Her long, red locks draped over the back of the seat, and I finally raised my eyes as she leaned back against him, their lips barely touching as their bodies moved slow but rhythmic in the darkness.
Will rubbed his thumb across my finger, and my stomach flipped, the gesture comforting.
My phone beeped, and I turned over my right hand, unlocking the screen with my thumb. The phone lit up my place by the window, rain pummeling the bus as we drove through the dark night.
“Let me take you home,” it read.
I clicked my music off, glancing over and seeing his phone in his hand, too—the same text visible.
“No,” I typed back.
I couldn’t let him take me home. Not ever. I tried to pull away from his hand, but he clasped it tightly.
“Let me take you home,” he typed again.
I clenched my teeth and turned my eyes out the window. I tried to pull my hand away once more, but he grasped it, forcing it instead onto my thigh, his fingers grazing my skin there.
A bolt of lightning shot through me, but instead of being angry, butterflies swarmed in my stomach and I squeezed my eyes shut. Leaving him there.
My phone beeped, and it took a moment to look at it. “I want to hold you like that,” it said.
I glanced up at Miller and Desi again, his arms wrapped around her, and I pictured myself in Will’s lap, parked off some dark road in the rain, and it took everything I had not to look at him, because if I did, he’d know…
He would know that I didn’t always hate him. A sliver of my brain was starting to believe there was more to him.
But I shoved his hand off, biting the corner of my mouth to keep the emotions away.
“Cops came to the warehouse and took all the tappers,” someone said loud enough to pierce my earbuds.
I turned my head enough to see a cheerleader, Lynlee Hoffman, across the aisle, looking back at Will.
He sat there, his hand still under the hoodie, acting like everything was completely normal. “Oh, yeah?” he said.
But he didn’t give a shit.
Lynlee shot me a look, narrowing her eyes and lifting her chin, because if they found out there was a party, it was because I had told my brother, right? As if the cops had to be geniuses to figure out a win always equaled a kegger at the warehouse. Duh.
I turned up the volume on my music again, drowning out any other sounds and tapped my thumbs, typing out a message. “Take her home. She’ll drool all over your dumb haircut and extensive knowledge of micro-brews and penis jokes.”
I mean, he was a jock.
I felt him shake with a laugh next to me.
He typed, letters flashing on his screen. “I take you home, or I take you in my lap right here. Decide.”
I ground my teeth together.
Everyone would see that. If my brother heard about it, I’d…
Jesus.
Damon leaned up from behind us, squeezing Will’s shoulders and talking in his ear. Will laughed at whatever he said, no one the wiser.
My phone beeped again. “Almost there,” he warned.
I shook my head. “People will see,” I typed out.
“Then make sure they don’t.”