Fire with Fire

REEVE AND I DRIVE AROUND IN SILENCE, EXCEPT FOR a few times when one of us says, “Oh my God,” because of how crazy this all is.

I don’t ask where he’s going. I just let him drive.

We end up parking in the woods. It’s so dark and quiet. Reeve pulls to a stop and clicks off his headlights, but leaves the car running so it can stay warm.

Not that it matters. For once I’m not even cold. It’s like we’re in our own real-life snow globe.

He unbuckles his seat belt and then I unclick mine, too. And in a second we are completely going at it. I am pressing my lips as hard as I can against his, and his arms are around me, squeezing me so tight. I feel a rush of everything I’ve been trying so hard to hold back. And I can tell he does too.

I can’t kiss him enough; I can’t hold enough of him in my hands.

I pull his coat off his shoulders and then I wriggle out of mine. Reeve lifts me clean out of my seat and puts me in his lap, my back pressed into the steering wheel. The horn keeps honking, but neither of us cares.

He pulls his face away from mine and says, in a panic, “After I left your house that day, I went up to my room and lay in my bed listening to depressing music.”

I keep kissing his face. His eyes, his cheeks. “Like what?”

His eyes roll back in his head. “Like . . . um . . . damn.” He laughs nervously. “Radiohead . . . Beck. I don’t remember now.”

I plant kisses on the side of his neck, up to his ears.

Reeve shivers. “If I had known you came over, I would have run downstairs. I would have showed you off to my whole family.” He pushes me away suddenly, so he can stare me straight in the eyes. “I want you to know that I didn’t invite Rennie. She came on her own.”

I drop my head to his chest and cling to him. I don’t want to, I don’t want to do anything to ruin this moment, but I have to confess. I have to be true to him. “That stuff she was saying at the party . . .”

He lifts my face to his. “Forget it,” he says.

“Reeve, please. Let me finish. I—”

“Don’t. Just—don’t. Don’t tell me. I don’t need to know what happened before. I just need to know that you’re with me now.”

“Yes.” I hesitate, and then I just say it. “I’m yours.”

A smile spreads across his face, and his mouth comes up my neck and over my lips and then we’re kissing again. His lips are urgent, like all we have is tonight. And I don’t even remember what I was going to say anymore, it’s that good. We kiss over and over and over again. This time there’s no one around to stop us.