As soon as the halls were clearing, he dragged her down the hall and into the tiny, shaded interior of the janitor’s closet, and shut the door. “That was reckless, baby, reckless.” But he grabbed her ass, boosted her up and against him, and pushed her lips open with his, plowing greedily into her mouth. “Christ, what am I going to do with you?”
She cupped his strong cheek. “Love me.” Her smile faltered on her face. “I’ve been waiting and hoping and praying for you to say it, so then I thought—”
“I love you.” He braced her against the door and kissed her with such rampant passion she quaked. “I love you, Paige. I’m crazy about you. Crazy. Crazy. Crazy.”
They kissed crazy crazy crazily, and when he tore free, Paige said tearfully, “I don’t care what my father says. I don’t care what anyone says, I want to—”
A sound out in the halls broke them apart.
Zach set her on her feet, briskly kissed her upturned forehead and smoothed her hair down her shoulders. “Button up your sweater.”
She frowned and looked down. “I’m not wearing a sweater.”
Ahh! she realized. He was teasing. Because sometimes she was wearing a sweater, and “button up your sweater” meant “people are coming, they could see us, they could catch us. Beware.”
The story of their young lives: Paige “buttoning up her sweater.”
She sighed dejectedly at that, suddenly wanting to have a good, long cry, she felt so frustrated. “Zach, I don’t want to button up my sweater anymore.”
“Tell us what you see, Paige, where are you? What are you doing?”
Her heart thundered in her breast as a marvelous exhilaration swept over her.
“I remember,” she said hoarsely, aware that her cheeks were getting wet, that her voice was highly unstable, “I remember a boy.” What she was really saying was, Zach, I remember you.
“Who is this boy, Paige?”
She ached to see his face. That stern, chiseled face with those steady green eyes. Was he listening? Was his heart pounding as hard as hers? “His name is Zachary Rivers.”
Zachary Rivers, are you listening to me?
SHE WAS TEARING him apart with her words.
Do you know what last night with you meant to me?
Oh, fuck, he could tear down the walls just to crush her against him.
“YOU GAVE ME my first kiss,” Paige whispered, unaware that she’d begun talking to him as she wiped away her tears. “And when we were crammed into the projection room to watch the JFK assassination, you stood that whole hour beside me, and the backs of our hands touched. You stood so still, and I stood so still, so that nobody noticed when you hooked your pinky around mine.”
And you smelled so damned good, I couldn’t breathe.
“PAIGE. PAIGE, I must ask. The day . . .”
“And,” Paige added, laughing between her tears, “when I visited the arcade, you thrust me up on your shoulders and taught me how to slam-dunk. And . . . you’re a horrible, horrible liar, Zach. Because I didn’t slam-dunk that ball at all. But you always were so gentle, always said nice things to me.”
Nah, you dunked it for sure. I remember.
Zach remembered all of it.
“Paige baby, throw the ball.”
“Don’t drop me!”
“I got you. Now throw the ball, just slam it in there, into the hoop.”
“O-okay.” Straddling his shoulders and clutching the sides of his neck with the insides of her slim, firm thighs, Paige raised her arms and shoved the ball, all delicate and femininelike, into the hoop.
The ball bounced at his feet. Chuckling to himself, Zach lifted her from his shoulders and, in one clean swoop, set her on her feet.