21 Stolen Kisses Read online

  I’ll never know. I’ll never know how the others were affected by my mother’s choices. I won’t ever know who else has a black hole in her heart from the lies that tunneled through it.

  One of the letters won’t stay put and it blows away. I tape up the rest.

  I reach into my backpack and take out the stamped, sealed envelopes—letters to many of the wives of many of the men who’ve spent time in my mother’s bed over the years. The Balzac. They can all have the Balzac. They can all have my favorite—the words the French novelist Honoré de Balzac had sent to the very married countess Eveline Hańska. It was a tragic love, and a wrong love, and yet their letters were beautiful and spoke to the kind of deep, abiding, lifelong love you could feel for someone.

  It’s time for the wronged to know. It’s time for me to get rid of the brick in my chest that’s weighed me down my whole life. I need to kick the past where it belongs—out of the way of my future.

  I am nearly mad about you, as much as one can be mad: I cannot bring together two ideas that you do not interpose yourself between them.

  I can no longer think of anything but you. In spite of myself, my imagination carries me to you. I grasp you, I kiss you, I caress you, a thousand of the most amorous caresses take possession of me.

  As for my heart, there you will always be …

  I spot a blue mailbox at the end of the street and dump this stack of letters into its big blue mouth, willing them to arrive quickly, because this time the letters aren’t anonymous.

  This time they’ve been signed by my mom.

  I know how to forge her name.

  *

  I stop at a nearby bench and lean Joe against the back of it. I sit down, pull out my phone and call Noah.

  “Please tell me you’re at my house right now,” I say.

  He laughs, that sexy laugh he has. “Nope. Didn’t even get a summons to appear. But you know I’ll meet you anywhere you want. Say the word, K.”

  My body feels warm, like it’s humming, buzzing even, from the way he says K. A knowing smile surfaces on my face, a private little grin between this man and me, this man on the other side of this island, a few miles from me.

  “Tell me about your day. The best parts—the food you ate, the music you listened to.” I close my eyes as he shares the details of his lunchtime Chinese chicken salad with David Tremaine and his afternoon listen to the cast album of Once while he worked on contracts for clients. “You left something out, Noah,” I say, sounding like a flirt and loving it.

  “What did I leave out, Kennedy?” he asks, flirting back.

  “What you wore to work today.”

  “Charcoal-gray pants. Black shoes. Silver disco shirt.”

  I laugh. “That I want to see.”

  “I told you I was half raised by drag queens.”

  “And now?”

  “T-shirt and shorts.”

  “You look good in a T-shirt and shorts,” I say, remembering the outfit he wore to the Yankees game last summer.

  “You should come over then,” he says, and I can hear in his voice how much he wants me to. I can hear his hunger. It matches mine.

  “I want to,” I say, and I’m surprised at how bold I’m being, but I want to be there with him. Plus, if he’s not at my house, it likely means a man is at my house, which means I really don’t want to be at my house.

  An idea strikes me. “I’ll call you right back.”

  “I’ll be waiting.”

  I hang up and dial Amanda. “What are you doing?”

  “Staring at my phone, waiting for you to call. And you did. My life is complete,” she says, then emits a playful sigh.

  “Seriously. What are you doing?”

  “You’ll laugh.”

  “I won’t.”

  “No. You will. It’s so lame. Especially since my parents aren’t even here.”

  My ears prick up. This is the sort of intel I was hoping for. “Tell me,” I insist.

  “Reading the news.”

  I laugh.

  “See! I told you you’d laugh.”

  “You’re such a news junkie. It’s cute,” I say, then shift gears. “Where are your parents?”

  “My mom is out of town at a conference in Miami. She’s speaking at it, presenting or something. And my dad is out at some work thing, but he said it’s supposed to run super late. Wink-wink.”

  I wither inside, a small part of my heart turning blacker, but I press on. “Do you still think he’s fooling around?”

  “Totally. I’m sure he’s with the wench tonight. Like I can’t figure out what it means that he’s at a ‘networking thing that’s going to run super late’ when my mom is out of town.”

  We chat for a few more minutes, then I tell her I need to get on my bike and ride downtown to my dad’s.

  Instead I call Noah. “I’m on my way. I’m riding over. See you in seven minutes,” I say. My mom’s used me to cover up for her for years; it’s only fair that I get to use her affairs to cover up my tracks. I’m lying to both my parents tonight, but they have each used me in their own way to hurt each other, to help themselves.

  I’m only doing what they taught me, I reason, as I race across town, without a soul in Manhattan, in the whole world, knowing where I am tonight. As the warm air whips past me on Fifth Avenue, I hardly feel like a girl still in high school for one more week. I hardly am. I might still spend seven hours a day there, but I am a girl of this city. Knowing how to navigate Manhattan is the class I excel most in.

  New York is my real school. I’ve learned everything I’ve needed to survive from this city.

  I reach his building and walk my bike into his lobby, saying hello to the doorman who knows me, and tells me he’ll lock my bike up in the storage room. I thank him and head to the sixth floor, where my boyfriend opens the door looking super hot and super sexy in his shorts and T-shirt.

  “You look like you got caught in the rain,” he says, eyeing my wet hair and damp clothes.

  “I did. Earlier.”

  “I like your hair like that. But then again, I like your hair any way you wear it,” he says, fingering a strand of my wet hair.

  “These jeans are kind of sticking to me.” I point to my blue jeans.

  “Do you like boxers?”

  I nod, and he takes my hand, threading his fingers through mine. He squeezes tight, his touch a signal that I’m his, and he’s mine. It is a small, but potent reminder, that he likes every part of touching me, and I feel the same for him. He walks me to his bedroom and offers me several pairs of boxers to choose from. I take a plaid pair, and then ask for a shirt.

  “Take your pick,” he says and I choose my favorite purple one, trailing my fingernails down the front as I glance suggestively at him

  I go to his bathroom and change, leaving my slightly damp clothes hanging on the shower curtain to dry. When I walk into his bedroom, he’s lying on top of the navy comforter, hands behind his head. He says nothing, just raises an eyebrow in appreciation of my new outfit.

  One that brands me even deeper as his. Here, in his clothes again, I am showing my loyalty. To him. These clothes are the sign, even though we are the only ones who know that I belong to him. I bring the collar of the shirt to my nose, and inhale him. My eyes flutter closed and when I open them, his are darker and completely fixed on me.

  “Come here,” he says, in a hot, husky voice. I’ve never seen so much desire in his eyes, so much heat. “Come here now.”

  Noah

  As she walks to the bed, I picture that red circle on the calendar. But it slips from my mind in a second in the curve of her hips, the look in her eyes, the way she licks her lips once, her tongue darting out.

  My body is a tightrope. My blood heats and my skin burns with want for her, especially when she reaches the bed and crawls to me on her hands and knees. In. My. Clothes. My throat is dry, and my lungs are on fire as she slinks closer. My hands are at my sides, balled into fists. Clenched. Want thunders through me
, and it’s nearly impossible to keep my hands off her. Not when she drops her mouth to mine. Not when she scoots on top of me, poised above me. Not when she laces her hands in my hair, and kisses me hard. Harder than she ever has.

  We’ve always excelled at the slow and soft kisses; the measured, controlled ones. The kisses where you melt into each other. But this feels like a first. Because it’s raw and heated, and she clutches at me tightly, her hands sliding out of my hair to grip my shoulders as our lips crash together, and we swallow each other’s moans.

  In this moment, I barely know how I’ve managed to keep my hands above her waist all those times we were together last year, and I hardly know how to do it now. Or if I even can anymore. Because when I pull gently on her lower lip with my teeth, she gasps in the sexiest, sweetest way. It kills my resolve. I shift her off me, and in seconds, she’s flat on her back on my bed, and I’ve pushed up her shirt and am kissing the soft skin of her stomach, licking a path up her body.

  Before I even realize it, she’s unbuttoning her shirt—my shirt—and then her breasts are exposed. I freeze. Because she’s so fucking beautiful, and she’s here for me. Of all the choices she could make, she’s chosen me, and I never want to break that trust.

  I don’t move. I just stare. Like it’s the first time I’ve seen breasts. It’s not, but it’s the first time she’s stripped off her top for me, and her body calls out to me like a siren song of longing.

  “Touch me,” she whispers.

  I don’t move. I just stay there, poised above her, the muscles in my arms taut. This is another line in the sand. The moment when I touch her in more intimate ways. I shut my eyes, but by the time I’ve opened them seconds later I’ve found no reason not to obey her wishes.

  Soon, I am kissing and touching and tasting her breasts, and she’s arching her back into me, threading her fingers through my hair. Every lift of her hips, every move in her body urges me on.

  She moans and gasps, and tugs me even closer. At some point, I break apart, stopping only to kiss her, and when I do, it reminds me that above the waist is a safer zone.

  For now.

  “Noah?” she whispers, my name a question.

  “Yes?”

  “Do you want to?”

  I laugh once. “Of course. But we can’t.”

  “When can we?”

  I run my fingertips along the column of her neck. “When I can take you away from here. When we can go away somewhere. Someplace special. Just you and me. I want everything to be amazing for you. Do you want that?”

  She nods. “Yes. But I want you now too,” she says, and her voice is breathy and desperate and the closeness to her is killing me.

  “You have no idea how much I want you,” I grit out, never taking my eyes off her. She rubs her thigh against me, and I groan from the touch.

  “Actually, I kind of do know,” she says in a murmur that makes me smile.

  “Well, what can I say? Touching you turns me on,” I tell her.

  She ropes her arms around me. “Touch me more then,” she says, her voice a bare plea. The need in her green eyes, the quick lift of her hips, breaks me down.

  “Are you sure?” I ask carefully, raising an eyebrow.

  She nods and breathes out. “So sure.” Then she chases it with a barely audible please, Noah, and I am lost to her wishes, I am drowning in this untamed desire for the girl I love madly.

  She dips her thumbs into my boxer shorts, and pushes them down her legs. I take them off the rest of the way, my hands gently caressing her legs as I return to her.

  She is naked before me and I am in awe.

  It is such a privilege to touch her like this. It’s like being given a Stradivarius, something precious and rare, and you must treat it with reverence.

  I start slow, listening to her cues. Soon, I am touching her and tasting her and crossing all the lines, but she’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever had. She responds like a dream, moving like water, sounding like a poem. She becomes a blissful mix of noise and motion, and then complete abandon, as her hands grip my hair and my lips consume her. She arches, then cries out, and nothing, nothing, nothing has ever been better than this.

  A minute later, I am next to her, waiting to feel shame or disgust. She might be legal, but she’s not eighteen yet. Even so, the only emotion I feel is utter rightness. She wedges her body into mine, grabs a fistful of my shirt, and asks me to take it off.

  “We are not going there,” I warn her. Like I can suddenly lay down the law when I already proved I can keep moving the line.

  “I just want to feel you,” she says, as she removes my shirt, and spreads her hands across my chest, then my waist. Her touch is extraordinary, and that tightrope is stretched as far as it can go. I want so much more of her, but I have every faith in the world that it will happen soon enough. When it’s supposed to. This certainty in her, and us, and the future is one of the greatest things I’ve ever known.

  “You’re going to make love to me someday soon, aren’t you?” she asks, her eyes wide and innocent.

  “Yes. I am. And that’s exactly what it’s going to be,” I say, cupping the back of her head, and pulling her close.

  “I know,” she whispers quietly into my chest. “I know.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Kennedy

  At precisely six fourteen the next morning, Joe and I arrive at the steps to my mom’s house. She’s not an early riser, so I’m positive she’s still nestled in her California King–size bed, a black satiny mask covering her eyes. Amanda’s dad will be long gone; she probably sent him home sometime in the middle of the night.

  I carry Joe up the steps. At the top step under the mat, I see the corner of an ivory-colored piece of paper. I bend down to retrieve it, pulling the rest of the paper from under the mat.

  The paper is folded in thirds. Quickly, I open it. One of the letters I posted last night has made its way back to me. The hair on my arms stands on end.

  There’s a note too, a personalized one just for me.

  K, I’d really like to see you again.

  Chills shimmy through me. There are only a few people in my life who have called me K. I spent the night with one of those people, so I know Noah didn’t leave this note. The other ditched me when I asked him to finish off the amends.

  Is this Lane’s way of telling me something? Or maybe it’s just his way of apologizing or something for last night, for not going with me?

  I look at the letter again, reading over the words I printed, words from Balzac to Hańska. Lane must have returned it to me, tucked it under my porch while I was riding across town. The bigger question is why. I hide the letter inside my backpack and head inside, strapping up Joe to the wall. Next comes the shower, blow-dry, makeup, a fresh pair of slacks and a blue starched blouse and I am ready for another day in my final week of high school.

  “Good morning, darling,” my mother says from the kitchen as I walk downstairs. I smell coffee roasting.

  “Hi, Mom,” I say, as she stretches her neck from side to side, working out the kinks. She wears a red dressing gown, mid-thigh length and silk. I keep a few feet of distance between us as she asks how I slept.

  I answer “Just fine,” but all I can think is, I got away with it. I slept at your agent’s house last night and you don’t have a clue. I feel like I’m grinning from the inside out, I feel like cinnamon sugar on toast. Getting away with something tastes wonderful. Especially when that something is as fantastic as what Noah did to me last night. My stomach swoops in memory; a hot rush of sparks takes off inside as I remember how it felt to call out his name.

  I better go before I linger in Lustlandia.

  “’Bye, Mom,” I say, and head for the door. She moves in for a hug. When she wraps her arms around me, my nostrils meet up with her morning scent. She smells like sex. I unwrap myself from her, squirming out from her arms. “I have to go.”

  “I love you, sweetheart. Be good today.”

  “Yeah.
You too,” I say, but it’s an empty wish because she’s not capable. But then again, I suppose I’m not so good these days either.

  As I walk to school, my phone dings with a text from Lane.

  I hope you didn’t get caught in the rain last night. Or if you did, that you had an umbrella to use. A red, polka-dot umbrella.

  The umbrella he gave me. Was it more than an umbrella? My brow furrows. Does he truly feel something for me?

  I stop at the Central Park West crosswalk, waiting for the little white man in the light to tell me it’s safe, and it’s as if the traffic and the people and the city are compressing around me. The people on the other side of the street seem so far away right now, like their faces and bodies are collapsing, turning tinier. And then, just like that, they’re zooming in on me. My world is both miles away and in my face, and the light changes and I cross the street, but my feet are heavy, and the concrete looms close and I know I’ll have to sit down soon and get a grip.

  I don’t have a clue what to do about Lane. Or when my mom will be smacked in the face with my letters.

  Soon I find myself in English, next to Amanda, and I have that desire again to tell her everything, to word vomit up all the things I keep inside me, to confess how I used her last night, how I knew her dad had to have been at my house, but I say nothing, and she’s strangely sullen all through class. When the bell rings at the end of first period, she whispers, “My dad didn’t come home till three thirty last night.”

  Her eyes look glassy. The vacancy in her pretty blue eyes turns to anger. “I hate him for what he does to my mom.”

  “I hate the woman he’s fooling around with,” I say, the words sliding out, unplanned, unbidden.