“The one where you take me home and bend me over the table while I’m wearing your shirt.”
I swallow hard and her eyes drop to my Adam’s apple. It’s hot and I have no idea why, but seeing her pupils dilate has me half hard in the middle of this damn coffee shop.
“I thought we were having coffee.”
She rocks her hips against me, my brain short-circuiting with the movement.
“We can reheat it.” She licks her lips as she adds, “And have a lazy,nakedday.”
“Let’s go before I embarrass myself.”
“You say the sexiest things,” she teases, taking a step back and sipping from her cup as I grab mine before taking her hand.
“Enjoy it now, because I’ll be completely unable to form words the second we’re in the apartment.”
Laughing, she pulls me toward the door, throwing the girl wearing her skirt a little wave and a conspiratorial smile.
Kinsley Dane might be the hottest woman I’ve ever met, but she also has the biggest heart, and she changed someone’s life today. She’s so damn incredible it makes my heart squeeze in my chest.
And just because I can, I pull her to a stop in the middle of the sidewalk and kiss the hell out of her.
And what’s better—Kinsley Dane kisses me right back.
19
KINSLEY
“Does anyone else call you Roy?”
“No, just you.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know, I just…I like the way it sounds when you say it.”
My fingers trace over his skin, his arm draped over me as I lay my head on his chest. I smile in the darkness, happy for this quiet moment.
“Tell me something true,” he asks and I want to brush over it, want to ignore his question. But a bigger part of me wants to answer, the part that likes knowing that I can just be myself since there’s no chance for a relationship.
Not a real one.
But times like this, it feels like it’s something more even though I don’t know what that more is. I still want it. I still wanthim.
But Royce Oakden will never fit into my world, and not because I don’t want him to, but because it’s not where he belongs, and I would do everything in my power to protect him.
Because he’s still sweet, unjaded by the reality of my world, and I like that about him. I like that he doesn’t look at me and see only the soccer player or the playgirl image I’ve created.
He looks at me and he sees me. He sees the woman who lives next door, who cooks him pancakes, and who wants to have dance parties in the apartment.
But I can’t tell him that.
“I miss my best friend,” I say simply. “It’s hard to remember a time we haven’t been together. But she’s in Blackstone Falls with the father of her cousin’s baby, and I know that I’m going to have to tell her that it’s okay to stay there because she’s happy and he makes her happy and they’ve become this beautiful little family unit and it’s okay that she doesn’t want to play soccer anymore—that she doesn’t want to live this life.” A sob gets caught in my throat, the admission so much more than I anticipated. “And I’m gonna have to let her go even though part of me doesn’t know how to do this without her. She’s my person and she’s the only one who knows everything there is to know about me.”
“Does she know about what’s going on with you? With the texts?” I shake my head and his arms tighten around me.
“She doesn’t need the stress, and I don’t want to worry her.”
“Don’t you think she’d want to know what’s going on with her best friend?”
