I gazed down his long body stretched to the end of my bed in the dim lamplight. When I looked at him from this angle, free to let my eyes roam across the whole of him, he seemed taller, but thinner, as he had when I photographed him at the 5K without his football shoulder pads. His crossed ankles were slender, and his feet were long, not wide, almost elegant.

After listening to a few more of his slow breaths, I started to feel ridiculous that I was still so tense, hovering over him like a buzzard about to swoop down on dead meat. I eased my shoulders back against the pillows, careful not to disturb him, and tried to practice what I’d been preaching, letting myself relax.

Without warning, the door opened. Mom was silhouetted in the bright light from the hallway.

It was like her to walk into my room without knocking. She wasn’t trying to catch me doing something wrong—she just thought of herself rather than me. It didn’t occur to her that she might startle me. I went out of my way not to startle her, but she didn’t do the same.

Now, though, her unannounced entrance felt like an intrusion. I wanted to snatch my hand off Brody’s, but that would alarm him and ruin everything. I left my hand where it was and lifted my chin.

Taking just enough steps into the room for her face to appear in the lamplight, Mom mouthed, “Thank you.” She knew why I’d called Brody, and she wasn’t mad. She was grateful.

I gave her the smallest nod.

She walked her fingers in the air and pointed behind her. She meant my dad had left and she was going over to the B & B for a while. She backed out of the room and closed the door as silently as she’d come in.

Brody moved anyway. We’d disturbed him. But no, he was rolling on his side, as the meditation lady told him. Sitting up was next, and a stretch and a yawn.

Then he pulled out the earbuds and scooted up to sit beside me against the pillows again.

I raised my eyebrows. “Well? Do you feel calmer?”

“I did,” he said softly, looking at my lips. “But not now.”

Our eyes locked. He moved toward me. We’d shared a moment like this before, with my face on fire and my heart speeding, but it had ended in disappointment. This one would likely end the same way. I waited for Mom to burst back in or for Brody to tell me he’d been kidding.

He reached up to cradle my cheek. His thumb traced my lower lip, sending chills shooting up my arms.

His lips met mine.

He kissed me hard for a second, then opened his mouth. This was a kiss. Quinn and then Noah had faked it pretty well with me in crowded movie theaters when lots of our classmates were around to see. But Kennedy, despite all his sarcasm directed at people who were less worldly than him, had zero idea how to kiss. I kept trying to show him. He obstinately refused to learn.

I didn’t need to teach Brody anything. As we kissed, his hand crept across my waist and circled my hip like he wanted to hold me steady forever. When I took a turn at kissing along his jawline, he lifted his head to give me better access to his neck, then gasped as if he’d never felt so good. This couldn’t be true, but he made me feel like I was giving him the sexy experience of a lifetime.

I kept expecting him to touch my breast, which made me nervous with my mom around. But he didn’t try—maybe for the same reason. After we’d made out for a good half hour, though, I wanted something more. I slipped my hands underneath his shirt. That’s when he slid his hands under my shirt and fingered the hook of my bra.

But in the end, he decided against unhooking it. He broke our kiss and backed a few inches away from me, panting. Between breaths, he grinned at me and said, “You have to know what you can get away with.”

“Yeah.” I smiled, showing him I understood. But I had something more I needed to say to him, something I was afraid I would regret. “I . . . ,” I said, and sighed. I couldn’t catch my breath. “Um . . .”

Kennedy would have interrupted by now, asking me if I spoke English. Brody only raised his eyebrows and watched my mouth like I was beautiful.

“I . . . don’t want to do this anymore,” I said in a rush. “I don’t like sneaking around, cheating.”

He chuckled. “Yes you do.”

He must have been referring to the head rush I got every time he came anywhere near me. Was I that obvious? I clarified, “It’s not right.”

“Well, why don’t you break up with Kennedy, then?” he asked. “I’ve been waiting for you to do that.”

“Me!” I exclaimed. “Why don’t you break up with Grace?”

“I’m not with Grace,” he said. “I told you, she spent half of Monday with that jerk from Florida State.”

“But when she came back,” I pointed out, “you sandwiched her between your legs and massaged her shoulders.”

He pursed his lips and shook his head. This was the first time since Ms. Patel’s homeroom that I’d seen his green eyes look angry. “I did it because you were in the ocean with Kennedy—right after we made out in the pavilion. Like that meant nothing to you. Like you didn’t care.”

“Brody!” I said, exasperated. “I stayed out there with Kennedy because the second Grace came back from getting drunk with those college dudes, you had your hand on her ass.”

He tilted his head to one side, looking genuinely perplexed. “I had my hand on her ass?”

“Yes!”

“I don’t even remember that, Harper. I was probably just holding her up because she was falling-down drunk.”