I sprint forward.

  “You’re outnumbered!” I scream over the next volley of fireworks.

  He turns his head, and in a flash of green, I recognize him.

  That’s impossible.

  I’ve never known anyone this ripped in my life.

  My heart stops, but my legs don’t miss a beat. I jump over the groaning form of the lead asshole, still crumpled on the sidewalk, and descend on the other two with a shrill battle cry and zero plans for how I’m going to attack them. Make your hands like claws was definitely not part of my self-defense class, but that’s what I’m doing.

  It shocks them.

  They stumble backward, away from my shrieking, clawing ass, and then Mystery is at my side, reaching for them.

  “What the fuck,” one of them spits, and then he does a stutter step move and spins around me to his wounded friend. “Get up. Get up, man. They’re crazy. Get up.”

  “You’re crazy,” the guy on the ground shouts, his raw voice mostly sinking into the concrete. He turns onto his hands and knees and forces himself upright.

  “I’ll give you five seconds,” Mystery says, and holy shit, I know him. I don’t know him know him, but that voice—I’ve heard that voice before. “Five, four, three…”

  The three of them run away, lurching back down the alley with their friend suspended on their shoulders.

  “That’s a pathetic run,” I say, and then my knees give out.

  Chris

  Mallory Whitford doesn’t fall gracefully. One second, she’s upright, and the next it’s like someone has swept her knees legs out from under her with a sawed-off broom handle. I jump forward at the last second and sweep her up into my arms at the last second.

  Her teeth are chattering, her jaw quivering, but I can’t hear her teeth clicking together over the crash of the fireworks. We must be nearing the grand finale, judging by how stupidly loud those things are getting. The echoes rattle through my ears. They careen off the inside of my skull, folding together into an almost unbearable roar.

  The volley crests and ebbs and Mallory Whitford looks into my eyes. “This is so embarrassing.”

  “It was more embarrassing for those…for those thugs.” I want to call them worse, but something is overwhelming the circuits in my brain. Something—more than one thing. The particular weight of her in my arms. The sunscreen scent of her skin. The wisp of her hair that’s broken free from her ponytail and drifted over to my cheeks. “You don’t have anything to be embarrassed about. You’ve never had anything to be embarrassed about.”

  I can hear her teeth clicking together. “How would you know that? How do I know you?”

  The shiver moves from her jaw to her shoulders. It’s the Fourth of July in Milltown, the heat from the day still rising from the pavement, but this woman needs a blanket. A house, a locked door, and a blanket.

  “School,” I tell her. “High school. We went to high school together.” By the time the last word is out of my mouth I’m moving up the hill. My uncle’s house isn’t far, and I’ll be damned if I just drop her off at some random location without me.

  Mallory threads her arms around my neck, her grip tight and familiar. “High school?”

  “Right here in Milltown.” My heart zigzags up into my throat. Back in high school, I never would have dreamed of touching Mallory Whitford like this. Adrenaline sings in my veins, making a late appearance to the party. I was in worse situations in Afghanistan, and the same thing would happen. Stony calm while we exchanged fire with radicals, then jittery nerves all night. “I sat behind you in science class freshman year.”

  The memories flood back in a rush of blood to my face that’s hotter than her skin against mine. On three occasions in science class that year, we passed notes to each other. For years afterward, I chased that exhilaration. I never found it again until today.

  I steal a glance down at Mallory’s face. She’s wide-eyed, stunned. “Chris? Chris Dailey? Is that you?”

  My name on her lips is the sweetest sound I’ve ever heard, barring the pilot announcing that we were descending into Denver.

  “It’s me.”

  All at once, the part of my soul that was stuck back in high school makes the leap after me. I’m not that guy anymore. I’m not the shrinking violet without a single ab to his name. I’m not him—but I still feel the same way about Mallory that I always did. Like being next to her was like breathing in fire in the most pleasant way possible.

  “Oh, my god,” she whispers. “Chris. Why didn’t you say something?”

  We’re almost up the hill. “I didn’t think it was the best time for an introduction. A…re-introduction.”

  She laughs, relief coloring the air around us. “I thought you were one of them.” Mallory runs a hand down over my shoulder and, honest to god, tests my biceps. “You’re…wow. Wow, with the muscles.” She takes that hand and covers her face. “And now you think I’ms one ridiculous damsel in distress.” Mallory wriggles in my arms. “I can walk, probably. Let me down.”

  “No way. You can get down when we’re inside.”

  She takes in a sharp breath. “Why, Chris Dailey, I can’t believe you’d speak to me like that. Like you're…in charge.”

  “Why, Mallory Whitford, did you just walk out of a movie set in the old west?”

  “No.” She pokes at my chest. “But you know who will? My friend Emily. My college friend Emily. She’s flirting with a cowboy at the Stars & Stripes right now.” Mallory gasps. “She has no idea there’s a roving gang of assholes out there. I should—I should text her.”

  “Text her inside. We’re here.”

  I jog up the sidewalk to the house. One light burns in the living room—I left it on, just in case. “Where’s here?”

  “My uncle’s place.”

  Mallory stiffens.

  “He’s not here.”

  She relaxes again. “Not that I mind. I just…” She giggles. “I had a flashback to school. Did you ever worry that your parents were going to be home and ruin your whole date night for you?”

  “Not really,” I admit. I never brought a girl home in high school. I certainly never carried one over the threshold like this. And I never kicked the door shut behind me with a resounding thud. Once I’ve locked it, the ache in my head starts to subside. “There. That’s better.”

  I move into the living room, toward the couch.

  “Chris.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m really not a damsel in distress.”

  I look down into Mallory’s eyes. “I would never in my life think of you that way.”

  “But if I was…” She bites her lip. “I’d want you to be the one that saved me.” Another shiver moves through her body, but this one feels different somehow. “I’m glad it was you.”

  Every tiny hair on my skin rises at the sultry tone in her voice. “You did most of it. That flying leap—” A laugh escapes me. Mallory Whitford, flying through the air with her claws out, screaming her head off. “That was nuts.”

  “I felt like I could do it. I didn’t want you to be alone in the fight.” She wrinkles her nose. “Once I knew it was you.”

  “You didn’t know it was me. Did you?”

  “Some part of me did. I saw you in the light of the fireworks…” She lifts a hand and traces the line of my jaw. “I knew, deep down…”

  My lungs fight me on the next breath. I have to force the air into those useless balloons. Everywhere she touches me feels electric. I could carry her like this forever—I could.

  “I knew,” she whispers, and then she threads her hand behind my neck, pulls me in, and kisses me.

  Mallory

  I don’t know what I’m doing. I haven’t known what I’m doing since the moment those people—those men—appeared at the mouth of the alley. But what I do know is that Chris Dailey is the sexiest man I have ever seen. And when he’s holding me close like this, in his muscled arms, against his muscled chest, how am I supposed to resist?

  I don’t resist.

  I just kiss him.

  Something ignites low in my core, a flame that licks its way up my spine, all the way to the back of my neck. Maybe I wasn’t a damsel in distress before, but I’m sure as hell in distress now. A…lustful distress. A distress that has my nipples peaking against my bra and my breath catching in my throat and my toes curling against my sandals.

  Oh, god, it could have been so bad. It could have been so awful if Chris hadn’t shown up when he did. I cling harder to his neck and kiss him deeper. He tastes faintly of mint and alcohol, like he was just at the bar. Was he at the bar? Did he sense that something was happening to me?

  I pull back and he blinks at me. The expression on his face could be next to bewildered in the dictionary. Questions worry at one another in the back of my mind. I can’t stop them from coming out of my mouth. It’s all irrelevant, and yet I’ve just grabbed the guy who used to sit behind me in science class and kissed him like time is running out. My hands shake.

  “Were you at the bar?” My tone is slightly accusing, and for the life of me I can’t figure out why. “Did you follow me out of the bar?”

  “The Stars & Stripes?”

  “Yeah.” It strikes me how silly this must look to him. Little old me, demanding answers when I’m still suspended above the ground in his arms. “Were you at the Stars & Stripes?”

  “I was there,” he says cautiously. “But I didn’t know you were there. I didn’t follow you out.”

  “But you were going the same direction.”

  “Your parents live three blocks from here.”

  “I know. Why are you here, though? You don’t live with your uncle.”

  A smile curves the corner of his mouth. “How do you know that?”

  “Because—because…” Because if someone as hot as Chris Dailey had come to down—had come back to town—my mother wouldn’t have been able to keep her mouth shut. She’s desperate for me to get married. She’s desperate for me to “start my life,” as if it hasn’t already started. “My parents would have said something.”

  “Your parents would be interested in what I’m doing?”

  “Well, yeah. Look at you.”

  Chris glances downward like this is the first time he’s ever considered what he looks like. Then he shrugs, with just a hint of cockiness. It’s sexy as hell, and I feel it…way down low. “I’ve put the work in.”

  I haul my eyes back up to his. “Thank you. For saving me. You really didn’t know I was at the bar?”

  “I really didn’t know. I had my eyes on my own paper. My eyes on my own beer, I guess.”

  Why? Why do I care that Chris Dailey didn’t see me sitting there at the bar, getting crushed by some douchebag? Why do I care that even after all these years, I’m still invisible to everyone I find attractive?

  Why do I want him to have followed me out of the bar?

  “I should be glad anyone saw me at all.” Chris takes in a deep breath. I feel every rise and fall of his chest. “Nobody ever notices me when it counts.”

  He laughs, a low rumble that vibrates through my body. “People notice you. I’ve always noticed you. But I blended into the background for a few years there.”

  “You don’t blend in now.”

  My teeth crash together again underneath another wave of adrenaline. Chris’s face flashes from concern to determination. “I think you’re in shock.”

  “I think you’re fucking right about that.”

  He whisks me to the sofa, sets me down gently in the cushions, and tugs a blanket over me. Chris tucks it up around my shoulders and holds it there. He kneels in front of me, the lamplight gentle on his face, and looks into my eyes. “Is that better?”

  I shake my head.

  “What can I do? Do you want some water? Do you want to go to the hospital?”

  “I don’t want to go to any hospital.” I feel like I’m speaking without a filter and acting without a safety net. Everything is razor sharp and clear. “I want to kiss you again.”

  He arches one eyebrow. “So that first time wasn’t an accident?”

  I shake my head again.

  Chris takes in a long breath, then lets it out, his hands tensing on the blanket. “I don’t know if it’s the right thing to do. You’ve been through—”

  “Listen, buddy.” I throw off the blanket and lunge forward, fisting his shirt in my hands. “Here’s what I’ve been through. I got ignored at the bar. I got ignored, like, all of college. I recently stood by and watched my best friend have a love story that’s straight out of the movies. She married her biggest crush on the planet after a whirlwind of an hour. It was the most romantic fucking thing I’ve ever seen. And now I’m here with my biggest crush on the planet, and you’re going to tell me it’s not a good idea to kiss me? I swear to god, Chris—”

  He has huge hands.

  I knew that intellectually. But when he reaches out and takes my face in one hand, wrapping the other around the back of my neck, I know it on a spiritual level.

  And when he kisses me, hot and strong and demanding, I forget all about his hands.

  Chris

  It’s not like the kiss before.

  That one felt like Mallory just wanted something to cling to, and who could blame her? The situation at the alley was a near miss. A dodged bullet. Maybe I was the one who caught that bullet in my hands and hurled it in another direction, with Mallory on the assist. People do crazy things when they’ve just recently survived a brush with catastrophe. People do desperate things. That might have been a thank you or it might have been a thank god we’re alive or it might have been any number of things.

  It might have been a mistake.

  This kiss is no mistake.

  Mallory melts under my hands, a soft moan escaping her lips, and every inch of my skin tightens and tenses. I take her bottom lip between my teeth with all the gentleness I can muster and she sights into my mouth.

  This time, I take what she’s offering, not letting the shock get the best of me. I demand entrance to her mouth with my tongue and she lets me in.

  Sweet. She tastes sweet. She’s sweet and responsive and oh, Christ, I have wanted this for years.

  I sat behind Mallory in science class for one semester in high school, and I fell hard for her. The day she passed me a note about how fucking insane our teacher was being was a highlight of my life. My hands shook when I unfolded the paper, and my heart punched the inside of my ribs until they were bruised. She was always so smart, and so beautiful, and I was nobody. I was nothing. I didn’t have a single thing to offer her.

  Now I have one single thing to offer her: a body that’s big enough to protect hers. And if some animal instinct has drawn her to it like this, then I can’t say no.

  I’m strong enough to take down a man my size with a single blow.

  I’m not strong enough to resist her.

  Stop everything.

  Mallory leans forward, into my mouth, and I have to push her away. I need a few inches, that’s all, so I can see her face.

  “What did you say?”

  My voice is a rasp, and even I can hear how much I want her. Mallory is silent except for the whisper of her breath. It doesn’t matter. I hear her words now, as clear as day.

  Now I’m here with my biggest crush on the planet.

  “Crush?” I choke out the word, then clear my throat. “I am not your biggest crush on the planet.”

  Her fists tighten in my shirt and yank me in closer. “How would you know that?”

  “Because you never—you never—”

  “I never what?”

  “You never said anything.”

  “I passed you a note in science class. Three times. And Rochester was a stickler for that kind of shit. I could’ve gotten kicked out.” Her voice trembles, as if she’s on the verge of getting sent to the principal’s office right now. “I was just hoping you’d write back.”

  “I wrote back.”

  “You wrote back yeah, LOL to all three notes.”

  “I was fifteen.”

  “I was fifteen, too.” Mallory’s dark eyes are close enough that the lamplight catches and flares in her pupils. “And I wanted you to write back. A real note.”

  I’m lost for words. “I was lost for words.”

  “Were you? Or were you just lost?”

  It occurs to me now that we’ve moved into another layer, something older and deeper than a firework flash of adrenaline through our veins.

  “Lost,” I admit, then swallow a parched dryness in the back of my throat. “I thought you were looking for something else.”

  “I was fifteen,” she whispers. “I didn’t know what I was looking for. I didn’t know what I was leaving behind.”

  I have swallowed a firework, and now it’s exploding at the base of my stomach. My lips hum with the heat, buzz with her proximity. Those lips were just on mine. I want them back.

  “You weren’t leaving anything. There was plenty of time before we graduated.” This truth is a dull edge. If I had ever once thought that Mallory could have been into me, I would have…

  I would have…

  I don’t know what I would have done. I wasn’t good enough for her then. I’m barely good enough for her now.

  “There’s plenty of time now.”

  There is not plenty of time.

  I’m in town for the holiday, and I don’t know how long Mallory is here. I’ve made a point of not knowing. I wasn’t going to be the stalker who couldn’t let a high school infatuation go. So I’ve made it my business not to know anything about her for years.

  Except I do know things about her.

  I know that when she stands in a crowd, she tends to hold herself apart. She’ll take charge before she lets people see that she’s anxious, or lonely. I know that she loves chocolate chip cookies that are slightly undercooked. I know, because for all the time I spent pretending to be aloof in science class, I remained in a tight orbit around her for the rest of school. A reasonable orbit. Friends of friends. And then I did the right thing. I left Milltown and everybody else behind.

 

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