He lifts one of those hands and gently bites my thumb. “You weren’t mine either—who cares? I’m pretty sure the point of being in a relationship is for someone to be your last, not your first.”

Just like that, I feel the last of the bricks weighing my shoulders down fall away, and I settle into the warm flannel feel of him, curling into his arms exactly as I’ve been dying to do for days. “You know, for someone who floated into Camden on a cloud of pot smoke, you are oddly profound, Sammy.”

He snakes an arm around my waist and turns me, quick as lightning, so that our lips are mere inches apart. “For fuck’s sake, please just call me Salem,” he mutters before kissing me into oblivion.

Chapter Eighteen

I WAKE UP THE NEXT MORNING with my lips feeling bruised and my brain feeling dangerously full of happiness and excitement in a way I haven’t felt in … ever, maybe? Which of course means I immediately assume it was all either a dream or a mistake, and any minute now Salem’s going to wake up and tell me the latter.

But when my phone does light up with a text from him, all it says is Beast in 5?

Despite the fact that Salem and I do eat many of our meals together, we’ve never, ever planned it, which does seem to confirm the possibility that last night was real and there will be more kissing in our future. I text back a quick confirmation, and then look at the other text that’d been waiting for me this morning.

Sabrina

fucking finally

My smile at that is so huge, it’s somehow embarrassing me even with no one in the room to see it. But I don’t have time to dwell on my relief at getting Sabrina’s blessing, so I run to brush my teeth and throw on clothes.

And in five—okay, seven, because punctuality still isn’t Salem’s strong suit—minutes, when a knock sounds at the door and I swing it open, the smile that spreads slowly over Salem’s extremely kissable mouth when he says “Hi” would suggest that last night was very, very real indeed.

“Hi,” I say back, feeling inexplicably shy. This is Salem, and yet I suddenly have no idea what to do in his presence. Can I kiss him? Can I take his hand? Do we have to keep us a secret because of Jenna or just my generally being an embarrassing human?

He leans against the doorway, his long, lean body filling the frame and making it even harder to think. “Having second thoughts?” he asks, his lips still twitching with a smile that suggests he does not actually think that’s what’s going through my brain.

“Just … trying to figure out what to do here.”