Page 120 of What We Brave
"Laine." Reid turns to face me, one arm draped over the steering wheel. "That's not how this works. You don't have to compartmentalize us."
"I'm not —"
"You are." His voice is gentle but firm. "You're worried about giving me enough attention. Making sure Blake doesn't feel left out. Managing everyone's feelings." He reaches over, tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. "You're allowed to just feel things. Even messy things. Even things about him while you're sitting here with me."
I open my mouth. Close it. Because what am I supposed to say to that? "What if I feel too many things at once?"
"Then you feel too many things at once." He shrugs like it's the simplest thing in the world. "We'll figure it out."
I stare at him. At his steady eyes and his patient mouth and the way he's looking at me like I'm not broken. Like I'm just having a hard day and that's okay and he's going to sit in this freezing truck eating mediocre vanilla ice cream for as long as I need him to.
"How are you so calm about this?"
"About what?"
"All of it. Me crying in a batting cage. Me talking about Blake while we're on a date. This whole... situation."
Reid laughs softly. "I'm not calm. I'm terrified half the time."
"You don't look terrified."
"I've had practice hiding it." He shifts closer, the blanket bunching between us. "But I'd rather be terrified with you than comfortable without you."
I lean across the console and kiss him.
Not a peck. Not a careful, testing-the-waters brush of lips that I could play off as friendly.
No. I kiss him like I mean it. Because I do.
He tastes like vanilla ice cream and cold air. His hand comes up to cup my jaw, thumb stroking my cheek, and the gentleness of it almost undoes me more than the kiss itself.
It starts soft. Careful. Then his other hand slides into my hair sending tingles down my neck and suddenly soft isn't enough.
I'm climbing over the console before I've decided to. Blanket tangled around my legs, knee hitting the gear shift — graceful, really graceful — and then Reid pulls me onto his lap and oh. His hands slide under my sweatshirt, warm against my skin, and every coherent thought I have just dissolves. Every single one. Gone. Didn't even wave goodbye.
For a second — just a flash — I think about Blake. The way he kissed me against my apartment door. And in the cab of his truck, and in the doorway of a restaurant. Every date I get more and more of him, learning how he feels.
This is different. Reid kisses like he's memorizing something. Savoring. Every touch deliberate and warm. And he's so familiar.
Feelings are weird.
Reid's mouth trails down my neck and I gasp, fingers digging into his shoulders like they've got their own agenda. The windows are completely fogged now. We're invisible in here — just us, the cold pressing in from every direction, and whatever heat we're generating between us.
"Laine." His voice is rough. He pulls back, breathing hard, and his eyes flick to the fogged passenger window, then toward the parking lot we can't even see anymore. "We should probably..."
"Yeah." I'm just as breathless. "Probably."
Neither of us moves.
Then Reid laughs — low and warm and a little bit wrecked — and pulls me against his chest instead. I tuck my head under his chin, legs stretched into the passenger seat. The blanket settles over both of us like it was waiting for us to figure this out.
"This okay?" he murmurs into my hair.
"Yeah." I close my eyes. His heartbeat is right there under my ear, steady and real. The heater rattles against the cold like it's losing the fight but refusing to quit. "This is good."
We stay like that for a long time. Two people in a fogged-up truck behind an ice cream shop, wrapped in a wool blanket that smells like sawdust and dog. I don't ask about the dog.
The world goes on outside without us. I can hear it — a car door somewhere, the muffled thump of a dumpster lid, somebody's music leaking out of a rolled-down window. None of it touches us.
