After a minute or two, there’s a crack of a branch in the distance, and the deer’s head lifts, ears perking before she runs off. Hallie stays there, squatting in the snow for another minute before I slowly take a few steps toward her, and she stands.
“That was crazy, right?” she asks, with a smile on her lips. Her eyes are a bit glassy, and I can make out where the tear fell before, but I ignore it, knowing somehow that’s what she would want.
“Yeah. You don’t normally see a deer that young without her mom, much less this time of year.” Hallie looks off to where the deer went, a look I can’t decipher on her face, before a chill runs through her, and I realize she’s absolutely freezing.
“Hallie, we’ve gotta get you inside,” I say, trying to keep my voice soft. Like the deer, I don’t want to scare her off, not now.
“I’m fine,” she says, then steps to move around me and back toward the UTV. Her shoes slip, her hands flying up in panic, and instinctively, as I’ve done so many times before, I catch her, pulling her into my chest. From here, I see her clearly—the whites of her eyes are a bit pink, her eyes are a little swollen—and I wonder if she’d been crying earlier, long before I found her.
“Those fucking shoes,” I murmur instead, and she gives me a half smile.
“They’re wet, so they aren’t even warm right now,” she admits. “I haven’t been able to feel my toes for a bit.”
“Your lips are blue.”
I expect her to tell a joke about looking at her lips, of which I’ll have to laugh off, even though we both know I am. In the past week, all I’ve been able to do is look at her, and often, I find my mind drifting to that kiss a year ago. Now that I know the truth of what happened, now that I know she’s just as into me as I am into her, and there are just extenuating circumstances making it impossible, I can’t seem to think of anythingbutkissing her.
And right now, with her so close, our breaths mingling in the cold air between us, it would take nothing at all to dip my head, to press my lips to hers. Would she meet me halfway?
My heart thunders in my chest as I grapple with the decision, deciding if I should just sayfuck itor step away, but I can’t seemto force myself to do either. We might stand like that for an eternity, but when her teeth chatter just a bit, I’m knocked out of the moment and into the reality where she needs me to take care of her.
“You need to warm up,” I say softly, loosening my grip on her and stepping away.
“Yeah, probably,” she murmurs. My mind is racing as she shivers again as we move back to the UTV, and she slides in beside me. Without thinking, I say something so incredibly foolish.
“Do you have a swimsuit?” The cold must be getting to me because I can’t quite figure out why I would say that.
“I…right now? On me?”
I shake my head and roll my eyes. “No. At your place.”
Her brows come together, and she shivers again, a reminder as towhyI said it. It has nothing to do with the potential of seeing her in a bikini and everything to do with the fact that she’s near hypothermic.
“Well…yeah?”
“We’ll go to your place. Grab it, and you can warm up in the hot tub.” She opens her mouth to argue, but I shake my head. “It’s the easiest way to warm you up, Hallie. I won’t even bother you if you don’t want.”
I don’t expect what she says next.
In a million years and with a million guesses, I never would have seen her next words coming.
“And if I do want?” she asks. My heart skips a beat, and I hold my breath. Her tongue comes out, licking her lips, licking her bottom lip absent-mindedly as she watches my own lips. I watch every millisecond, cataloging it for future use, for long lonely nights. Then, she clarifies. “For you to bother me. What if I want that?”
My mouth is dry, and my voice is raspy when I give my response. “Then I’ll be happy to bother you.”
Her pupils flare with my words, and beneath my thick denim jeans, my cock twitches.
This is so fucked up. This is such a bad fucking idea.
But I can’t stop it.
“Okay,” she says, then nods. “Then let’s go get my bathing suit.”
FIFTEEN
I hold onto my uneasy feeling for ten more minutes, but when I’m sitting on the edge of Hallie’s bed at her insistence, while she digs through her drawers for a bathing suit and acozy outfitto put on after, I crack, unable to hold it in anymore.
“So are you going to tell me why you were standing out in the freezing cold by yourself?” I ask, breaking the silence. I tried, but even watching her side profile, the blank look on her face as she digs through the drawers, I know this isn’t the normal, happy-go-lucky Hallie.
