“Ah, when I was Fake Charlie? Yeah, well, you can definitely claim some of the credit for me embracing my true self: the snoop.”
“I barely did anything. Just pissed you off in the rain one day.”
“You goaded the good girl out of me.”
His smile was slow and a little sweet. I wondered if he could talk about that night without thinking of the kiss in the rain. I definitely can’t. Can’t even write about it now without going there. His body hard against mine, his lips slick with rainwater…
“I like you a lot better when you’re not behaving yourself,” he said, stretching his arm across the back of the sofa.
My breath quickened. Glanced at his crinkling gray-blue eyes and then looked away hastily, because that felt like a very risky place to look. His gaze wasn’t just soft and sweet now. There was heat there.
“Does getting nastier really count as personal growth?” I said, through a laugh.
“You’re never nasty.”
“What am I, then?”
It was a dangerous question, and I knew it. But I wanted to hear what he thought of me. Wanted to catch him in this moment—sleepy, walls down, knowing smile on his face—and hear him say what I suspected we both knew.
There was something here. It had grown slowly, like the two of us, and it was absolutely going nowhere,couldn’tgo anywhere. But it felt so good. I looked away, my gaze finding my handbag. I keep the catalog of donors in there—don’t want to leave it lying around the stables. Stared at the bag and tried very hard to remember exactly why flirting with Jones was such a bad idea.
“You’re thoughtful and kind,” he said softly. “Funny, too. You get the best out of people. You’re scared, sometimes, and you do the thing anyway. You’re brave. And you’re so beautiful that I want to stare at you nonstop. I thought for a while if I looked enough, I’d get you memorized, and I could quit, but it really hasn’t worked that way.”
I kept my eyes fixed on that handbag. It began to swim in my vision.
“One all,” I said. “You made me cry, this time.”
He reached out to squeeze my ankle. His hand lingered, then, when I didn’t pull away, it stayed. The way I was sitting, knees to the side, legs tucked, meant his knuckles were tantalizingly close to my upper thigh. I wanted him to move, just a little. Imagined him stretching out his fingers, climbing his hand up the curve of my hip and gripping me there.
“Charlie. I never thought…” His voice was husky.
The look in his eyes sent a feeling through me, a kind of inversion of the anxiety: a firework, but a good one. I looked down at his hand on my ankle. Slowly, fully in the knowledge that I shouldn’t, I slid myhand over his. Just this—his hand on me, mine on him—was enough to send desire beating through me. It was becoming so bloody hard to remember why we shouldn’t do this. Had a wild vision of telling him,I want a baby, and of him saying,I want a baby, too, right now, let’s have a baby together, but of course it was crazy. It would never happen like that. I know exactly how it would go: I’d fall for him, then either scare him off or let him string me along for far too long, and all the while I’d lose yet more precious time.
“Charlie,” he said again, his voice deeper. Almost a warning.
Knew I should let go of his hand. Move away. Keep my eyes down.
Instead, I looked up and met his gaze. Saw pure, raw longing there, and felt it surge through me in response, and knew I was done for. Reason was gone. There was nothing I could do except lean forward to kiss him.
He moved in the same moment. We met halfway, lips fierce as we collided with a searing kiss. My hands were in his hair, tugging and clawing, and his fingers worked their way under my jumper, searching for skin, finding it. He gripped my hip. I lay back, pulling him over me as we kissed harder. Wild and messy. He ground against me, just once, and I cried out—I was already lost in it, lost with him.
I honestly don’t know how long it was before I saw sense. He said “Charlie” again—moaned it, his lips against my neck. That was what pulled me up short.
“Jones,” I said breathlessly.
He stopped instantly. Heard something in my voice, I guess, or felt it in my body.
“You OK?” he asked, smoothing my fringe back from my forehead.
I could feel his chest heaving against mine.
“I just…I can’t,” I said, and he was already moving off me, straightening his shirt, shoving back his hair. His eyes were warm and kind, but he gripped the sofa cushion as he settled back into it, as if he needed something to hold him steady.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to get…” He took a breath, running a hand over his face. “I was trying to tell you, I never thought anyone could make me feel…”
I said his name again, pulling my knees up to my chest. His eyes searched my face.
“No?” he said. “You don’t feel the same?”
