I wait for a knock or my name. Some indication that he’s going to push—the way Jon always did when I tried to set a boundary.
All I hear is silence as my racing pulse starts to slow.
Five minutes pass. Then ten. And I realize he’s not coming.
Is it relief or disappointment curving around my spine? Both, maybe. The tangle of emotions is too knotted to separate into individual threads. Time to go to sleep and pretend this never happened. Tomorrow, I’ll make an awkward joke about it. And ina few days, I’ll fly back to Colorado and never see Jeremy outside of events with his sister, where I can go back to ignoring him.
Good plan. Except my feet carry me to the door, need and want at a level I barely recognize spurring me on.
I find him on one of the lounge chairs by the pool, sitting forward with his elbow on his knees, a glass of bourbon dangling between those long fingers.
Yes, please, my body begs.
Charred cat piss, I remind it.
He’s staring at the liquor like it holds the answers to questions he might not be ready to ask. Join the club, dude.
“You don’t have to hide out here.”
His head turns, and in the soft glow coming from the underwater pool lights, his features appear even more piercing than normal. Couldn’t he at least have a sagging jaw or receding chin?
“Not hiding, sweetheart. I’m sulkily brooding. It’s what guys like me do.”
His words pull a laugh from me, and damn, there’s that husky undertone again. “I’ve never met a guy like you.”
“Lucky you.” He sets the glass down on the small table beside him and starts to stand. “I owe you an apology. I had no right to?—”
“Do you want to fuck me?”
His body goes still, and the connection stretching between us is so charged, I can feel it press against my skin. What would possess me to ask that question? Oh, right. I refuse to hear an apology for the first kiss to make me feel alive in years.
“Since the moment I first saw you.”
At least I’m not the only one who sounds like I’m nursing a three-pack-a-day Marlboro habit.
“Passed out on the beach? So appealing.”
“Before.” He runs a hand through his hair, and I watch the muscles in his forearm flex. I might be obsessed withthose forearms. Don’t judge.
“When Sloane first called to tell me about her leukemia, I flew to Colorado and drove to Skylark that same night.” His gaze shifts away from me to the pool’s smooth surface. “But I was too much of a chickenshit to face her. Not after the horrible things I said during our last fight and letting one stupid argument turn into years of silence.”
“So instead you…”
“I watched her,” he admits with a self-deprecating laugh. “I parked outside the bookstore and watched her go about her day like some creeper in a low-budget Lifetime movie.”
“Don’t knock Lifetime, but definitely creeper coded.”
He laughs again, then finally looks at me, and the tenderness in his expression feels out of place with those granite angles. “The two of you walked out of Cover to Cover together, laughing about something. You tossed your hair over your shoulder, and I thought...” His throat bobs as he swallows. “I thought you were the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”
My heart stutters when he continues.
“You reminded me of all the pretty girls who never gave me the time of day in high school. They looked right through me like I didn’t even exist. Or even worse, with pity for the sick computer geek.” His jaw tightens. “I wanted you and hated you at the same time, because you were beautiful and part of my sister’s life in a way I wasn’t sure I ever would be again.”
The breath whooshes out of my lungs. “I don’t think you can faultmebecause you were a dick to Sloane.” I try to sound flippant, but my voice comes out breathless.
“People with my kind of money typically do whatever we want.” He stands and closes the distance between us until he’s near enough that I can smell his cologne and the salty scent of his skin. “But that doesn’t make it right. I shouldn’t have kissed you.”
“I wanted you to.”
