Rush The Game

to jerk away. Slowly, he pulls me closer. I let him. I let him wrap his arms around me. I let myself rest my cheek against his chest. And for a few moments, I just breathe and listen to the steady beat of his heart.
    “I’m still an asshole,” he whispers, his breath fanning my hair.
    “I know,” I whisper back.
    “Good.” Last word.
    Luka is sitting on my front steps when I get home. He’s hunched over, head down, forearms on his knees. At the sight of him, warmth kindles in my chest. Not like the butterflies I felt with Jackson. Something else. A feeling of the familiar, the known and safe.
    He lifts his head at my approach, his dark eyes wary and assessing. “I waited for you.”
    I stop a few feet away. “So I see. Thanks.”
    “For waiting?”
    I nod. “For waiting. For coming at all. I know you’re breaking the rules.”
    “Yeah.” He offers a lopsided grin, easy and open. “Seems like everywhere we turn, there are rules. I wonder if we’ll ever just get to make our own.”
    I don’t know what to say to that. I’m not sure I want to be a rule maker, or even a rule breaker.
    “He found me,” I say.
    Luka lifts his brows. “Who?”
    “J—” I press my lips together, not certain I’m supposed to say his name. Then I throw my hands in the air. “This is ridiculous.” It is. I’m supposed to censor every word I say because some invisible entity might be watching? I understand the need for a certain amount of discretion, but second-guessing my words is making me paranoid. “Jackson,” I say. “Jackson went running with me.” Only as I say it do I remember that it must be okay because Jackson said names out loud, too.
    It’s confusing to try to play by rules when I don’t even know what they are.
    Luka’s eyes widen. “Wow. Okay.” He doesn’t sound happy. “Wasn’t expecting that.”
    “Neither was I.” I hold out my hand. Luka takes it, and I pull him to his feet. Once he’s standing, I have to tilt my head back and look up to meet his eyes. He definitely got taller during the year he was away. His shoulders are broader, his jaw leaner. “Why’d you call him?”
    “Because I couldn’t stand letting you—” He holds his hands to the sides, elbows bent, palms up, obviously looking for the right word.
    “Freak out,” I supply.
    “I was going to say lose your shit, but that works. So where is he?”
    “Jackson? I left him at the park.”
    “Couldn’t stand another minute in his company?”
    I press my lips together, remembering the way I felt with Jackson’s arms wrapped around me, the way I rested my cheek against his chest and listened to his heart beating slow and steady. I don’t know how long we stood like that. I think that given the choice, I might have stayed there forever, but at some point Jackson dropped his arms and stepped away from me, leaving me feeling awkward and weird.
    While he was holding me, it felt right. But once it was over . . . well, that was another story. Suddenly, I’d wanted— needed —to be away from him, because standing so close, breathing in the scent of his skin and feeling his arms warm and strong around me, had pushed me into water far out of my depth.
    Luka laughs, mistaking my silence. “He has that effect on people.”
    “Actually, I couldn’t imagine running back here with him and having my dad pull in as we arrive,” I say. “That’d be great, trying to explain who he is and where I know him from.” Dad had been the perfect excuse, and Jackson hadn’t offered any argument. So either he’d been as anxious to ditch me as I was to ditch him or he’d sensed my discomfort and decided to be kind. If I were a betting sort of girl, I’d lay money on the former.
    As if my mention of Dad summons him, the Explorer pulls into the drive.
    “Perfect,” I say at the same time that Luka says, “Perfect.”
    We look at each other and laugh. Which actually is perfect because Dad climbs out of the SUV to see two classmates laughing together instead of a boy and a girl standing tense and awkward and uncertain.
    Dad walks over and I make the introductions. It’s easy. Painless. “Dad, this is Luka. He goes to school with me. He’s on the track team.” Dad grabs hold of that last bit of information and decides Luka’s trying to convince me to join. He grins and pumps Luka’s hand because he thinks an organized sport would be good for me. I don’t bother to correct him.
    He glances at me and, taking in my running gear,