Author: Kristan Higgins

“It’s okay, Chas,” he assured me with a smile. “It’ll be legend in another month. It just seems horrible now.”

“No one likes me, Trevor,” I said, wiping my eyes. “I only had my friends from crew, and now they hate me. I’m nobody here. Just a bigmouth idiot with the O’Neill shoulders.”

“I like you,” Trevor said.

“Right,” I muttered, stealing a glance at his face. His lovely, happy eyes smiled at me. “You only like me because you have to, to stay in my family.”

“Not true,” he said, tickling the inside of my elbow. Heat crawled up my arm, melting my insides. I opened my mouth to say something, but I couldn’t, trapped in the familiar tangle of my crush on Trevor Meade, world’s most popular man. “Not true at all,” he said again.

“It’s true,” I grumbled.

“Come on, Chastity,” he said. “You’re great, you know that.”

“Save the pep talk, buddy,” I said, shoving away from him and standing up. Let him go tickle someone else’s arm. One of his girlfriend’s. Jerk.

“Chas,” he chided. “You are. You’re beautiful and smart and funny, and yes, you do have the O’Neill shoulders and they’re gorgeous. Plus, if we need someone to lift a tree off a car, there you are.”

“Bite me,” I said.

He reached out and grabbed the waistband of my skirt and tugged so that I fell (quite gladly, despite my feigned reluctance) back on the bed. “Sit down and stop feeling sorry for yourself.”

“I don’t. I feel sorry for you, having to babysit me in my time of woe,” I answered.

“I like babysitting you,” he murmured.

“How pathetic.”

He didn’t answer. I sneaked a look up at him, and he was just looking at me, a little smile making the corner of his mouth pull up. My breath stopped, and I could feel my face grow hot. Those damn happy eyes dropped to my mouth, and Trevor’s smile faded.

Then before he could break the moment, before he could turn away, I kissed him, and he didn’t stop me. Instead, he pushed my hair out of my face, and he kissed me back, gently, sweetly, his hand slipping behind my head, his lips moving just right against mine, smooth and warm. I gripped his shirt and sighed against his mouth, and knew that as long as I lived, this would be the one perfect kiss that I’d remember forever.

“Chastity,” he said, but I didn’t give him time to say anything else. I just kissed him again.

He tasted like mint and coffee, and his mouth was soft and sure at the same time, and we fit together so wonderfully…he was solid and warm and strong, and so was I. I leaned back, pulling him with me so that we lay on the bed, and the kiss became deeper, less perfect, more urgent. My fingers slid through the smooth coolness of his thick glossy hair, and I opened my lips for more.

Kissing Trevor felt like summer in June…lovely and lazy and hot, what was yet to come stretching out in front of us, filled with possibility. We kissed for ages without doing anything else, tangled in each other’s limbs, kissing and nuzzling and touching until the wee hours. My shirt was unbuttoned a few, and so was his, but that was as far as we went, even though we were both panting and flushed and sweaty and above the age of consent.

Finally, Trevor pulled back. He was lying on top of me, my legs were wrapped around his, my skirt up around my thighs. His dark, thick hair was tousled, his eyes were heavy-lidded, and I could feel the hardness of his body pressed against mine. His arms were shaking slightly. “I should probably stop,” he said quietly, touching my bottom lip with his forefinger. “I should go.”

“Don’t go, Trevor,” I whispered. “And don’t stop.”

He swallowed and gazed at me, serious and quiet. I could see him weighing the intelligence of what we were about to do, what we had already done, could see his hesitation. Because I’d loved him for so long, been crushed by my yearning for Trevor for so damn long, I slid my hands under his shirt and pulled it over his head. “Please stay,” I said, kissing his beautiful neck.

“Are you sure, Chastity?” he asked, his voice hoarse. I could feel his heart thudding against mine.

“Yes,” I said. Then he was kissing me again, hotter and more urgently than before, his hands in my tangled hair. And I was sure, because after all, I’d loved him for years. Wanted him for years. Wondered and wished and longed for him for years, and having him there on the narrow twin bed, on top of me, I felt more right than I’d ever felt in my life, before or since.

The hot shock of his skin, the smoothness of his back, the noise he made deep in his throat when I bit his shoulder…it all made me hot and tight and dizzy…and so happy. My heart was absolutely certain. When he rolled over so that I lay on top of him, his hands threading through my hair, he smiled at me, and I thought I’d come apart with joy.

He was my first lover, though I knew I wasn’t his. And afterward, instead of making some excuse of how he had to go or maybe this was a mistake, he just slid down a little so that his cheek was resting over my heart, his arms still tight around me. “Are you okay?” he whispered after a few minutes.

“Yes,” I whispered back. “Are you?”

He laughed and lifted his head to smile into my eyes. “Never better,” he said, and I knew I’d love him forever.

For two days, we barely left the room. We got hungry, of course, and when my supply of M&Ms, cream cheese and Wheat Thins ran dry, we went to a diner in town, sitting next to each other in the booth, talking about classes and people and even my social gaffe. We avoided mentioning my family, but otherwise, it was like I always imagined it would be. Once, just when it felt like we’d backslid into pure platonics (during a discussion of the Yankees’ postseason), Trevor touched my cheek, his voice stopping midsentence, and I could tell that he thought I was beautiful and desirable and lovely. I blushed fiercely, feeling the sudden need to look away. Trev laughed that low, naughty chuckle that I’d always wanted to hear directed at me, and my heart swelled with so much emotion that I thought I might cry from pure happiness.

On Sunday, we reluctantly parted, needing to do some studying. “Come to the game with me,” Trevor suggested. The Bearcats were playing at home, and what could be more romantic than the two of us snuggled under a blanket in the stands, holding hands at the football game?

“Okay,” I agreed instantly.

In the doorway, he cupped my face in his hands, studying me. “Chastity, I—” He paused, frowning a little. For a second, my heart stuttered in fear, but then he smiled. “I’ll see you later,” he finished, kissing me softly. He started down the hall, stopped, came back and kissed me again. “I’m really leaving now,” he said. One more kiss, a nuzzle, a hug, a final kiss. Finally, I shoved him away.

“Get out, you big lug.” I grinned, practically floating with happiness. He smiled back and finally ran down the hall. Then I forced my pheromone-saturated brain to focus on my Canterbury Tales paper.

I WAS A LITTLE LATE GOING TO the appointed telephone pole in the stadium parking lot. Trevor’s back was to me, and I broke into a happy run, fully intending to tackle him, nuzzle his neck and possibly cop a feel. But when I saw who he was with, I lurched to a halt.

It was Matt.

“Hey, Sissy!” he bellowed, running to give me a huge hug. I squeezed back hard, realizing just then how much I’d missed him. My boyfriend and my youngest brother, my two favorite men in the whole world.

“Hi, Matt! What are you doing here?” I smiled at Trevor. He didn’t smile back, his eyes flickering between Matt and me. In his pockets, his fists were clenched. My heart fell to the asphalt with a nearly audible thump.

“I thought I’d come for the game, hang out with Trev, see how you’re doing,” Matt said, his face flushed with the cold. A few of the cashmere set circled like vultures, and Matt’s gaze bounced toward them. Oh, he would make a killing this weekend, looking the way he looked and now a fireman to boot.

“Great!” I said. “Trevor and I were gonna catch the game together, too, right Trev?”

“Yup. That’s right,” he answered, forcing a smile.

That was all it took. I knew in that instant that Trevor and I were not going to stay together.

We found our cheap seats and sat huddled, me in the middle, for the duration of the game. I cheered for our guys, asked Matt questions about work and the academy, about Mom and Dad, and Trevor did the same. I didn’t let myself think about the warm length of Trev’s leg against mine, how I already knew and loved his smell, how his unshaven cheek had left beard burn on my chest. I forced myself to be just Matt’s sister, the O’Neill girl, just one of the guys.

Trevor relaxed a little at some point, realizing that I wasn’t going to announce the fact that he’d deflowered the sister of his two best friends in the world, the girl who happened to be the daughter of his surrogate parents. He didn’t speak to me much, though, talking over my head to Matt instead, offering only commentary about the game to me. He couldn’t seem to look me in the eye for more than a second.

When the game was over, Matt said, “Chas, we’re gonna hang out at the pub, okay?”

I was not included, I could tell, being underage and, well, the sister. I glanced at Trevor. He looked away, his jaw tight. “Okay, guys,” I said. “See you in a couple of weeks, Mattie. Love you.”

“Love you, too,” he said, hugging me.

Trevor managed to make eye contact. “Bye, Chastity.”

“See you around!” I called brightly, punching him on the shoulder.

As I left them, I heard Matt say, “Check out that girl in the red jacket. You know her?”

I paused, wanting to hear the answer. “Not yet,” Trevor answered with a laugh.

I started walking again. Sure, he was probably just shooting the shit with Matt. But he didn’t…I could tell…he wasn’t…

The tears were coming hot and fast, so I kept my head down and ran to the library, found a deserted bathroom and cried, my heart open and raw, big bellowing sobs that bounced off the walls. When a librarian came in and asked me if I needed to go to the infirmary for a sedative, I got myself under control, splashed some cold water on my face and went back to my room. I changed, went for a ten-mile run and made my decision.

When Trevor came to my room that evening, any doubt I’d had was cleared up by the misery on his face. “Hey, buddy,” I said with forced cheer. I suggested we go out, because even though I was resolved, I didn’t want to break up in the same room where we’d been making love all weekend. We walked to a bench under a particularly beautiful chestnut tree and sat. The branches rose and then curved downward, nearly to the ground, and the golden leaves sheltered us from passersby, and the dark made what I had to say a little easier. Beside me, Trevor sat stock-still, staring straight ahead, tense and quiet as a cat.

“Trevor,” I said, taking his hand, “I think we might have made a mistake.”

His shoulders dropped. There was no mistaking the utter relief that lightened his expression. “I was just about to say the same thing,” he admitted.

Funny how pride makes you tough, sometimes. I turned to face him a little better and swallowed hard. “Look, Trevor, you mean the world to me. But when I saw you with Matt, well…” My voice broke, but I coughed to cover. “We’re young and foolish, and our whole lives are ahead of us, all that crap.” I swallowed again. “We probably shouldn’t be doing this.”

I thought I sounded pretty good, given that my heart was in an increasingly tightening vise. I tried to smile, succeeded, and watched as Trevor nodded, jamming his hands in his jacket pockets.

“Chas, I should’ve…I should never have…” He swallowed. “I’m so sorry. This is all my fault,” he said miserably.