“Nick,” she hissed back.
“What’s wrong?” he repeated.
“Why do you even care? I’m a big-time ballet brat, remember?”
“And I’m an uptight asshole. But we’re stuck with each other.” He was stuck with her, he meant. He had taken pity on her. “And if we’re going to keep working with each other, you either need to get it together or tell me the truth.”
She stared at him furiously for a few seconds, then forced the words out. “You could have told me you had a girlfriend.” She hated how plaintive and pathetic she sounded.
There was a long silence, and her words hung in the air. Nick was giving her that look again, and she watched as realization dawned on his stupid, handsome face. She wanted to screw her own face up and squeeze her eyes shut so she didn’t have to watch a knowing smile creep over his mouth, but she willed herself to stare him down, desperate to hold on to some scraps of dignity. It was physical attraction, what she felt. That was all. He was objectively good looking. She could think that withoutlikinghim. The world was full of objectively good-looking men, literally millions of them, and plenty of them were unlikeable assholes and—oh God, he would hold this over her forever, she thought as she watched him.
But the smile she was expecting never materialized. Instead, he rubbed a hand over his head and sighed.
“I don’t have a girlfriend,” he said quietly.
“Oh, bullshit,” she retorted.
“Idon’t,” he said, more firmly this time. “We broke up a few months ago.”
“Marcus doesn’t seem to think so.”
“Yeah, well I lied to Marcus,” he shot back hotly.
Carly frowned. “Why?”
“I—It doesn’t matter. It’s complicated.”
“Uh-uh, no way,” Carly crossed her arms. “If we’re going to keep working together, you either need to get it together or tell me the truth.”
Nick narrowed his eyes at her, but after a moment, he spoke. “She broke up with me. We were together a long time. I was hurt, and I wanted to lick my wounds on my own. And, I didn’t want to make my break-up Marcus’s problem when he had a wedding to plan. Okay?”
Carly shrugged, as if this information was neither here nor there to her, as if she wasn’t alight with curiosity. How long was a long time? Had they talked about marriage? What was she like? What was Nick like when he was in love?It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t like you, and you don’t want to like him.
“Okay,” she said, pushing off the wall at last. “Are we done here?”
“Maybe,” Nick said. “If you can tell me why you’d be so upset if I had a girlfriend.”
“I wouldn’t be,” she gritted out. Her pulse was suddenly fluttering in her ribcage again.
“But you were. We established that already.”
God, he was infuriating. “Fuck off, Nick.”
“I’ll fuck off if you tell me why you were were so bothered by the idea of me having a girlfriend.”
“Fine,” she snapped. “I’m angry because for one very brief, very idiotic second, I thought you weren’t a complete asshole, and of course I was wrong, and I hate being wrong.”
“Interesting,” he said, taking another step toward her. There was barely a foot between them now, and if he came any closer, she wouldn’t be able to avoid smelling his cologne. “Because for one very brief, very idiotic second, I thought you weren’t a complete brat. And I don’t think I was wrong.”
Carly stared at him. He watched her, studying her face while she scrambled for words. He was so close. She pressed her lips together and watched his eyes flick to her mouth and stay there. “But if you really think I’m an asshole, then you wouldn’t care about that. Right?”
“Right,” she said faintly, determined not to look away from him even though he was so close and so beautiful it almost hurt to meet his eyes. God, those eyes. In the dusk light the blue was almost gray, the lashes casting shadows on his cheeks. Those eyes could see things in her face she didn’t want him to see. Things she didn’t want to be true. But they were. The knowledge that Nick wasn’t single had made her furious for reasons she hadn’t wanted to think about. But he’d known. He’d looked at her and he’d known. “Right, I don’t care about that,” she murmured, with a swallow.
“And you definitely wouldn’t care if I had a girlfriend. Isn’t that right, Carly?”
“Oh, shutup,” she sighed, and then she grabbed a fistful of his shirt and pulled his mouth down to hers.
At first it was more collision than kiss. He stumbled forward in surprise, his nose squishing hers slightly, and his teeth glanced against her bottom lip gracelessly. But then he braced himself against the wall, a hand on either side of her body, and righted himself. Suddenly there was almost no air between their bodies at all. She was so aware of the smell of him, all spice and citrus, his mouth pavlova-sweet and reassuringly firm against hers. She felt his tongue slip past her lips, and as it met her own, a small sound, somewhere between a sigh and a groan, escaped from her throat.
