She looks away. “That’s not your problem.”
“It’s always been my problem.”
I reach up, carefully unwinding the last of the lights from her waist. My fingers linger at her hip. On purpose.
“Because you’re my best friend,” I add quietly. “And because I want you.”
She laughs weakly. “You have a funny way of showing it.”
“I stay,” I say simply. “I always stay.”
She looks at me then, really looks.
“That doesn’t mean you get to decide things for me.”
“I’m not deciding,” I say. “I’m offering.”
The lights finally fall free, pooling at our feet.
Neither of us moves.
The storm howls outside like it knows something’s about to snap.
“You should step back,” she says.
I don’t.
“You should tell me to.”
She doesn’t.
Instead, she whispers, “You’re going to ruin me.”
I smile slow and dangerous. “I’d do it gently.”
Chapter 8
Rory
Itell myself I’m fine.
I’ve told myself that all night—while the snow pounds the windows, while the firehouse hums with generators and low voices, while Valentine’s decorations blink like they’re mocking me.
Fine is a lie.
I sit on the edge of the long wooden table in the common room, boots kicked off, socked feet tucked beneath me. I’ve got a mug of cocoa I haven’t touched and a heart-shaped cookie someone left behind that I keep breaking in half without realizing it.
Dax watches me from across the room, pink hearts strung from the ceiling blink behind him.
I don’t look at him.
That feels safer.
“You’re going to turn that cookie into crumbs,” he says.
I snort. “That’s the goal.”
He comes closer anyway. Of course he does. He always does. Pulls up a chair, spins it backward, straddles it like he owns the space—and maybe me, if I’m being honest.
