Past

“So, you get that perfect tan from your grandmother, huh?” Rowan asked as he walked over to me.

I was standing in the wooded area of the lawn by the fire pit, which was where I normally hung out during parties like these. Tonight was my grandmother’s birthday party and my siblings had gone out of town, something they’d planned before Mom planned this party, and while I definitely thought I’d be alone, Rowan’s presence made me giddy, though, it wasn’t only because I didn’t want to be bored and alone.

“I guess so. You’ve never seen her before?” I smiled as I answered his question, tucking my hair behind my ear. “I could’ve sworn you had.”

“Never had the pleasure. She must travel a lot.”

“She travels back and forth to France. My grandfather left her a Chateau.”

“Is that why you were in France last summer?”

“Yeah.” I nodded, hoping the darkness and my complexion were enough to hide my flush.

My heart hadn’t managed to contain itself from the moment he walked through the door, and it didn’t matter how much I told myself that it was because I’d been bored until he got here. The truth was that I’d sported a crush on him for quite some time. I could tell you virtually everything about him, from the specks of gray in his blue eyes to where he sat in the coxswain during rowing matches. Still, we were just friends. Just friends. He was more of Freddie’s friend than mine. I constantly reminded myself of this whenever he walked by me in the halls and winked and my girlfriends squealed and freaked out. He was a year older than I, but I still managed to snag two AP classes that he was in. Thank God for small miracles like small private schools with limited AP. I was the only junior in a class with three seniors. Also the only junior in the school that would graduate ahead of my class and start college a semester ahead.

Normally, Rowan hung out with Freddie and Sam. Tonight, our siblings weren’t around to buffer our interactions. Celia was away scouting colleges; Freddie had gone with her. Samson was on a trip with his girlfriend. That left Rowan and I alone in the woods, quite literally. I would have sworn he’d be at Emma Wesley’s party, his rumored girlfriend, whom I wanted to hate so badly but was too nice to warrant those feelings from me. It was stupid for me to hate her at all. It wasn’t like Rowan kept girls around. He was the kind of guy who had a new girlfriend or fuck-buddy or someone to keep him company every few weeks. Samson said he got bored quickly. I thought he hadn’t met the right girl, and that included me. I wasn’t naïve enough to think I’d be the one to tame the beast inside him. I hadn’t even thought about trying.

I changed the subject. “I’m surprised you’re here tonight.”

“Where am I supposed to be?”

“Emma Wesley’s party.”

“Why would I be there?”

I settled back against the tree trunk behind me. “Aren’t you two dating?”

“Define dating.” I could hear the playful tone in his voice, but I wasn’t having it. I lifted my chin and met his eyes.

“I’m not Freddie or one of your crew boys. Are you dating or not?”

“Not,” he said, pausing before continuing. “She wanted to get serious, I didn’t, so she broke it off. I heard she’s dating Erick Gnash.”

“The quarterback?”

He nodded.

“Well, she certainly has a type.” Erick was one of the cutest kids in school. Even Celia had a crush on him, and she was a senior, in the same class as Freddie and Rowan. Perks of being born ten months after your older brother and having a birthday that coincided with state laws.

“She’s a nice girl.” A nice girl but not what he wanted, I supposed. I wondered if it was because what he wanted was tall, blonde, and obnoxious. I didn’t bother pointing that out. If I did, he’d think I was interested, and I wasn’t. Not at all.

Liar.

I whisked the little voice away with the shake of my head.

“How’d it go at your last meet?”

“We won. You should’ve come.”

“You only want me to go because all of you fit in my truck.”

After that, he was silent for the longest time before asking, “So, where is your grandmother from anyway?”

I had totally been staring at his profile, which was just about perfect. Long lashes, chiseled jaw, long nose, plump lips. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he took another sip of his drink. Even his neck was nice. I blinked away from my thoughts and remembered he’d asked a question. Right. My grandmother.

“New Zealand.”

“Hm.” He looked at me for a moment. “Where is that?”

“Near Australia.” I felt my lips pull up at the corners. People always had funny reactions to that. His brows scrunched together as he took a sip.

“Right,” he said slowly, as if remembering the geography. “It’s an island.”

“Tiny island.”

“With beautiful women,” he said.

I felt myself blush, bit my lip, and glanced away. Was he calling me beautiful?

Maybe he’s saying your grandmother is beautiful, moron.

Grandma Joan was quite stunning, after all, and he’d never cast me a second glance before. Why would he start? I clutched my own cup tighter when I heard him speak again.

“Do you know anything about it?”

“Like do I know how to speak Māori?”

“If that’s the language.” His lips twitched. I felt my face go hot at the mere sight of it.

“I know a few things but not much.”

“Like what?”

I took a sip, my eyes set on his. He watched me expectantly. I mulled over the things my grandmother had taught me, which hadn’t been much if I were being honest. She was barely one year old when her parents moved to the States. It wasn’t as if she remembered anything about her birthplace, but her parents had made it a point to teach her about her roots, and she tried to do the same for my mother, which was where it stopped. Mom said she couldn’t feel a connection to a place she’d never visited. I took a breath, leaned down to set my cup on the grass, and made my way over to him. The shade of his eyes became clearer with each step that I took. My heart shook, but I managed to close the distance between us and stood directly in front of him. He waited.

“Tena koe is how you say hello,” I explained. “It means, ‘I see you.’”

“Tena koe,” he repeated, his eyes set on mine.

If he’d ever looked at me like this before, I had never been aware of it, and I was glad for it because I felt like I was on a ledge with no place to go. Maybe it was the fact that we were alone. Maybe it was all of the changes happening in my life, with my siblings moving away soon. Whatever the reason was, it urged me to act on something I had wanted to do for as long as I could remember. I took a step closer, reached my right hand up and cupped the back of his neck. He lowered the hand holding his drink so there was nothing between us, and I pulled him closer to me. He didn’t close his eyes the way I would have if I thought someone was about to kiss me. He also didn’t back away the way I would have if I had a boyfriend and someone who wasn’t him was about to kiss me. He simply looked at me, searching my eyes quickly, as if to make sure I wanted this. If my pulse hadn’t been spiking the way it was, I would have laughed because, hell yes, I wanted to kiss him, but it wasn’t what I was doing.

“This is called a hongi,” I whispered. “It’s how they greet each other. You have to press your forehead against mine, your nose against mine, and breathe out.”

“Why?” he whispered back.

“To indicate that we’re all equal—one soul.”

He took a step back. I dropped my hand from his neck. He looked at me warily, his eyes jumping between mine, searching for God only knows what. I waited. That was how things were with Rowan. He liked to process his thoughts and feelings while people waited. I knew his game, knew that if I pushed him, he’d freak out. So, I watched as the wheels turned in his head.

“Okay,” he said after a few beats. “Let’s try this again. This is how everyone greets each other? Man and man, woman and woman, woman and man?”

I nodded and felt myself smile. He ran a hand through his hair and exhaled a shaky laugh.

“My dad can’t seem to hug us, yet people in New Zealand are doing this?”

My smile dropped. His parents were assholes. When we were kids, while his brother and the rest of us were in tee-ball and ballet, Rowan was spending his Saturdays in meetings with his father. They’d come by Monte Industries and I’d catch the bored, faraway expression on his face. He’d found rowing in our early teens and stuck with that every weekend since, and I got the impression that his boat, Miles, saved him in a way. My mind drifted back to his father and his refusal to show affection to his sons.

“You want to talk about it?”

“No.” He frowned, looking away from me and back to the party, back to the adults who thought what they did was so much more important than raising responsible, caring individuals. He sighed and looked back at me. “What else do you know?”

“That’s basically it.”

His lips twitched. “So, we can’t go on a trip to New Zealand any time soon?”

“Guess not.”

“Hm.” He stepped closer again, close enough that I could smell his Jean Paul cologne and feel the heat from his body. He brought his arm up, splaying his large hand on the side of my neck, his thumb rubbing my jaw gently. I wondered if he could feel the way my pulse skittered under his hold, wondered if he knew just how deep my feelings for him ran. If he did, he didn’t let on. If he did, he’d run. I knew that much. The Hawthorne boys only gave you small particles of themselves, enough to make your cells lose balance while their own regenerated. He held my gaze steady as he dipped his head and placed his forehead against mine, his nose touching mine. Then he closed his eyes. I followed suit. And we breathed. He inched closer. I did the same. Without preamble, his lips touched mine. I jolted but managed to keep my eyes closed, mainly because if this were a dream, I wanted to remain sleeping, preferably forever if Rowan Hawthorne was going to continue to kiss me. I stifled a breath, a whimper, anything that would threaten to pull us out of this haze. I wondered if he knew how long I’d dreamed of this, if he had any idea that every time I looked at his lips, I imagined them on mine.

His fingers threaded into the hair on the nape of my neck as he pulled my head back slightly so he had a better angle against my mouth. His teeth nipped my bottom lip softly before he sucked it into his mouth with a groan that seemed to develop in the back of his throat. I shivered against him, brought both hands up to the back of his neck, and pulled him closer, feeling like the distance between us was too much.

He pushed me against the large tree trunk and slanted his mouth over mine once more. This time, the action was more desperate, his tongue sliding into my mouth in search of mine. I felt myself free fall into the kiss in a way that terrified me. I’d always wanted Rowan, but I had stayed away from him because a part of me knew that it would be like this—an intense push and pull that neither one of us was ready for. It was that thought that had me breaking the kiss and rearing away slightly. I kept my gaze on his chest, unwilling to meet his eyes just yet.

“I fucked this up, didn’t I?” he said, his voice a rough whisper that did crazy things to me.

I began shaking my head, but he caught my chin and tilted my face up to look at him. His gaze was intense and hazy and did nothing to settle my thrumming heartbeat. He leaned in, pressed his lips to my forehead, and walked away without another word.