I snatch it away, my skin hot from his touch. He stares at me, hand still hovering near mine, and I dart up the stairs.
I need to get out of this house. I need to roll around in the goddamn snow.
“Ella.” Gable follows me up the stairs and into the hall. This fucking hallway. “You have to stop doing that.”
I tap my fingers against my leg and turn to him. “Doing what?”
“You flinch whenever I’m near you. And every time you do, it just reminds me …” He sighs. “Just stop. I’m not going to do anything.”
“Then why did you do it at all?” I ask, my heart racing, wondering why I’m asking when the answer doesn’t matter.
“Because … because I got caught up. It was the day, reading what you’d written … I reacted and I shouldn’t have. And like I said, it won’t happen again.”
It shouldn’t hurt, but it does. Reducing that kiss down to a split-second mistake really fucking hurts.
“So, you didn’t want to do it?”
Give it up, Ella.
“No,” he says.
“Why?”
He sighs. “Fuck, you’re annoying. You want to know why I didn’t want to kiss you? There’s your answer. You piss me off.”
“Right, okay.”
“This can’t happen, Ella. It can’t ever happen.”
I’m breathing fast now, my heart ruling my head, because my head is telling me to walk away and ride out these next few weeks in peace.
“I know,” I say. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“Not just that,” he says, and he makes to move closer but stops himself. “Asher wouldn’t want it.”
“You don’t know what he would have wanted, because this situation is so out of left field, he never would have even considered it,” I say, raking my hands through my hair.
“Believe me, I know exactly how he’d feel,” he says. “And he wouldn’t like how I’d treat you.”
What the hell does that mean?
“Treat me?” I ask. “It was a kiss; I’m not asking you to go steady, Gable.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
I sigh and roll my eyes. “Then be fucking clear. You’ve never had an issue with cold-hearted truth before, so lay it on me.”
His eyes search my face. “I know how he was with you. I won’t make you feel loved; I won’t make you feel wanted, Gibson. I’ll make you feel good, and that is where it will end.”
My heart is racing so fast that my neck warms, and my fingernails press almost painfully into my thighs.
“I don’t have his kindness in me,” he says. “I never have. So, while he’ll have … admired you, appreciated you, I would use you. So yes, I know he wouldn’t have wanted this. And that’s why I don’t want it, either.”
I take in a deep shuddering breath, cheeks warm.
“So, you’re saying you’d just fuck me?”
“That is exactly what I’m saying.”
