Survival of the Unfit

Chapter 29

April

When a boy knows how to kiss, you’ve found god.

I don’t mean a kiss. I mean, kiss. I mean head in both his hands, fingers in hair and stomachs pressed together. The sound of a sharp inhale. The fistfuls of shirt clutched, and just all the little things that didn’t have to do with your mouth. I mean the way you can feel him breathe. The way you can sense how much has been pent up for so long. How warm he is, feeling the heat infect your own body and everything a kiss at a middle school dance does not have. Kiss. Not a kiss.

“This is...such...a bad idea,” I said between kisses, between pushing him back into his own room.

“A terrible one,” he replied, slightly out of breath.

“Awful,” I added, going down his jawline. “So awful.”

 “It’s such...a shame,” he sighed as I backed him up more. His heels hit his bedframe and he stumbled backwards onto the bed. “Shameful, Swanson.” I didn’t hesitate to press my lips against his again as he scooted back and I hopped on, looming above him. 

I pulled away and looked him in the eye. “A tragedy.”

He grabbed my face. “I love your sarcasm.”

I grabbed his. “I love your sass.”

There was a brief interlude of kissing before he pulled me away again. “I don’t know if I love you,” he said.

“I don’t know if I love you either,” I responded.

Another brief interlude, and then he looked more concerned pulling my face away this time. “Should we stop?”

“No,” I immediately responded, scanning up and down his face and seeing his chest rise and fall, the little line of skin showing from his shirt being pulled up a little too high giving me a fluctuating heartbeat. I traveled back up to his eyes and leaned in, enough for to keep him on the edge of his seat. “Because I might. I might be in love with you and if our days are numbered, I don’t care what we do tonight.”

A very light, shuddering breath left his mouth as he examined me with longing. “Okay.”

I grabbed the bottom of his t-shirt and pulled it over his head, flinging it behind us. And I was about to makeout with Levi Wolfe, thee most attractive guy I’ve ever witnessed, without his shirt on (for god’s sake the boy has a v-line), and then I saw the scar. I pushed myself off of him and stared at the long red line across his right side. “Oh my god, what happened?”

“Whoa, what?” he asked, scrambling back a little, as if he had no idea there was a six inch scar on his side.

I set a hand on his shoulder while staring at the scar, and he completely froze up. A...scar? “How recent was this?” I asked quietly.

He settled a little more comfortably and ran a hand through his mussed-up hair, exhaling. “Uh, a week. Handful of days.”

I traced the line, feeling the ridge and scab, almost feeling as if I was the blade slicing him. Like I could feel his blood and almost hear the subtle grunt that he probably tried so hard to contain. It easily could’ve been a stab wound to his liver and not a graze.

“Hey,” he said, gently grabbing my hand, pulling it away from his scar. He intertwined our fingers and set a hand on my waist, blue eyes fixated on mine. “I’m alive. It’s no big deal.” A small, teasing smile spread across his face. “But I’m afraid I can’t makeout with a girl in my sister’s clothes.”

I unwillingly smiled and hit his shoulder, climbing off the bed and heading to his closet. “Fine.”

I heard his bed shift around, probably him settling more comfortably. And this is one of those “April said fuck it all” moments that had happened once before. When I went out and bought a leather jacket and all my gear, when I got Brandy’s weapons from her house and vowed revenge, that was a fuck it moment. And after having a bounty tacked to my name, after being in a house alone with a guy I maybe or may not be falling in love with, after never having any strict morals or values in the first place, I was having a fuck it moment.