I lean forward and kiss the top of her head, then walk into the kitchen. “You want brownies or cookies?” I watch her from the kitchen as I grab the desserts and she’s staring at me, wide-eyed.

I freaked her out.

I just completely freaked her out.

I walk back to where she’s seated and I kneel down in front of her. “Hey. I didn’t mean to scare you,” I tell her, taking her face in my hands. “I’m not suicidal if that’s what’s freaking you out. I’m not fucked up in the head. I’m not deranged. I’m not suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. I’m just a brother who loved his sister more than life itself, so I get a little intense when I think about her. And if I cope better by telling myself that what she did was noble, even though it wasn’t, then that’s all I’m doing. I’m just coping.” I allow her time to let my words sink in, then finish my explanation. “I fucking loved that girl, Sky. I need to believe that what she did was the only answer she had left, because if I don’t, then I’ll never forgive myself for not helping her find a different one.” I press my forehead to hers, looking her firmly in the eyes. “Okay?”

I need her to understand that I’m trying. I might not have it together and I might not know how to move past Les’s death, but I’m trying.

She presses her lips together and nods, then pulls my hands away. “I need to use the bathroom,” she says, quickly slipping around me. She rushes to the bathroom and shuts the door behind her.

Jesus Christ, why did I even go there? I walk to the hallway, prepared to knock on the door and apologize, but decide to give her a few minutes first. I know that was really heavy. Maybe she just needs a minute.

I wait across the hallway until the bathroom door opens up again. It doesn’t look like she’s been crying.

“We good?” I ask her, taking a step closer to her.

She smiles up at me and exhales a shaky breath. “I told you I think you’re intense. This just proves my point.”

She’s already herself again. I love that about her.

I smile and wrap my arms around her, then rest my chin on top of her head while we make our way to her bedroom. “Are you allowed to get pregnant yet?”

She laughs. “Nope. Not this weekend. Besides, you have to kiss a girl before you can knock her up.”

“Did someone not have sex education when she was homeschooled? Because I could totally knock you up without ever kissing you. Want me to show you?”

She falls onto the bed and picks up the book that she read to me last night. “I’ll take your word for it,” she says. “Besides, I’m hoping we’re about to get a hefty dose of sex education before we make it to the last page.”

I lie down beside her and pull her to me. She rests her head on my chest and begins reading to me.

I ball my hand up into a tight fist and keep it at my side, doing everything in my power not to touch her mouth. I’ve just never seen anything so perfect before.

She’s been reading for well over half an hour now and I haven’t heard a damn word she’s said. Last night it was so much easier to pay attention to the actual story because I wasn’t looking directly at her. Tonight it’s taking every ounce of willpower I have not to claim her mouth with mine. She’s propped against me with her head on my chest, using me as her pillow. I’m hoping she can’t feel my heart pounding right now because every time she glances up at me when she flips a page, I squeeze my fists even tighter and try to keep my hands to myself but my resistance resonates in my pulse. And it’s not that I don’t want to touch her. I want to touch her and kiss her so bad it physically hurts.

I just don’t want it to be insignificant to her. When I touch her . . . I want her to feel it. I want every single thing I say to her and every single thing I do to her to have significance.

Last night when she told me she’s never felt anything when she was kissed, my heart did this crazy thing where it felt bound, like it was being constricted, just like the lungs in my chest. I’ve dated a lot of girls, even though I might have downplayed that to her. With every single girl I’ve been with, my heart has never reacted like it reacts to her. And I’m not referring to my heart’s feelings for her, because let’s be honest, I barely know her. I’m referring to my heart’s literal, physical reaction to her. Every time she speaks or smiles or, God forbid, laughs . . . my heart reacts like it’s been sucker-punched. I hate it and like it and somehow have become addicted to it. Every time she speaks, the sucker-punch in my chest reminds me that there’s still something there.

A huge internal part of me was lost when I lost Hope, and I was convinced Les took the very last contents of my chest with her when she died last year. After being with Sky these last two days, I’m not so sure about that, anymore. I don’t think my chest has been empty this whole time like I thought. Whatever is left inside me has just been asleep, and she’s somehow slowly waking it up.

With every word she speaks and every glance she sends my way, she’s unknowingly pulling me out of this thirteen-year-long nightmare I’ve been trapped in, and I want to continue to allow her to pull me.

Fuck it.

I unclench my fist and bring it up to her hair that’s spilled across my chest. I pick up a loose strand and curl it around my finger, keeping my eyes trained on her mouth while she reads to me. I find myself still comparing her to Hope every now and then, despite my efforts not to. I’m trying to recall exactly what Hope’s eyes looked like or if she had the same four freckles across the bridge of her nose that Sky has. Every time I start to compare them, I force myself to stop. It doesn’t matter anymore and I need to let it go. Sky has proved that she can’t be Hope and I have to accept it. The odds of the girl I lost being right here, pressed against my chest, her strand of hair between my fingertips . . . it’s impossible. I need to separate the two of them in my head before I screw up and do something stupid, like refer to Sky by the wrong name.

That would suck.

I notice her lips are pressed into a tight, thin line and she isn’t speaking anymore. It’s a damn shame because her mouth is fucking hypnotizing.

“Why’d you stop talking?” I ask her, without looking at her eyes. I keep my gaze trained on her lips, hoping they start moving again.

“Talking?” she says, her top lip curling up in a grin. “Holder, I’m reading. There’s a difference. And from the looks of it, you haven’t been paying a lick of attention.”

The feistiness in her reply makes me smile. “Oh, I’ve been paying attention,” I say, lifting up onto my elbows. “To your mouth. Maybe not to the words coming out of it, but definitely to your mouth.” I slide out from under her until she’s on her back, then I scoot down until I’m beside her. I pull her against me and take her hair between my fingertips again. The fact that she doesn’t resist in the slightest only means I’ll be at war with myself the rest of the damn night. She’s already made it clear she wants me to kiss her, and I’ll be damned if backing away from having her pressed up against the refrigerator wasn’t the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.

Shit. Just thinking about it is almost as intense as when it was actually happening.

I drop the strand of hair and watch as my fingers fall straight to her lips. I don’t know how the last five seconds just occurred, but I’m looking down at my hand as it grazes over her mouth like I have no control over my limbs anymore. My hand has a mind of its own but I really don’t care . . . nor do I want to stop it.

I feel her breath against my fingertips and I have to bite the inside of my cheek to center my focus on something other than what I want. Because it’s not my wants that are important right now—it’s hers. And I highly doubt she wants to taste my mouth as much as I need to taste hers right now.

“You have a nice mouth,” I say, still slowly tracing it with the tips of my fingers. “I can’t stop looking at it.”

“You should taste it,” she says. “It’s quite lovely.”

Holy shit.

I squeeze my eyes shut and drop my head to her neck, forcing my focus away from those lips. “Stop it, you evil wench.”

She laughs. “No way. This is your stupid rule; why should I be the one to enforce it?”

Oh, Jesus. It’s a game to her. This whole not kissing thing is a game to her and she’s going to tease the hell out of me. I can’t do this. If I give in and kiss her before she’s ready I know I won’t be able to stop. And I don’t know what the hell is going on inside my chest right now but I really like the way it feels when I’m around her. If I can drag whatever this is out to make sure she feels the same way, then that’s exactly what I’ll do. Even if it takes me weeks to ensure she gets to that point, then I guess I’ll wait weeks. In the meantime, I’ll do whatever I can to make sure her next first is anything but insignificant.

“Because you know I’m right,” I say, explaining exactly why she needs to help me enforce this rule. “I can’t kiss you tonight because kissing leads to the next thing, which leads to the next thing, and at the rate we’re going we’ll be all out of firsts by next weekend. Don’t you want to drag our firsts out a little longer?” I pull away from her neck and look down at her, very aware that there is less space between our mouths right now than between our bodies.

“Firsts?” she says, looking up at me curiously. “How many firsts are there?”

“There aren’t that many, which is why we need to drag them out. We’ve already passed too many since we met.”

She tilts her head and her expression grows attractively serious. “What firsts have we already passed?”

“The easy ones,” I say. “First hug, first date, first fight, first time we slept together, although I wasn’t the one sleeping. Now we barely have any left. First kiss. First time to sleep together when we’re both actually awake. First marriage. First kid. We’re done after that. Our lives will become mundane and boring and I’ll have to divorce you and marry a wife who’s twenty years younger than me so I can have a lot more firsts and you’ll be stuck raising the kids.” I bring my hand to her cheek and smile at her. “So you see, babe? I’m only doing this for your benefit. The longer I wait to kiss you, the longer it’ll be before I’m forced to leave you high and dry.”

She laughs and the sound is so toxic I’m forced to swallow the huge lump in my throat so I can make room to breathe again.

“Your logic terrifies me,” she says. “I sort of don’t find you attractive anymore.”

Challenge accepted.

I slowly slide on top of her, careful to hold my weight up with my hands. If my body were to touch any part of hers right now, we’d already be moving on to seconds and thirds. “You sort of don’t find me attractive?” I say, staring straight down into her eyes. “That can also mean you sort of do find me attractive.”