Boyfriend + Brother || Shawn Mendes

*-chapter 28-*

I'm starting to get used to the way his lips fit against mine. My arms seem to move on their own accord, loosely throwing themselves around his neck as I smile against him somewhere amidst the kiss. I like that this is beginning to feel familiar. It doesn't take long for his tight grip on my thighs to loosen, his hands wandering elsewhere, somewhere new and risky.

The kiss slows down as his focus switches from my lips to his hands. They hover by the hem of my shirt for a few moments, brushing the material as though he's waiting for me to object, but I don't want him to stop. I tighten my arms around his neck and pull his lips harder against mine. Shawn gets the message.

He tears his lips from mine, pulling back to meet my eyes for a moment, before moving back in again to plant a row of kisses along the edge of my jaw. His hands are still on my body, his thumb rubbing my skin in soft circles, his skin cold yet oddly sensational. Soon his other hand joins in and I suddenly grow self-conscious. I'm staring up at the ceiling through half-closed eyes, my face tilted to the side as he plants kisses on my neck.

Shawn sighs against my neck and his breath tickles my skin. I move my hands to his jaw and draw his lips back to mine, but before they connect once more, our eyes lock for a moment. We catch our breath as we stare at one another, comfortable in our embrace and unable to hold back the small smiles toying at the corners of our lips. We shouldn't be kissing on the floor of his bathroom and his hands shouldn't be on my body and I shouldn't be enjoying it. The scandalous nature of it makes it all the more exhilarating. And all the more worth it.

***

Shawn and I escaped from the confinement of his bathroom two hours later. Our parents returned home with a daughter with a broken hand.We had to bullshit our way to freedom.

"I don't know how it happened," I said. Not only was I lying through the door, I was also lying through my teeth.

"Me either," Shawn added.

"I was coming to find him and I fell against the door," I said. Another lie. Beside me, Shawn was pressing the back of his hand to his lips to muffle his laughter.

Manny said he would call the neighbourhood handyman, to come over straight away. But Mr Thompson obviously didn't care too much about the standard of his customer service, because he turned up on the other side of the door forty minutes later. It took thirty bucks and a lot of picking and drilling to unbolt the lock, and finally Shawn and I sheepishly made our exit.

We didn't talk to each other again for the rest of the night. It wasn't because I didn't want to speak to him. It was because he spent over an hour on the phone with Caitlin, his voice strained with the effort to come across soft and pleading as he tried his best to apologize for his "accidental mistake" that "happened in the spur of the moment", which he "completely didn't mean to do." I could hear it all through the paper-thin walls that separate our rooms. He fed her lie after lie, stacking them on top of each other as he built up a cover story, claiming that a fan wanted to take some cute photos for her Instagram and somehow the clingy fifteen-year-old wouldn't leave him in time for the paparazzi to come and take even more photos. slightly far-fetched and confusing, but Caitlin believed him.

His regret was so forced and so fake that I almost wanted to tear down the wall and ask him what he was playing at. But I never did, because I remembered that the Tanglewood sophomore was really just me. And so last night I fell asleep with my mind split in two. One half was drowning in guilt, but the other was floating, recklessly in love with Shawn.

***

"And that's why British guys are better than all these American slash Canadian scumbags," Madeleine announces, finally, after a five-minute speech comparing the two nationalities. According to her, British guys are better, because they have cute accents like mine and use cute words and are just overall cute, and that's as advanced as her arguments get.