It made him smile to watch her fight. Hell, it made him smile to have her glaring at him for picking on Ben. But he never smiled outwardly, it was always internally, hidden away from her beautiful emerald eyes. He hid everything, and not just from her, Kevin hid everything from everyone. He wouldn't admit it, but it hurt to keep so much inside. It hurt to know that she thought he didn't care about anything, about her. The more he admitted to, the more it would hurt, he thought. Though it was very clear that it was hurting him way more to keep it inside. He had a theory, as wrong as it may have been, that you couldn't be hurt if you didn't let anyone in. But, somewhere along the line, he'd made a mistake and he had let her in. She just didn't know it. But he did. All too well.
"Back to the point," she said, tucking her hair behind her ear, shifting in the passenger seat, her hands wringing the seatbelt in both hands as she spoke. Kevin let the tiniest bit of a smile slip, passing it off to himself as a smirk, and tried briefly to remember what exactly she had been talking about to begin with. "Ben's birthday is in four days and I still..." Oh, that was right. Kevin didn't care, but he feigned interest. He was really just thinking about how beautiful she was. "Uh... Kevin?"
He snapped out of it. "Yeah?" He looked back toward the road as if his eyes had never left.
Gwen wasn't fooled. She furrowed her brow. "You were staring at me." And then she smiled. Kevin did his best not to notice it, but his best wasn't very good at all. He may have hit the brake a little hard when they came up to the red light.
"Sorry."
"For staring, or for giving me whiplash?" she asked with a brief smile that disappeared when he didn't return it. She shouldn't be surprised, he thought. He had that theory, and all.
"I'm in love with you."
It was a stupid, stupid thing to say, followed by an incredibly fast acceleration at the green light which produced a very painful squeal from his tires. He grimaced, though he couldn't be certain at exactly what he was grimacing. There were too many options. He tried not to look over at her, to make a bigger fool of himself, but he couldn't resist gaugeing her disgust. Call it morbid curiosity, call it self-hate. And it was worse than he thought, because she was smiling at him. She was probably going to laugh.
But then, "I thought you'd never fess up." And she did laugh, but it was an innocent, bashful little giggle as she leaned over and pressed her lips against his. Which, in hind sight, may not have been the safest thing to do while he was driving. Not that he was going to complain.