He makes my heart race even when I’m just standing still. Travis comes up behind me, his presence enveloping and warm against my cold body. I can see my breath in front of me, beneath the dim light from the entrance of the law library.

“This is for research,” I say, spinning around to face him and putting a finger in the air between us. I try to act like I’m bold, and maybe I’m coming off as convincing. I don’t want him to know I’m scared. I want him to think I have myself completely under control, like I can disappear if I want to. But I can’t, even if I tell myself I can. His grip on me is too strong.

He takes a hand casually out of his pocket and slips it under my chin, tilting my face up and sliding his thumb across my bottom lip. It’s chapped from the cold, and dry, and pale. My breath hitches deep inside my throat, and I don’t move as he leans down to place his lips against my neck, coaxing my breath and a little moan out of me. His lips are smooth as they pass over my delicate skin, tasting me, taking me away from here.

“You know your dad would kill me if he knew about this,” he whispers, bringing goosebumps from beneath the skin on my neck to the surface.

“And yet,” I say, “here you are. I must really be worth the risk, huh?” I try to hide the tremble in my voice. I just hope it’s working.

He pulls away from my neck, his lips parted slightly and his big, dark blue eyes swimming with want. I’ve seen it before. In him. In other guys. In guys who I’ve been told my whole life were worthy, but never made me feel special. Never made me feel anything like what Travis makes me feel.

It’s the want in his eyes that I can’t resist. It’s what I can’t control about myself.

This wasn’t supposed to be easy. I never thought it would be. I just never knew it would be so damn hard.

I find my plastic key fob on my keyring and pass it across the sensor on the cold red brick wall next to the door. The fluorescent lights inside the library are hard and unforgiving, making me remember how late it is. It’s gone from nearly pitch-black to day-bright in a second, the shadows we moved between replaced with steady beams of light from straight above.

There are no shadows to hide behind once we’re inside, but Travis doesn’t change at all. He looks as good now as he did moments ago, when his eyes and his gorgeous face with its sharp angles and four-day scruff were hidden under the cast of nighttime. It was the nighttime that was so intoxicating, that made me think I would be brave enough to do this.

To finally do this.

But it’s not supposed to be easy. It never should be.

Anything worth doing isn’t easy.

Travis takes my hand and leads me through a heavy pink door into a dull gray staircase.

“I can’t resist you,” he says, grasping my upper arms and grazing his hands over them. “Not anymore.”

Even through my hoodie I can feel his touch like it’s on my skin. Everything about him tonight is ultra-electric. Everything about us tonight is heightened and buzzing. He looks down at me with the same look he’s given me so many times, but I know tonight I will do something I haven’t before. I don’t know if he has done this. I think he has. But I don’t care. I want to give this to him.

“The biggest risk would be letting you get away from me,” he says. “I would have so much more to lose.” He shakes his head. His hair is slightly longer on top, and he brushes it away from his face as it falls into his eyes.

He’s sexy. There’s no denying that. I tried to, when I was younger. After we’d washed the dishes and he’d say goodnight to my parents, he’d walk home. He lived just next door. I got upstairs to my room as fast as he got to his room next door. I guess I just walked a little bit slower than he did.

He’d pull back the curtain on his window. Seeing him from far away made me wish he’d come back over. It always did. I wanted more from him. He was just a friend, though.

One night, though, I looked into his window when he didn’t know I was looking. God, I sort of felt like a pervert. I was peeping on him, there’s no other way to put it. His back was to his window, and he lifted his shift over his head and tossed it onto his bed. Then he tilted his head over his shoulder and his eyes caught mine. Did he know I was watching all along? Maybe he did. It didn’t matter, though. He’d caught me. He knew I wanted him.

It was the night of his 18th birthday. I remember it so vividly. It still feels like a sweet, warm, detailed dream I just woke up from. All I have to do to get back there is close my eyes.

My dad and I went to the German bakery on Main Street to pick up a cake for Travis’ birthday. It was chocolate ganache and spongy vanilla layers with coconut and shaved almonds. Dad and I picked it out together for him.

I wanted to put three candles on the cake for Travis: a couple of those big single-digit candles, a one and an eight, and one of the little spiral blue and white ones. That little one would be for good luck. I wanted him to have all the blessings in the world, and I wanted him to know those good wishes came from me.

But Dad wanted to actually put nineteen individual little candles on the cake. I laughed when he picked them out from the little metal stand in the corner of the bakery. I said those were for little kids, when the number of years you’ve lived can be represented with a reasonable amount of candles on the top of a cake.

All those candles are too many, I’d said, laughing. You don’t think it’ll look silly?

Not at all, Dad said, with his sarcastic, knowing smirk. As long as I’m alive, he’ll get all the candles. I think Travis will laugh when he sees all these candles, anyway. Kid could use a good laugh.

So Dad got his way, and Travis smiled and shook his head when he came over and stepped into our dark house, the kitchen lit up by all those candles. I saw how happy Dad had made him. I’d thought it would be too much, but it was just enough.

It was just right.

What did you wish for? I’d asked him after he blew them out. The kitchen was dark for a moment, the smell of sulfur and melting wax filling the air, before someone hit the lights and the kitchen lit up again.

Can’t tell you, Travis said, crossing his arms across his chest and bumping his shoulder into mine. It won’t come true that way.

He towered over me on that night. I think that was the first time I really saw the man he was becoming. Instead the lanky, slightly goofy teenager I’d known, he was turning into a really handsome young man.

He was always physical. He ran track, but he wasn’t a jock. He was just good at being fast on his feet. He didn’t train, not really. Not the way some of the actual jocks trained. Sometimes he’d run in the mornings, but sometimes he wouldn’t. Sometimes he came to school late, or not at all, and I assumed on those days he woke up late because he was out late doing whatever he’d do, he wouldn’t run.

Even if he wasn’t a jock, and wasn’t that great in school, he did have a few passions. One of them was old cars. Fixing them, going to shows to look at them. Working in the garage in town made him some good money, and it certainly didn’t hurt his physique.

Oh yeah, there was that, too. That was one of the things I’d just started to notice that night in the dark over all the candles.

His other passion...I didn’t believe him at the time, but he said his other passion was me. He told me that night, after we’d taken our second slices of birthday cake into the living room, after my parents had gone upstairs to bed. He said I was his best friend. He said I kept all the pieces inside him together, even when he felt like he would crack and break.

When I saw him through the window later that night, I allowed my eyes to meet his, and stay there, and when he smirked and his eyes crinkled up slightly with his sexy smile, I let my eyes stay there.

He turned to me. His shoulders were broad and his chest was bare and his arm had the flower tatoo he’d gotten because of his mom’s plant collection. And then I let my eyes go a little bit lower, to his abs, to the sexy V trailing down. I imagined what he had going on down there. My stomach flipped when I saw him look down, like he was taunting me.

You can look, he said. Our windows were about twenty feet apart. I don’t know how the sound travelled between us so well, but it was like we had our own little piece of air between our windows and we could always hear each other perfectly.

Sorry, I said, waving my hands. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.

You’re a real sicko, you know that? he teased.

Happy birthday, I said. My heart skipped and started to pound louder inside my ears as he leaned forward on his window sill, the big screen of mesh and metal shielding him from the lightning bugs just outside.

You want to know what I wished? he scrubbed the side of his face with one of his strong, calloused hands.

I thought you didn’t want to tell me, I said, my fingers coming up to the delicate lace on the curtain my mom had made for me. I held on, letting my fingers fidget nervously along the edge. My voice felt foreign. I felt like my tongue was making shapes it hadn’t before.

I’ll tell you, he said, if you really wanna know. His voice was darker, with an edge to it that I hadn’t heard or felt before. I didn’t know why it was like that.

My body heated with want. It was new and strange. I was beginning to feel something for him, though it was something I knew was deep down inside me for longer than I wanted to admit.

And even though it was there before, I never really felt it before.

Tell me, I said. My breath caught inside my throat.

He put his fingers on the edge of his jeans, looking down, and then looked up at me. He pulled his hands away and caged his window with his arms, the smooth muscle inside them flexing. Strong and sure and certain, he smiled at me as he began to stand up straight, taking his hands down again.

I wished I’d live next door forever.

He pulled his heavy, dark curtains closed as my heart pounded inside my chest.

A smile pulled across my face and I moved away from my window quickly, pushing my back against the wall and closing my eyes. I was hot all over, and I struggled to catch my breath.

It was like a dream. A sweet, frustrating dream.

But I’m not dreaming now. Not at all. No, what’s happening right now is very, very real.

He squeezes my arms slightly and pushes me gently against the wall, our mouths crashing together and our tongues searching the other’s in a kiss that sets my world ablaze. I feel his hardness against me as I melt into him, my body flooding with desire, unable to control myself. I let him feel me, take me - this is what I was afraid of. This is what scared me for so long. This is what opening up means. Taking a risk, and letting my fate be in the hands of someone else.

And for once, being scared feels good.

It feels so damn good.

I'm falling for him, and I can't stop myself.