“I can’t believe I was so emotional!” I snapped. “Dean… The night he planned. The way we get along… And we laugh, Mom. Like, I’ve never laughed so much in my life.”

“I know,” she said. “I can see it.”

“But then I ruined it. I couldn’t control it. At all. The memories—” I sucked in a sharp breath, demanding my mind not to fall into the past again. “They crashed my brain.”

Mom shifted a bit so she could look me in the eye. “You didn’t ruin it. And that isn’t stupid. That’s a natural reaction after something so…” The same angry gaze coated her eyes—the one from that night—for a moment before she blinked it away. It had taken everything for me to stop her and Dad from pressing charges against Brandon. From contacting his parents, who were away when he’d thrown the party. I hadn’t wanted the word to spread…didn’t want to acknowledge the situation by tagging charges onto it. I’d just wanted it to disappear. To never have happened.

“You did nothing wrong,” she continued. “You’ll kiss Dean, or have another relationship, whenever you’re good and ready. Not a second before. And if Dean doesn’t understand that, then he isn’t the right boy for you.”

“He does get it, though,” I said, rubbing my palms over my face. “That’s what’s so insane. He gets my friend rule. He wants to know why I have it, not change it.”

Mom narrowed her gaze. “But he tried to kiss you.”

A flush raced over my skin. “I wasn’t exactly throwing up all my barriers,” I said, remembering how badly I’d wanted him to kiss me in that moment. The charge in the air, the excitement from the night, the closeness I felt to him. “Mom.” I glanced up at her. “Am I awful? For wanting to kiss him? After—”

“No,” she hurried to say. “Not at all. Don’t you ever think that.”

It was hard not to think it. After what had happened, I thought I wouldn’t want to kiss anyone for a long time. Never want to let someone get that close again until there were years between what happened. Then Dean happened, and now I wasn’t sure if it was even right for me to be having these…desires.

“It feels different with him.”

“How so?”

I sighed, my body tingling with thoughts of him. “With…you know who, it was never like this. I didn’t even know it could feel like this, and Dean and I aren’t even dating.” I chewed on my lip. “He’s perceptive and kind and funny. And when he holds my hand or when I hug him, it’s like being underneath my favorite blanket and skydiving at the same time.” I cringed. “That sounded so corny.”