“Um... now? It finished cooking a while ago. I’ve just been keeping it warm.”
Sitting down to a meal Micah had cooked was ten shades of surreal, but the awkwardness of it faded as soon as the smoky, meaty stew he served up hit my tongue. It tasted a thousand times better than it smelt, and the rice was unbelievable. I half cleared my plate before I found coherent words. “This is incredible. How am I only just now finding out you can cook?”
“Because it’s not true. I can make one thing, and that’s only because it involved putting meat and beans in a pot and falling asleep.”
“Yeah, well. Feel free to do it more often.” I ate more food while Micah pushed his around his plate. As my greed was sated, the anxiety that had carried me home returned.Fuck. Maybe he really is going to move out.
The mountain of delicious food he’d cooked me turned to stone in my gut. I shoved my plate away and reached for the beer he’d put in front of me. “Let’s have it then,” I said. “What do you want to talk about?”
Micah picked up our plates and carried them to the sink. He turned the tap on, rinsed them, and stacked them in the dishwasher before he faced me again. “I want to take back what I said the other day.”
“Which part?”
“I don’t know, I can’t remember it all. Whichever part made you think I don’t want you.”
“You never said you didn’t want me. Just that you weren’t... well enough, I guess, to explore how you feel.”
Micah sighed. “That’s still true, but I’m having a really hard time accepting it.”
Every nerve in my body screamed at me to get up and go to him. To put my arms around him and smooth the worry lines from his face, but caution countered instinct. I took a deep breath. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that I don’t want to ignore what happened, and I don’t want you to feel as though you have to. For a while, I wished it hadn’t happened at all, but I don’t want that either.”
“Whatdoyou want, Micah?”
He took a step forward. Stopped. Took another step. “I don’t... fuck, I don’t know. But I can’t live like this. I can’t live with you feeling like you did something wrong when you putting your lips on me like that was all I’ve ever wanted.”
My heart stuttered to a painful halt and restarted with a savage kick to my ribcage. “I don’t feel like what we did was wrong, but I respect that it’s not what you want right now.”
“But it is!” Micah shouted. “Don’t you get it? Idowant it. I wantyou. I always have.”
I flinched. Couldn’t help it. I was a feisty mofo in my own right, but it had been a long time since a dude had last yelled at me. And it was the first time I’d ever heard Micah raise his voice. I stood and went to him. I put my hands on his chest. His heart thudded wildly against my palm and his arms trembled. “It’s okay to want me and do nothing about it. I’m your friend. You don’t owe me anything.”
“I don’t want to just be your friend. I want more.”
He spoke so softly I had to wonder if my own thoughts had betrayed me. If I’d unconsciously spoken them aloud. But Micah’s eyes said more than his words ever could. Molten with desire and fear, they entranced me, drawing me in until our faces were inches apart. “I want more too,” I whispered. “But not if it’s going to derail you. You’ve worked so hard to get better.”
“As if you could ever make me worse. Dude, it’smethat’s freaking me out. Not you.”
“How do we stop that, though?”
Micah shrugged, and helplessness cast a shadow over his face. “I don’t know. But... I want to try. And I have the tools I need for that. Will you, um, be patient with me?”
I could be patient about anything except waiting another second to kiss him again. With his heart still kicking the shit out of my palm, I closed the distance between us and melted against him, fusing our lips together.
Micah staggered back against the counter, taking me with him. He seized my face in his hands and responded, and as his velvet tongue slid into my mouth, stars aligned. This was different to any kiss we’d shared before. There was no surprise, no shock and awe, just the warmth of a desire gone unspoken for far too long.
Somehow, we ended up in the hallway. My bedroom door was closest, but it was shut. Micah’s door was open. He broke our kiss and took my hand. “Come with me.”
12
Micah
Morning came with bright sunshine. After weeks of dull grey skies, it was like I’d opened my eyes to another world—a world where Sam lay asleep next to me, his slender arms wrapped around me, his head on my chest.
My fingers were tangled in his hair. I left them there as I came awake and took stock of the fact that he was really in my bed and what I was seeing wasn’t the remnants of a fucked-up dream. It had been years since I’d slept with anyone, in the literal sense. Before Sam, spending the night with someone had involved a pocketful of coke and faceless sex. With him, we’d kissed for hours and then fallen asleep in our clothes, and I wouldn’t change a fucking thing.
Except maybe that my leg was so stiff and sore it felt like my nerves had been replaced with jagged glass. And the fact that I had to get up and neck my medication before I got jittery, which meant disturbing Sam and leaving the nest we’d built around us in my bed.
