Clay's P.O.V.

After the events that just occurred between Skye and me, I had to go outside and clear my head. I looked back at the party. Nobody was looking over at me. This was my chance to get out. I carefully and quietly walked up the stairs towards the front door, and I sat down on one of the small concrete stairs outside the house. It was warm outside, but every once in a while, there would be a cool breeze that would blow past me and cause me to shiver.

The image of Skye crashing her lips onto mine kept appearing inside my head, and every time I could feel my heartbeat accelerate when I thought about how unexpected the kiss was. But then when I thought about when Miranda kissed me on the cheek, I could feel my cheeks start to turn bright pink at the thought of her kissing my cheek. My hand unconsciously made its way to my right cheek, and gently I stroked the spot where Miranda kissed me.

I didn't care if Skye was mad at me for rejecting her feelings. I was going to try to talk to Miranda away from the others and tell her my hidden feelings for her. I hope that she accepts me and what I have to say. I headed back to the party, and I sat down next to Hannah and Miranda on the couch again. "Where did you go? You disappeared for a while," Hannah asked. "Oh, it's nothing. Just needed some fresh air," I lied. Hannah nodded slightly and started talking to Jessica while Miranda looked sad.

"Hey, are you okay?" I whispered to her as her eyes began to fill with tears. "I'm fine," she answered, wiping her tears away. I knew that she was lying, I didn't know what or who upset her, but I was going to help her feel better. "Miranda, it's obvious your not okay. You can tell me what's wrong," I said, putting a gentle hand on her shoulder. "Don't touch me," she said firmly. I quickly removed my hand from her shoulder.

"I-I'm sorry. I'll leave you alone if you want me to," I said, scooting away slightly from her. Miranda looked over at me with a few tears trickling down her cheeks, and she stood up and walked towards the stairs. I was confused. I didn't know why she was upset. I hadn't been gone that long, and everybody seemed to be continuing their conversations with friends. The only person who could know what made Miranda cry was Hannah.

"Hey, Hannah?" I asked. She took a sip of her hot cocoa and locked eyes with me. "What is it, Clay?" she asked. I leaned in close to her ear and asked her if we could talk in private, and she said yes. There wasn't a lot of places we could go in the basement to have a private conversation. And the upstairs was off-limits unless we had to go to the bathroom. That left only one place, the closet.

I carefully closed the paneled doors behind us, and we turned on our flashlights so we could see better. "So, what did you want to talk about?" Hannah asked softly, not wanting to draw attention to ourselves even though we were in the closet. "What's wrong with Miranda? I tried to talk to her, but she didn't say much, just told me not to touch her, and she went upstairs," I asked. Hannah let out a small sigh and looked through the wooden panels for a moment.

"I don't know if I should tell you. Miranda might get upset if I told you," she answered. I silently pleaded with Hannah to please tell me what was wrong with her, and I made a promise that I wouldn't tell anyone about this conversation between us. "Miranda said that she saw you kissing Skye while you were getting hot cocoa. I'm sorry if that sounded weird coming out of my mouth, but that's what she told me," Hannah answered.

Oh, she did see what happened with Skye. "Look, Hannah, I didn't kiss Skye. She kissed me. She said that she had a crush on me, but I told her I didn't feel the same. That's when she kissed me," I explained. Hannah's jaw dropped slightly, and she was silent for a moment before shaking her head, bringing her back to reality. "Oh," she barely whispered. "Just wondering, why did Miranda get upset when she saw that?" I asked.

"Don't tell anyone this, but she got upset because she has a crush on you,"