BELOW IS AN EXCLUSIVE EXCERPT OF INTO THE TOMORROWS. Enjoy!
“What are you thinking?”
I turned to where Colin lay on the bed, reclined, his black hair flopping over his forehead. If I stared at him long enough, I could see the boy I’d fallen for six years before, a boy with smiles and a comfortable ease; a boy with a love for everyone around him—not just his girlfriend. But now, when I looked at him I saw the dimples and the gaze of a man who wasn’t sure what to do with me. Quite a place we’d boxed ourselves into. One slice of a razor was all we needed to reveal the mess inside.
If I closed my eyes to the Colin in front of me, I could imagine the Colin who’d reached for me—with his hands and lips and his eyes. But it took effort, because the Colin now was like a familiar stranger. Someone you passed by every day, maybe shared a smile in greeting with or a “how are you?” but not someone you could claim to know.
He moved off the bed toward me, placed a hand first on my forearm. One black curl formed a nearly complete circle over his lobe. Because that was what I focused on, something minor, when he looked at me like that. Like he wanted to tilt my neck and kiss the crease.
Instead, the grip on my forearm eased and I thought for sure he would let go, and resume being feet away on the bed, miles away from my heart. But he didn’t.
“Hey,” he said, placing his fingers on my chin and turning my head so that I looked in his eyes. There was a time, years ago, when I’d imagined his eyes as the color of the sky at dawn, the palest blue—sometimes green—as it battled against the dark. But now, everything with Colin was a blur, smeared with wax. “I love you, you know?” He said it as if he was reminding us both and it made my skin tighten.
“I love you too,” I said, but the words were opaque. I let go of the mild irritation that had adhered itself to me when he questioned me and gave him a smile that wasn’t a smile at all, just a curving of lips and lies.
That seemed to have unlocked something within him, because that time he did lower his lips to my shoulder and just rested his face there. I held my breath—not in anticipation, but with dread. And then I squeezed my eyelids shut. I’d gone so long without this kind of intimacy with my boyfriend that I felt like he was that familiar stranger again. I’d need to get used to the way he touched me. Relearn how to play our music again.
His lips pressed a kiss to that spot—his favorite spot—and I wished to be seduced by it or to open my mouth and tell him no. But instead of those things, I just stood there, letting him kiss my skin as I clenched my fists.
I felt him sigh against my skin, sending warmth down my back. “You always smell so good,” he said.
I softened a little at that, the edges of the Colin I’d fallen in love with pushing through. “It’s just lotion.”
He rubbed his face along my shoulder. “It’s amazing.”
And, unwittingly, a picture of Jude slid into my head. Jude, who was articulate and in touch with how I felt. And, still unwittingly, I found myself relaxing against Colin’s touch. And when Colin turned me so his lips could find mine, I did the worst thing I could have done.
I imagined it was Jude.
***ARC of this book was provided for an honest review
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