The-Spanish-Love-Deception-www.indianpdf

man so confident, so composed—one who had made my body come alive and
sing with nothing more than the softest of touches—could be fussing over
having to kiss me. The flutter in my chest stirred, making me itch to reach—
A loud cheer exploded around us, taking my attention off Aaron.
People chanted, “Que se besen! Que se besen!” Kiss! Kiss!
My eyes leaped around desperately, my heart rising to my mouth.
Everybody was looking in our direction.
I’ll do it. I’ll kiss him.
As I zeroed in on the screen, something lurched to the pit of my stomach
in response to what I saw.
My dad reached for my mom’s face and planted a kiss on her lips.
It wasn’t relief. What had pierced my body was disappointment. Baffling,
inexplicable disappointment at me not being the one framed by the silly
string of hearts. Because my parents had been targeted by the kiss cam. Not
us.
I felt Aaron move beside me. Turning in his direction, my gaze
hopelessly fastened to his lips again. His mouth. That speck of
disappointment grew, obliterating everything else and turning into something
thick and heavy that promised a rich taste on my tongue. One that made my
heart speed up.
Want, I realized. What I felt was need. I wanted him, needed him to
gather me in his arms and kiss me like he had promised.
“Because when I finally take those lips in mine, it will be the furthest
thing from pretending.”
That was what he had said. And wasn’t what I was feeling inside—what
threatened to spill out and turn my life around—the furthest thing from a lie?
From pretending?
It was. Consequences be damned, but it was.
I was long past this deception scheme. And the ball of emotions that came
with that realization collapsed down my chest, crumbling along the rest of my
body and taking everything in its way with it. Real—what I was feeling had
to be real.
“When I finally kiss you, there won’t be any doubt in your mind that it is
real.”
I wanted it to be real. Real, real, real.
Aaron must have felt the shift in me—naturally, as he was the one person
on earth who seemed to read me like he owned the only copy to The