But I shake my head. “No.” I clap my hand over his, stopping him from shoving the paper into his pocket. I unwrap his fingers, one by one. His skin was warm to my touch before, but now it feels like I’m touching live wires. I pull the paper from his hand and flatten it on the table.
It’s still true.
“I’m going to keep this,” I tell him almost sheepishly. “So I can look at it any time I feel bad. You really know how to make a girl feel special, you know?”
I say that last part in a silly voice that makes me instantly mortified.
But Clint’s expression is confused. I feel like if he spoke, he’d sayHow could you forget?
“Jeff always talked about how people didn’t need compliments,” I explain. “‘If you do, you’re insecure,’ he’d say. Maybe I was, but I wouldn’t have minded one or two here and there, you know? Not even about my looks. Just anything beyond the perfunctory would have gone a long way.”
Clint makes a confused face and points to his lips. He writes in his notepad,Sometimes I can’t catch all of what people are saying.
Embarrassed, I repeat myself. “I feel so stupid. Because I think it was just me he didn’t compliment.”
You’re so hot, baby.That’s what he said to Clara. In a fucking broom closet.
“I’m not fishing right now,” I promise Clint. “I just…thank you. For saying that.”
I don’t realize my hands are in fists until Clint’s warm hands graze mine. Once again, heat radiates from where we touch.
I stare at our joined hands. And I watch as Clint presses my fists open, making them relax. I watch as, with a kind of reverence, those thumbs gently press against my palms, sliding softly up.
The touch is somehow deeply intimate. Heat gathers between my legs as I imagine the same kind of reverence he’d show in other places.
Clint pulls his hands away like he thinks he’s gone too far.
But I catch them before he can stop.
He snaps his gaze to mine, his pupils broadening.
An hour ago, I was engaged to be married. Now? I want to tell Jeff to go to hell. I want to make him suffer.
I want to feel all the things I never felt with him.
I want to know the touch of a man who actually thinks I’m beautiful.
Finally, I let go of Clint’s hands. He looks chagrinned. But I press a hand to his cheek.
His eyelids flutter, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows.
And right there, I make a decision so unlike me that I know I have to act before I lose my nerve.
I tip his chin up so he knows to look at my face. When his eyes are on me, I say, “I need to take this off.” I press my hands to my wedding dress.
Clint’s eyes go wide.
My stomach drops as I realize he doesn’t look into it. He looks…terrified.
“I have a slip on underneath,” I say quickly. “I’m just finding it kind of hard to breathe.”
I dip my chin. “You know what? Never mind. I’m fine.” I feel sleazy for coming on to him. I misread the signs.
But Clint’s hand comes to my chin now, his fingers there tilting my face back up. He shakes his head, his expression back to where it was before.
Admiring. Reverent.Mine.
That makes no sense. But there it is.
