I’ve known for over a year that I’m missing something in my life. But it wasn’t until this trip that I realized how much I’m still standing in my own way with all of the rules I’m subconsciously following that shouldn’t be rules at all.
“Do people ever tell you it’s not your fault? Do people ever tell you you’re right and someone else is wrong?” I ask.
He doesn’t look at me while he flings more dough balls onto a cookie sheet. “Get plenty of validation in plenty of places.”
I swallow my next argument.But here? Are you validated here? Your sister gave you a babysitter. How is that validation?
No point in saying it out loud.
That much is clear.
He doesn’t want to hear it from me. And no matter how much we both adore Emma, she shouldn’t have asked me to babysit Theo.
Chandlershould own his part in this. And she’s marrying him in two days.
Because he’s truly her soulmate?
Or because she’s wanted a family for so long that she can’t fathom starting over with someone she doesn’t know as well, even if that someone could be better for her?
I’ve known Emma for a long time, and I hate the conclusion I can’t help but draw right now, and that it’s taken me untiltwo daysbefore her wedding to question it at all.
“I appreciate what you did tonight, for whatever that’s worth,” I tell Theo.
“Go. Away.”
“Why?”
He drops the tray of cookies on the prep table, oven gaping open behind him, and finally looks at me.
There’s an uncharacteristic intensity in his normally easygoing, but currently piercing gaze that makes me stumble back half a step.
It’s not anger.
It’s not frustration.
It’s—
Oh my god.
It’sdesire.
Theowantsme.
“Because if you don’t,” he says, low and gravelly, “I’m going to pin you to the nearest wall and kiss the ever-loving fuck out of you, and if I start kissing you, I won’t stop until we’re both bare-ass naked and completely spent on this floor.”
I suck in a quick breath as my breasts tighten and my clit tingles, and it’s not enough air.
Theo’s always been off-limits. Thebad boy. The rule-breaker. The guy all the girls would whisper about in the hallway in high school, the one they wanted to lose their virginity to, the one rumored to know more about sex than any high school boy should.
And that was over a decade ago.
When he was scrawny and wild and unpredictable.
He still has a wild side.
He’s still unpredictable.
But he’smore. It’s like he has all of the chaos harnessed deep inside of him, and he knows when to unleash it for maximum advantage.
