“My mom volunteers at the hospital. A couple of days a week. Helping out wherever she’s needed. ” I must look annoyed because he holds up one palm and says, “Bear with me. It’s relevant to the story, I promise. ”
I make a rolling motion with my hand, go on, and he smiles. “I used to go with her sometimes, especially when I was younger. One day when I was about fourteen, I was spending the morning there with her. The doors opened and I couldn’t really tell what was happening, but I could hear a commotion. Someone crying, someone yelling, calling for a doctor. I looked over and I saw a girl about my age with long, dark hair yelling for help. And one of the nurses tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘That’s the girl you’re going to marry someday. Callie Westfall. ’”
I feel a pain in my chest at his words. I hate the thought of him marrying my sister. She wouldn’t be right for him. She wouldn’t understand him. She wouldn’t bother to try.
Bishop pulls one leg up and balances his forearm across his bent knee. “I remember staring at her, trying to picture my entire future with her. And then she stepped to the side and there was another girl, younger, with waves of honey-colored hair and huge gray eyes. ” His mouth curls up at the edges, but his eyes are solemn. “Her face was streaked with tears and blood was running down her torn-up arm. ” His eyes skip to my scarred forearm.
“Me,” I breathe, although of course it was me, who else would it have been?
“You,” Bishop says. The word spins out into the air like a promise. Like something I can hold on to if I just have the courage to catch it. “I’m not going to lie and say it was love at first sight,” he continues. “But it was fascination. You were hurt. You were frightened. But you were still defiant. Your eyes flashed when you talked about that dog. Your face showed exactly what you were feeling, but what you were feeling was unexpected. Like on the day we got married and you shrank away from me. ” He gives me a small smile. “With clenched fists. ” Bishop stares at me, his gaze drifting over my face. “If I had to get married, I wanted to marry someone who I was interested in knowing. You’re easy to read, Ivy, but the whole book of you is complicated. That’s why I wanted you instead of your sister. ”
My stomach has turned itself inside out. My heart is breaking, but all its millions of shattered pieces are soaring. I can’t breathe, but I can still feel, every nerve ending in my body set on high alert. If he touched me now, I might disintegrate. Or fly to the stars.
“You fascinated me that day,” Bishop says quietly. “And you still do. ”
All my life, that damn dog bite has been the one thing I wished I could do over, had some self-control and not ended up bitten, forever marked with a sign of my impulsiveness. Those silvery scars a constant reminder of what a disappointment I have the potential to be. But Bishop sees them as something else entirely. A badge of honor. Evidence of my strength. A source of fascination. He doesn’t condemn my recklessness or my inability to hide my emotions. My worst personality traits transformed into my best.
“Dare,” I tell him. I move before the thought even reaches my brain, find myself kneeling on the hard floor next to him without really knowing how I got there. My face is mere inches from his. I put a hand on the wicker couch beside his head for balance.
“What are you doing?” he asks, voice low.
“Be quiet. ” My throat makes a dry, clicking noise as I swallow. “If I don’t concentrate, I’ll chicken out. ”
His eyes sparkle with amusement. “I didn’t give you a dare yet. ”
I take a deep breath. “I gave myself one,” I say. And then I’m kissing him. His lips are softer than I imagined, the stubble on his upper lip rougher. For a split second he doesn’t respond, and I have time to think I’ve made a huge mistake, regret and embarrassment welling up in me like blood rushing to the surface of a wound. But just as I’m about to pull back, his hand comes up and threads through my hair, pulling me closer instead.
It’s not a gentle kiss, not tentative the way I thought my first kiss might someday be, all chaste mouth and dry lips. It’s wild and raw and sloppy. It’s like every time I’ve felt that flare of heat with him over the weeks and ignored it or turned away, it didn’t die the way I thought it had. It stayed alive inside me, burning, growing, and now it’s exploding, too big for my body to contain. My desperation would embarrass me, if he didn’t seem desperate, too.
He pushes me backward, onto the floor, and the wood scrapes my back where my shirt’s ridden up. His weight is on me, his long body cradled between my legs, both his hands lost in my hair now. I kiss him until I can’t breathe, until I have to pull back or die and it’s still a close call which I’d prefer.
He’s breathing as hard as I am, his face hovering above mine. I raise one hand and trace the line of his eyebrow with my finger, let my hand go lower and run my fingers over his kiss-swollen mouth.
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs against my skin. “About the possible overzealous use of tongue. Apparently, I didn’t learn my lesson in summer camp. ”
I laugh and he does, too, dropping his head so his face rests in the hollow of my neck. His breath feathers across my skin. I stroke the back of his head, running his short hair through my fingers. “It wasn’t overzealous,” I tell him. “I’m not exactly an expert, but the tongue-to-lip ratio seemed perfect. ” He laughs again, raising tiny goose bumps on my body.
“I’ve wanted…I’ve wanted to do that for a long time,” I whisper. “Kiss you. ” It’s easier to get the words out when he’s not looking at me.
He raises his head. “Me, too. ” He kisses me again, softer this time, gentle. One of his hands has snuck behind my neck, his fingers stroking lightly. I arch up into his touch. “Me, too,” he repeats against my lips.
These kisses go on and on, drugging my blood instead of igniting it. But the end result is the same. He is as close to me as he can get, his heart beating against my breast, his legs wrapped in mine, and it’s still not close enough. For once, my conflicted mind is quiet. There are only the flickering candles, and the scent of fresh cut grass from outside, the ghost of a breeze in the trees, and his mouth on mine.
Victoria couldn’t have picked a better day to give me the afternoon off. I wasn’t able to concentrate all morning between sheer exhaustion and thoughts of last night on the porch with Bishop. I’d finally fallen into bed after midnight, after a few more stolen kisses in the hallway, then laid awake half the night, far too aware of him sleeping on the other side of my bedroom wall.
On the way home, I decide to swing by President Lattimer’s library to pick up some new books. I know there is a council meeting at City Hall today, so I should be able to avoid Bishop’s father and Erin will make herself scarce if she gets wind I’m in her house. I doubt she’s any more eager to run into me than I am to bump into her.
I let myself in the front door with the pass code Bishop gave me weeks earlier. As always, the front hallway is dark and still. I close the door and wait, hear nothing. Step four, find the codes, Callie’s voice whispers. I’ve been delaying this step, but there’s no good excuse with the house empty around me. There is a keypad on the wall outside President Lattimer’s office. My heart is beating so fast I feel lightheaded, have to take a deep breath to steady myself before I walk quietly across the hall. I don’t know the code for the office, but maybe it’s the same as the one for the house. I’m just raising my hand to try when I hear the scrape of chairs from inside the office, the sound of men’s voices. I cock my head, listening. One of the voices sounds like Bishop. I slide backward, turn, and run on my tiptoes across the hall to the library, slip inside, and leave the door cracked.
I can’t see anything, but I hear a door opening, a man’s booming voice, one I don’t recognize, saying, “So, gonna make your dad a grandpa soon?”
Bishop’s response sounds light enough, but I can tell he’s answering through gritted teeth. “We haven’t even been married three months. ”
The man laughs. “If I remember right, when I was eighteen, three months would have been plenty of time. ” Another big laugh. “Right, Mr. President?”
“I’m sure they’re working on it,” President Lattimer says.
There’s a hard clapping sound. Someone getting patted on the back? I hope it’s not Bishop; he hates that. Would hate it even more from this crony of his father’s. They must have moved the council meeting here, rather than holding it at City Hall.