Bhodi balls up the cookie box and fires it into his empty pintglass, Christmas lights twinkling in his blue eyes. “Your hand.”
I glance down and find I’m pressing my own thumb into the spot Bhodi unlocked as my new kryptonite. “It’s fine. It just feels nice.”
“Nice is good, right?”
“Better than good. Is that a nurse thing? Rubbing people’s hands?”
Bhodi nods. “Some of the patients I see have been incapacitated a long time. Acupressure can help with the discomfort that causes.”
“I didn’t know that.”
Neither did any medical professional I’ve ever come across, but I keep that to myself and focus on how close we’re sitting—how close wealwayssit. We’re at a picnic bench in the town square, but I could be comfortable anywhere with Bhodi. He makes my heart beat like an incoming storm, but I like the wildness I feel around him. The recklessness, when I’ve spent so long drowning in caution, too scared to face any more pain.
He’ll never hurt me.
Course he won’t. He’s myfriend.
“Something funny?”
I dust crumbs from my hands, absorbing Bhodi’s nearness. The warmth seeping from his body, and the piney-cotton scent that makes me think of clean sheets beneath a fir tree. A big bed in the woods. Him and me. Me and him. “Nothing’s funny, except my silly brain.”
Bhodi leans back—he’s facing away from the table, facingme—and stretches his legs out, his strong thigh so very nearly pressed to mine. “What are you thinking about?”
“How I’ve never thought about a friend as much as I think about you.”
The smile of my dreams comes back, but it’s tinged with something that makes my bodyscreamwith the urge to reach for him. “That word’s been spinning around my head too,” he admits. “I like it—Ineedit—but I still want to fuck you.”
It’s the first time either of us has said it out loud, and it should feel out of context. Too sudden, too soon, but it doesn’t. Because I want to fuck him too…almost as much as I want to be his friend. His person. His fucking rock. And that keeps me in my seat when my baser instincts want to lean in and kiss the shit out of him.
“But we can’t bang.” Bhodi keeps talking when I don’t. “You’re my landlord. It’d be like a bad porno.”
Despite the echo of Sab’s thoughts on the matter, I remain convinced that nothing about banging Bhodi could ever be bad, but the scenario he’s describing is still seven shades of awful. I really am his fucking landlord. I’m in a position of power. If this went south, Bhodi’s the vulnerable one.
I knock his knee with mine. “I know all that. Doesn’t stop me thinking about it.”
“Oh yeah?” Mischief dances in Bhodi’s gaze. “What are we doing? And how are we doing it?”
I press my finger to my lips. “Shh. There’s kids around.”
There aren’t. Not really. But I’m not sure I can put words to the daydreams that blow through my brain when I’m least prepared for them. Bhodi’s a dirty bastard, I can tell, but would he want me like that? On my fucking?—
“You’re a tease.”
Bhodi rises, breaking me out of wherever the fuckthatthought was going. He towers over me, which doesn’t help, but I’m here for it. I’m here for anything except annoying him.
Have I done that? With his face cast in shadow from a nearby streetlight, it’s hard to tell, and I don’t like not knowing.
I swing my legs from under the bench and stand, swallowing the distance Bhodi’s put between us. He’s fractionally shorter than me, but a little wider, a cast-iron fact that does nothing to help me rein this shit in. “Sorry if I’m making this weird.”
“You’re not.” Bhodi hooks the cord of my hoodie around his finger before he seems to catch himself and let it go. “I’m just not used to…I don’t know. Holding back, I suppose. I usually plough on whether it’s a good idea or not, and that’s what I’m trying to stop doing. And withyou, it matters even more that I don’t fuck it up.”
“Why’s that?”
Discord sullies his gaze again, fighting with what might be shyness, but I can’t be sure. “I like you, Tam. Being around you makes me feel good, and I haven’t felt that with someone in…actually, I’m not sure I’ve ever felt it.”
I take a breath to tell him I feel the same. That I want him more than I’ve ever wanted anyone, but that I’m scared too. Of losing the easy companionship that comes so naturally to us. Of losing his gentle touch, and beautiful fucking smile.
But Bhodi’s phone blares, shattering the moment, and I step back to let him reach for it.
