Smells Like Winter

38: Challenge Me

Maddy went rigid.

This couldn't be happening.

Mia held Logan's intense gaze, the two of them seeming to be speaking with their eyes.

If it was nothing, then go ahead. Kiss him like you kissed me that night, Logan's eyes challenged her. Mia's full lips were now nothing but a thin line.

Sia looked like she was sick. The one she wanted was in love with her best friend. Carter's face was an expressionless mask Maddy couldn't see through.

Mia gave Logan a last look that spat, Fine, right in his face, accepting the challenge in his eyes with a blasting spark of her own.

And she turned towards Carter.

Maddy's heart skipped a beat. An emotion she'd never felt before hit her stomach like a rock thrown in water. The way Mia crawled towards Carter on all fours made her insides twist and sting. She crinkled her nose, because she honestly did not want to have to watch Mia shoving her tongue down Carter's throat.

Carter didn't budge as Mia stood in front of him, shoulders squared, so close that their noses almost touched. They looked each other straight in the eyes.

Mia was gorgeous, a goddess of such ethereal beauty that it was almost poisonous. Her silky strawberry blonde hair cascaded over her elegant shoulders in wild, yet somehow neat waves. Her skin was flawless, like alabaster, and glowing, and her small, upturned nose was devastatingly cute, almost kissable. Her cat eyes were the eyes of a predator, brown and sparkling like expensive champagne behind her long, seductive eyelashes. Her full lips had a sinful, sensual plumpness about them.

Then Mia licked those lips of hers, and leaned forward.

Maddy clenched her jaw and looked away. She looked at Logan, then at Sia. She could see how much it hurt for them to watch. It was clear in their tense muscles, their pressed lips, their wide eyes.

She didn't really care whether Mia and Carter would kiss or not. Wasn't supposed to, at least. But seeing the pain in Logan's and Sia's eyes, anger lit inside her veins. This wasn't fair. It pissed her off. It pissed her off that Mia was hurting Logan like this. It pissed her off that Logan had challenged her to kiss Carter just to hurt her back. It pissed her off that the usually happy, cheerful Sia was now so sad. And it pissed her off that Carter did nothing about it.

He clearly doesn't mind a good smooch.

She couldn't even blame him.

As Maddy pictured Mia's lips pressing against Carter's, the image too vivid through the eyes of her imagination, for a split second, it felt like time had stopped.

Then, "No."

Maddy's heart started beating again, thunderously enough that she could hear it. She lifted her large eyes on Carter, wide and quivering, only to find him staring back at her, piercing her soul.

"No," repeated Carter, shaking his head lightly. He drew his eyes away from Maddy, and gently pushed Mia back. "You two need to sort things out, clearly. Let's call it a day."

Maddy released a breath she hadn't realised she was holding.

"I think that's a good idea," rasped Sia quietly, and, turning her back on all of them, she lay down a few feet away.

Logan spared Mia a last insistent glance before doing the same. He pulled his blanket kind of aggressively, and then didn't move again.

Mia rubbed the sockets of her eyes with the lower part of her palms, letting her fingers rest on her temples for a moment.

You fucked it all up, she seemed to be telling herself.

Her hands dropped miserably by her sides, and she dragged her feet to a spot as far away from Logan as possible, closing her eyes as if wishing to never open them again.

Maddy sighed. She reached for another blanket and curled up in the warm fabric, wrapped in it like a burrito, trying to keep her teeth from chattering -it had gotten colder all of a sudden.

Now that the image of Mia standing so close to Carter wasn't poisoning her vision, Maddy didn't see why her gut had tightened so much.

Confused, she tossed and turned on the rough surface of the ground that had become her bed for the night, feeling agitated.

And, just as she was trying to process what had just happened, she felt a body shifting the blanket and getting closer to her, radiating off heat.

As much as she wanted to absorb the warmth of his body in that cold night, she couldn't help but tense at the way his shoulder touched hers slightly.

"What are you doing?" she breathed.

"The dare, remember?" replied Carter indifferently, with that raspy voice of his.

"Screw the dare, Carter. Go away," mumbled Maddy, pushing him to leave her alone to her blanket burrito. She turned her back on him, dismissing him.

He huffed a laugh. "Not in the mood for cuddling, princess?"

She didn't need to turn around to know that he was smirking, that he had raised an arrogant, pierced brow at her.

"Definitely not with you," she hissed.

The girl tried not to tremble too badly from the cold, because that would bruise her pride, but failed miserably. Her teeth were chattering.

"You're shaking," he observed. And, at her lack of response, he reached out for her and pulled her closer to his body.

Maddy's eyes went wide at the unexpected pull, the contact. She tried to take his hands off her waist, stifling a small, voiceless cry.

"Don't touch me, your hands are cold."

But his hands just tightened around her, like a vice. "I'm hot, I swear."

Maddy's face heated. "Let. Go."

"Don't you want a man to warm you through the night, princess?"

Maddy half-turned to shoot him a hateful squint. "You're a man when I tell you you're a man," she informed him moodily, and turned her back to him once again, facing the darkness ahead.

"Wanna see?" he purred in her ear.

She shivered at the closeness of his lips and breath to her earlobe. Thrashed away from him, anger lighting her veins, pushing him at an arm's length distance. "Prick."

He chuckled behind her. Bastard.

"Good night, princess. Try not to moan too loud when you dream of me."

Maddy choked at that, and feigned coughing to disguise it. "Try not to think so high of yourself." She pulled the blanket to her so hard that it left him almost uncovered. "Pervert."

He just chuckled again, and turned around.

They slept back to back that night.