I shook my head. “No.”
His gaze met mine again, and I braced myself for something cataclysmic. He had a look that made me think he could do anything he wanted, change anything he wanted, save the fucking planet if he wanted to.
“You.”
The bottom fell out from underneath me. Not just the kitchen counter and the floor but the universe itself. It just dropped away. One minute, I’d known how to stand and walk and take care of myself, and the next, I was free-falling in a way that made me feel like it would be permanent. That I would never find solid ground again. I would just drop and drop and drop until there was only Charlie and only me and he only said that for the rest of eternity.
“What do you—”
He cradled my face with both his hands and pulled us close. “I couldn’t stomach the idea that I’d messed us up so badly. I couldn’t face losing you for real. And I was fine to put you, or the dream of you, aside while I got my shit together. But I promised myself it wouldn’t be forever. That when I reached this point of emotional and physical health, I could have you back. I could chase you again. Kiss you again. You were the big fucking reward at the end of a hard fucking road.”
“Charlie, I didn’t think you liked me back then. I thought you just—”
“As I’ve said, I pushed you away because I liked you so much. Because I knew I couldn’t lose the opportunity to make this good. Really good. The stuff of epic romances good.”
“You can’t be serious,” I argued, trying to get his sweet confessions to land in a permanent place in my brain, but they kept flitting out of reach. Like I was too violent and chaotic to make a good home for them. Like I was too much of a cynic to make room for genuine compliments. “That was so long ago.”
“Ada, you got under my skin. You marked my body with something that belongs only to you.” His hands moved down my neck, over my shoulders, to my hips. “I want more of this. I want to see if it’s as good as I remember. I want to take you out and date you and see if this is as good as I know it can be.”
For some reason, my dad’s no-show today popped into my head. But then Charlie leaned in and kissed the corner of my mouth. “I want to see you naked again,” he whispered against my mouth. “I want to taste you naked again.”
A full-body shiver wracked through me. “Okay,” I agreed without needing to hear anything else. “Yes.”
He pulled back. “A date, then? Tomorrow night or Monday?”
Wait, what? I shook out the sexy haze in my brain and tried to make sense of what he’d just said. “Tomorrow night for what?”
“Our date,” he explained slowly. “Does it work better to go out tomorrow or Monday? If you have another night off, I can be flexible, but I wasn’t sure—”
“I meant, we don’t have to go out...” Now I was fully embarrassed. Might as well keep going then. “I meant, you were talking about getting naked and—”
“Sure, we can work up to that,” he agreed magnanimously—too magnanimously if you asked me. “But let’s start with a date. I’ll wine ya, dine ya—”
“We can skip straight to the next part. I promise. I’m good. I’m ready for that part.”
His chuckle did the shiver thing again. All over my dang body. “Then maybe I need to be wined and dined, yeah? Besides, this is more than sex, Ada. This is good. This has potential. This will make sex so much better.”
I wasn’t sure I believed him. I wasn’t sure I needed what he promised. In fact, I was definitely not looking for something relationship-y. I just wanted to... meet some mutual needs.
On an unrelated note, I had never wanted to bury myself alive more than I did after that thought.Oh my God, what was wrong with me?
“Charlie, I don’t—”
He kissed me again. Fully on the mouth. Fully in a way that stole all my thoughts and objections and Charlie defense systems.
“One date,” he coaxed. “One dinner. One night out with me.”
One date? And then hopefully some amazing sex. Ugh, who would turn that down? And despite his proclamation, that he’d been waiting to be healthy enough to try again with me,with us, I wasn’t going to go there in my head.
I planted a mental No Trespassing sign in front of it to be sure.
He could have his one date, I could scratch this suddenly very itchy itch, and then we could go back to... whatever we were before tonight.Even if that meant no kissing...But we’d done it before. We could easily do it again.
Easily-ish.
“Fine, Charlie. One date.”
He did that half smile that was so bewitching. “Good answer, Ada.”
