Ugly Love

by Colleen Hoover

  I have to chew on the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling.

  I think you're attracted to me, Miles.

  *

  As soon as we arrive at my parents' place, my father puts Corbin and Miles to work hanging Christmas lights. I take our things into the house and give Corbin and Miles my room, since it's the only one with two beds. I take Corbin's old bedroom, then head to the kitchen to help my mom finish prepping dinner.

  Thanksgiving has always been a small affair at our house. Mom and Dad didn't like having to choose between families, and my dad was hardly ever home, since a pilot's busiest times of year are the holidays. My mother decided Thanksgiving would be reserved for immediate family only, so every year on Thanksgiving Day, it's always just been me, Corbin, Mom, and Dad, when Dad is home. Last year, it was just Mom and me, since Dad and Corbin were both working.

  This year, it's all of us.

  And Miles.

  It's strange, him being here like this. Mom seemed happy to meet him, so I guess she didn't mind too much. My dad loves everyone, and he's more than happy to have someone else helping with the Christmas lights, so I know the presence of a third person doesn't bother him in the least.

  My mother passes me the pan of boiled eggs. I begin cracking them to prepare them for deviled eggs, and she leans across the kitchen island and rests her chin in her hands. "That Miles sure is a looker," she says with an arch of her eyebrow.

  Let me explain something about my mother. She's a great mom. A really great mom. But I have never been comfortable talking to her about guys. It started when I was twelve and I got my first period. She was so excited she called three of her friends to tell them before she even explained what the hell was happening to me. I learned pretty early on that secrets aren't secrets once they reach her ears.

  "He's not bad," I say, completely lying. I'm absolutely lying, because he is a looker. His golden-brown hair paired with those mesmerizing blue eyes, his broad shoulders, the scruff that lines his firm jaw when he's had a couple of days off work, the way he always smells so fantastically delicious, like he just stepped out of the shower and hasn't even towel-dried yet.

  Oh, my God.

  Who the hell am I right now?

  "Does he have a girlfriend?"

  I shrug. "I don't really know him, Mom." I take the pan to the sink and run water over the eggs to loosen the shells. "How is Dad liking retirement?" I ask, attempting to change the subject.

  My mother grins. It's a knowing grin, and I absolutely hate it.

  I guess I never have to tell her anything, because she's my mom. She already knows.

  I blush, then turn around and finish cracking the damn eggs.

  chapter eight

  MILES

  Six years earlier

  "I'm going to Ian's tonight," I tell him.

  My father doesn't care. He's going out with Lisa. His mind is on Lisa.

  His everything is Lisa.

  His everything used to be Carol. Sometimes his everything was Carol and Miles.

  Now his everything is Lisa.

  That's okay, because my everything used to be him and Carol.

  Not anymore.

  I text her to see if she can meet me somewhere. She says Lisa just left to come to my house. She says I can come to her house and pick her up.

  When I get there, I don't know if I should get out of the car. I don't know if she wants me to.

  I do.

  I walk to her door, and I knock. I'm not sure what to say when she opens the door. Part of me wants to tell her I'm sorry, that I shouldn't have kissed her.

  Part of me wants to ask her a million questions until I know everything about her.

  Most of me wants to kiss her again, especially now that the door is open and she's standing right in front of me.

  "Want to come in for a little while?" she asks. "She won't be back for a few hours, at least."

  I nod. I wonder if she loves my nod as much as I love hers.

  She shuts the door behind me, and I look around. Their apartment is small. I've never lived in a place this small. I think I like it. The smaller the house, the more a family is forced to love one another. They have no extra space not to. It makes me wish my dad and I would get a smaller place. A place where we'd be forced to interact. A place where we'd stop having to pretend that my mother didn't leave way too much space in our house after she died.

  Rachel walks to the kitchen. She asks me if I want something to drink.

  I follow her and ask her what she has. She tells me she has pretty much everything except milk, tea, soda, coffee, juice, and alcohol. "I hope you like water," she says. She laughs at herself.

  I laugh with her. "Water is perfect. Would have been my first choice."

  She gets us each a glass of water. We lean against opposite counters.

  We stare at each other.

  I shouldn't have kissed her last night.

  "I shouldn't have kissed you, Rachel."

  "I shouldn't have let you," she tells me.

  We stare at each other some more. I'm wondering if she would let me kiss her again. I'm wondering if I should leave.

  "It'll be easy to stop this," I say.

  I'm lying.

  "No, it won't," she says.

  She's telling the truth.

  "You think they'll get married?"

  She nods. For some reason, I don't love this nod as much. I don't love the question it's answering.

  "Miles?"

  She looks down at her feet. She says my name like it's a gun and she's firing a warning shot and I'm supposed to run.

  I sprint. "What?"

  "We only rented the apartment for a month. I overheard her on the phone with him yesterday." She looks back up at me.

  "We're moving in with you in two weeks."

  I trip over the hurdle.

  She's moving in with me.

  She'll be living in my house.

  Her mother is going to fill all my mother's empty spaces.

  I close my eyes. I still see Rachel.

  I open my eyes. I stare at Rachel.

  I turn around and grip the counter. I let my head fall between my shoulders. I don't know what to do. I don't want to like her.

  I don't want to fall in love with you, Rachel.

  I'm not stupid. I know how lust works.

  Lust wants what lust can't have.

  Lust wants me to have Rachel.

  Reasoning wants Rachel to go away.

  I take Reasoning's side, and I turn to face Rachel again. "This won't go anywhere," I tell her. "Thisthing with us. It won't end well."

  "I know," she whispers.

  "How do we stop it?" I ask her.

  She looks at me, hoping I'll answer my own question.

  I can't.

  Silence.

  Silence.

  Silence.

  LOUD, DEAFENING SILENCE.

  I want to cover my ears with my hands.

  I want to cover my heart with armor.

  I don't even know you, Rachel.

  "I should leave," I say.

  She tells me okay.

  "I can't," I whisper.

  She tells me okay.

  We stare at each other.

  Maybe if I stare at her enough, I'll get tired of staring at her.

  I want to taste her again.

  Maybe if I taste her enough, I'll get tired of tasting her.

  She doesn't wait for me to reach her. She meets me halfway.

  I grab her face and she grabs my arms, and our guilt collides when our mouths collide. We lie to ourselves about the truth.

  We tell ourselves we've got this . . . when we don't have it at all.

  My skin feels better with her touching it. My hair feels better with her hands in it. My mouth feels better with her tongue inside of it.

  I wish we could breathe like this.

  Live like this.

  Life would feel better with her like this.

  Her back is against the r
efrigerator now. My hands are beside her head. I pull away and look at her.

  "I want to ask you a million questions," I say to her.

  She smiles. "I guess you'd better get started."

  "Where are you going to college?"

  "Michigan," she says. "What about you?"

  "Staying here to get my bachelor's, and then my best friend, Ian, and I are going to flight school. I want to be a pilot. What do you want to be?"

  "Happy," she says with a smile.

  That's the perfect answer.

  "When's your birthday?" I ask her.

  "January third," she says. "I'll be eighteen. When's yours?"

  "Tomorrow," I tell her. "I'll be eighteen."

  She doesn't believe that my birthday is tomorrow. I show her my ID. She tells me happy early birthday. She kisses me again.

  "What happens if they get married?" I ask her.

  "They'll never approve of us being together, even if they don't get married."

  She's right. It would be hard to explain to their friends. Hard to explain to the rest of the family.

  "So what's the point of continuing this if we know it won't end well?" I ask her.

  "Because we don't know how to stop."

  She's right.

  "You're going to Michigan in seven months, and I'll be here in San Francisco. Maybe that's our answer."

  She nods. "Seven months?"

  I nod. I touch her lips with my finger, because her lips are the kind of lips that need appreciating, even when they aren't being kissed. "We do this for seven months. We don't tell anyone. Then . . ." I stop talking, because I don't know how to say the words We stop.

  "Then we stop," she whispers.

  "Then we stop," I agree.

  She nods, and I can actually hear our countdown begin.

  I kiss her, and it feels even better now that we have a plan.

  "We've got this, Rachel."

  She smiles in agreement. "We've got this, Miles."

  I give her mouth the appreciation it deserves.

  I'm gonna love you for seven months, Rachel.

  chapter nine

  TATE

  "Nurse!" Corbin yells. He walks into the kitchen, and Miles is following behind him. Corbin steps aside and points toward Miles. His hand is covered in blood. It's dripping. Miles is looking at me like I'm supposed to know what to do. This isn't an ER. This is my mom's kitchen.

  "A little help here?" Miles says, gripping his wrist tightly. His blood is dripping all over the floor.

  "Mom!" I yell. "Where's your first-aid kit?" I'm opening cabinets, trying to find it.

  "Downstairs bathroom! Under the sink!" she yells.

  I point toward the bathroom, and Miles follows me. I open the cabinet and pull out the kit. Closing the lid on the toilet, I direct Miles to take a seat, then I sit on the edge of the tub and pull his hand to me. "What'd you do?" I begin to clean it and inspect the cut. It's deep, right across the center of his palm.

  "Grabbed the ladder. It was falling."

  I shake my head. "You should have just let it fall."

  "I couldn't," he says. "Corbin was on it."

  I look up at him, and he's watching me with those contrastingly intense blue eyes of his. I look back down at his hand. "You need stitches."

  "You sure?"

  "Yeah," I say. "I can drive you to the ER."

  "Can't you just stitch it up here?"

  I shake my head. "I don't have the right supplies. I need sutures. It's pretty deep."

  He uses his other hand to rifle through the first-aid kit. He pulls out a spool of thread and hands it to me. "Do your best."

  "It's not like I'm sewing on a damn button, Miles."

  "I'm not spending the whole day in an emergency room for a cut. Just do what you can. I'll be fine."

  I don't want him to spend the day in an emergency room, either. That means he wouldn't be here. "If your hand gets infected and you die, I'm denying any part in this."

  "If my hand gets infected and I die, I'd be too dead to blame you."

  "Good point," I say. I clean his wound again, then take the supplies I'll need and lay them out on the counter. I can't get a good angle with how we're positioned, so I stand up and prop my leg on the edge of the tub. I put his hand on my leg.

  I put his hand on my leg.

  Oh, hell.

  This isn't gonna work with his arm draped across my leg like this. If I want my hands to remain calm and not shake, I'm going to need to reposition us.

  "This won't work," I say, turning to face him. I take his hand and rest it on the counter, then stand directly in front of him. The other way worked better, but I can't have him touching my leg while I do this.

  "It's gonna hurt," I warn.

  He laughs as though he knows pain and to him, this isn't pain.

  I pierce his skin with the needle, and he doesn't even flinch.

  He doesn't make a sound.

  He watches me work quietly. Every now and then, he looks up from my hand and watches my face. We don't speak, like always.

  I try to ignore him. I try to focus on his hand and his wound and how it desperately needs to be closed, but our faces are so close, and I can feel his breath on my cheek every time he exhales. And he begins to exhale a lot.

  "You'll have a scar," I say in a quiet whisper.

  I wonder where the rest of my voice went.

  I push the needle in for the fourth time. I know it hurts, but he doesn't let it show. Every time it pierces his skin, I have to stop myself from wincing for him.

  I should be focusing on his injury, but the only thing I can sense is the fact that our knees are touching. The hand of his that I'm not stitching is resting on top of his knee. One of the tips of his fingers is touching my knee.

  I have no idea how so much can be going on right now, but all I can focus on is the tip of that finger. It feels as hot against my jeans as a branding iron. Here he is with a serious gash, blood soaking into the towel beneath his hand, my needle piercing his skin, and all I can focus on is that tiny little contact between my knee and his finger.

  It makes me wonder what that touch would feel like if there wasn't a layer of material between us.

  Our eyes lock for two seconds, and then I quickly look back down at his hand. He's not looking at his hand at all now. He stares at me, and I do my best to ignore the way he's breathing. I can't tell if his breathing has sped up because of how close I'm standing to him or because I'm hurting him.

  Two of the tips of his fingers are touching my knee.

  Three.

  I inhale again and try to focus on finishing his stitches.

  I can't.

  This is deliberate. This touch isn't an accidental graze. He's touching me because he wants to be touching me. His fingers trail around my knee, and his hand slips to the back of my leg. He lays his forehead against my shoulder with a sigh, and he squeezes my leg with his hand.

  I have no idea how I'm still standing.

  "Tate," he whispers. He says my name painfully, so I pause what I'm doing and wait for him to tell me it hurts. I wait for him to ask me to give him a minute. That's why he's touching me, isn't it? Because I'm hurting him?

  He doesn't speak again, so I finish the last stitch and knot the thread.

  "It's over," I say, replacing the items on the counter. He doesn't release me, so I don't back away from him.

  His hand slowly begins to slide up the back of my leg, all the way up my thigh, around to my hip and up to my waist.

  Breathe, Tate.

  His fingers grip my waist, and he pulls me closer, still with his head pressed against me. My hands find his shoulders, because I have to grab onto something in order to steady myself. Every muscle in my body somehow just forgot how to do its job.

  I'm still standing, and he's still sitting, but I'm positioned between his legs now that he's pulled me so close. He slowly begins to lift his face from my shoulder, and I have to close my eyes, because he's making me so nerv
ous I can't look at him.

  I feel him tilt his face up to look at me, but my eyes are still closed. I squeeze them a little tighter. I don't know why. I don't know anything right now. I just know Miles.

  And right now, I think Miles wants to kiss me.

  And right now, I'm pretty damn sure I want to kiss Miles.

  His hand slowly trails all the way up my back until he's touching the back of my neck. I feel like his hand has left marks on every single part of me he's touched. His fingers are at the base of my neck, and his mouth is no more than half an inch from my jaw. So close I can't distinguish if it's his lips or his breaths that are feathering my skin.

  I feel like I'm about to die, and there isn't a damn thing in that first-aid kit that could save me.

  He tightens his grip on my neck . . . and then he kills me.

  Or he kisses me. I can't tell which, since I'm pretty sure they would feel the same. His lips against mine feel like everything. Like living and dying and being reborn, all at the same time.

  Good Lord. He's kissing me.

  His tongue is already in my mouth, gently caressing mine, and I don't even remember how that happened. I'm okay with it, though. I'm okay with this.

  He begins to stand, but his mouth remains on mine. He walks me a few feet until the wall behind me replaces the hand that was on the back of my head. Now he's touching my waist.

  Oh, my God, his mouth is so possessive.

  His fingers are splayed out again, digging into my hip.

  Holy hell, he just groaned.

  His hand moves from my waist and glides down to my leg.

  Kill me now. Just kill me now.

  He lifts my leg and wraps it around him, then presses against me so beautifully I moan into his mouth. The kiss comes to an abrupt halt.

  Why is he pulling away? Don't stop, Miles.

  He drops my leg, and his palm hits the wall beside my head as if he needs the support to continue standing.

  No, no, no. Keep going. Put your mouth back on mine.

  I try to look at his eyes again, but they're shut.

  They're regretting this.

  Don't open them, Miles. I don't want to see you regret this.

  He presses his forehead against the wall beside my head, still leaning against me as we both stand quietly, attempting to return air to our lungs. After several deep breaths, he pushes off the wall, turns around, and walks to the counter. Luckily, I didn't see his eyes before he opened them, and now his back is to me, so I can't see the regret he obviously feels. He picks up a pair of medical scissors and cuts through a roll of gauze.

  I'm stuck to the wall. I think I'll be here forever.