We’re a baffle sandwich, except we’re the bread in the sandwich and the doorway between us is the filling.
“So you’re sorry because…?” I prompt.
Also, why are men more attractive to me when they’re bewildered and confused?
“I—I came to apologize.” There’s a level of uncertainty in his voice that does nothing to combat how adorable I think he is.
“I got that part. For what?”
“For…” He lifts his eyes to mine. Visibly swallows. “For scaring you away from the party.”
His answer filters through my brain like it has to get through the outer layers of sludge and lyrics before it can hit the parts that understand what he’s talking about.
But finally?—
The kiss.
He’s apologizing for looking like he was going to kiss me under the mistletoe.
Heat flashes across my face as the first drops of a freezing rain splatter the dead leaves littering the forest floor around the cabin behind him.
I wanted him to kiss me.
I was ready for him to kiss me.
Even knowing that he’s a massive playboy, that the gossip pages are always one step away from labeling him amanwhore, that kissing him would mean I’d once again have to move, there were multiple parts of me ready for him to kiss me.
I assumed he was willing to do it because it was expected when you’re standing under the mistletoe, and that he didn’t give it another thought.
The fact that he did—my stomach dips.
And then I take back control of myself. “You didn’t scare me away.”
“I—the mistletoe—and the rules—and I—when you bolted, I thought I’d crossed a line and ruined your vacation. Your Christmas.”
NotI wanted to kiss you.
Nope.
I thought I ruined your Christmas because there was a rule about mistletoe.
I swallow hard against disappointment that has no right to be there.He kisses women all the time, Aspen. You’re not special.
But hedoescare about me on some level. We’re friends. Basically since the first minute we started texting about his pool house, I’ve felt we were friends.
And he’s just reminded me that that’s all we’ll ever be.
“You weren’t inappropriate last night,” I tell him. “But stalking me out to a cabin in the woods…”
He looks up at the sky, up at the falling rain that’s hitting him on the head, then blinks and winces, rubbing his eye like Mother Nature nailed him as he looks back at me. “I just didn’t want you to think you had to run away instead of enjoying your holiday with Waverly. I tried to text you, but it bounced. So I tried to call you, and it wouldn’t go through. I thought—I thought you blocked me.”
I shake my head. “Glitchy cell signal here.”
“Yeah, I—” He cuts himself off as another blast of wind blows the fat, cold drops of rain onto both of us.
I shiver.
He shivers.
