It took him a few seconds to remember what pair I was referring to—the one he’d gifted me at Adalyn’s bachelorette to help me accomplish my dare. “Those are yours. For as long as you want to keep them.” Fully clothed, he padded toward me and gripped my chin, forcing me to look up. “Babe, did I do or say something wrong?”
I bit my lip and shook my head.
“Are you regretting what we did?”
“No.” I slid my lower lip between my teeth. “I don’t think we should kiss anymore.”
He slow-blinked. “Am I that awful at it?”
I snorted. “Like you could be awful at anything.”
That seemed to make him grow a few inches taller. “Then why not let me use it on you?”
I expelled an annoyed breath. I wasn’t annoyed at him but at myself. “Because you don’t want a relationship, and kissing”—I stepped back, skating my chin off its perch, and thrust a hand through my hair—“it feels boyfriendy, which is confusing.” My fingers snagged on a knot. I forced it to surrender. “Give me a few days to adapt to this arrangement between us. Once my head gets the memo it’s purely physical, we can go back to kissing.”
His gaze swept over my expression twice, probably in an attempt to establish whether I was merely quirky or just plain unhinged. “Okay.” He nodded. “No kissing.” He backed up a step. “Anything else?”
I went back to gnawing on my bottom lip. “No hugging, hand-holding, or napping together. And definitely no spending the night.”
“Noted. Anything else?” His tone was a little rigid, as though he wasn’t liking my list of rules.
“I’ll text you if I think of anything else.”
“You do that . . .” There was a definite edge to his voice.
I released my hair. “Liam, you may not need rules, but I do.”
A deep sigh relaxed the hard ridges of his body and face. “I’m so used to stipulating the law it feels strange to have someone else doing it, but I understand. And I will try to uphold all your requests.”
He walked over to my bedroom door and opened it. “Have a good night.”
“You too. And give Storm a kiss.”
He looked over his shoulder at me. “Lucky him.”
Change our status, and you’ll get one too.
Thankfully, I managed to stifle those words before my bluntness could ruin this fledging tryst.
Chapter 41
At dusk the next day, I finalized my painting and emailed it to my customer, then climbed the hill toward my house for dinner. I hadn’t heard from Liam, not that he needed to check in. Besides,Ihadn’t texted him.
As I trudged through the snow, I thought about sending him aheybut then decided it might come off as an invitation for a booty call, and although I wasn’t against one, that wasn’t my intent. I really just wanted to see how his day had gone.
The moment I pushed through the front door of my family home, my father’s stomach-growlingly delicious cooking enveloped me. “Hmm . . . what smells so good?”
“Probably me.”
I froze in the doorway, and then my mouth quirked at Lucas’s ridiculousness.
“Yeah. That’s got to be it.” I tried to peer over his shoulder, to see if anyone else was there.
“Who you looking for, Knickknack?”
My eyes zipped back to Storm, who was clinging on to Lucas’s side like a koala. “No one.” I reached out and scratched his chipmunk cheek. “Hey, you.”
“Wouldn’t be a certaincasualfriend?”
