Chapter Forty-Five

Ashleigh

Most Likely to Kill Each Other

The night ends slowly, little by little, pieces of it falling away and being packed up until it ends suddenly and all at once.

One minute, I m helping Bryony collect up her colourful little box-lights from the floor of the school hall, swapping numbers and blushing and shushing her as she giggles and tries to wheedle out of me all the details about what happened with me and Ryan

I need to know what went down! she whispers, none too quietly, cheeks flushed and eyes glittering. Or, at least who went down!

I cut her a look, but give in to some childish part of me that never got the chance to really do this. I break into a grin and wiggle my eyebrows, then glance at Ryan and pull a face with a small shrug, and Bryony s squeal is loud enough to make both him and Hayden look over from putting empty plastic drinks bottles into a bin bag.

And then I m hugging her goodbye and promising Hayden to come visit him and the girls in two weeks but that, yes, I ll text him when I get back to the hotel safe and we ll talk more tomorrow, and I m leaving from the main entrance with Ryan just half a step behind me.

I m not sure if this means we re leaving together , or if we just happen to leave at the same time.

Ryan breaks the silence. I reckon she fancies him.

What?

Bryony. Fancies Hayden.

I laugh, because it s a laughable concept, but mostly only because of how different they were at school. Still, I m not wholly convinced there s any attraction between them as adults.

As if, I say. There s no way. They re just friends, I m telling you. There s nothing going on between them.

Ryan s face splits into a smug grin, eyebrows twisting almost in sympathy for how wrong he thinks I am. It s an insufferable look and one I know well, one that makes me want to drag him back inside to spy on Hayden and Bryony and the rest of their clean-up just so I can point out all the ways he s wrong.

I don t know, they looked pretty pally to me all of a sudden.

They look like two people who got stuck spending time together tonight, and bonded over it a little.

Oh, yeah? And that s why Hayden s stayed behind to help clean, is it?

That s because he s a nice guy and he can t help himself. It s the dad in him. He likes helping people. He s always doing stuff like that; it s not because he likes -likes her.

And, God, did this man really make me say like -like , like that?

Right , he drawls, and steps closer, readjusting his hold on his still-damp suit jacket over his shoulder. His school tie still hangs loose, undone, around his neck, and my attention is drawn momentarily to it, and then to the triangle of smooth brown skin bared by the few open buttons of his shirt And that s why they both insisted they would finish up and couldn t get rid of us quickly enough? Please .

You ve completely misread the signals. It s actually making me feel sorry for you, Ryan, how wrong you are about this.

And your need to constantly be right all the time is incorrigible, Easton.

Incorrigible? That s a mighty big word, coming from you.

Somehow, somewhere within this petty argument, Ryan s gotten up close, or I ve stepped into him, because now our bodies are flush and my insult doesn t pack a punch the way it usually would have. It comes out light and teasing, a shadow of what it used to be, and it makes Ryan smirk in genuine amusement. His hand slips to catch my waist, yanking me just a little closer so that I lose my balance and my hands catch his chest to keep me from stumbling.

Neither of us speaks, but there s some sort of understanding that passes between us in the moment before I close my eyes and his hand shifts to splay across my lower back.

And, as simply and suddenly as that, I m kissing Ryan Lawal again.

I m not kissing the guy who used to make my life a misery and needle at me every chance he got, while I practically made it my life s mission to tear him down whenever I thought he got too big for his boots. I m not kissing the guy whose smug face makes some angry, feral thing claw inside my chest in a mix of jealousy or resentment or plain old irritation.

I m kissing someone who knows me maybe better than I know myself, someone surprisingly funny and devastatingly good-looking, who thinks about how I take my coffee in the mornings and isn t, underneath it all, anything but the person he s always shown himself to be.

I m kissing Ryan Lawal and I never want to stop.

But the crunch of tyres and grumble of an engine comes towards me and - that s one of our taxis. It means our time is up. Tonight is, at last, over.

It could be, you know. Romantic. If you wanted.

I ignore the approaching car and slide my fingers through Ryan s short hair, deepening the kiss rather than ending it.

Tonight might be over, but that doesn t mean this has to be.