This was going to be a long week.
* * *
“You wantthe bad news or the bad news first?” I asked as I got off the phone, Carter still perched on the end of the bed like he was afraid to move.
“Dealer’s choice.” Carter shrugged.
“Heating’s out. But on the plus side, it’s out for everyone, so we’re not suffering alone.”
“That’s not as comforting as you think it is,” Carter said. “Means we can’t even go hide out in Dad’s cabin or something.”
I hadn’t even thought of that as a possibility, but now that he mentioned it… yeah, this was worse than it could have been. If it was only us, well, other people had couches we could crash on.
“No, right, okay. So. They’re saying at least a couple of hours to fix it, maybe not until the morning when there’s, y’know. Sunlight to see by.”
“This is sounding less and less promising as you go on.”
“Well,” I said, looking at the dying embers of the fire that’d been set in the hearth when we came in. It was more for show than anything, and I knew that, but it had to be better than nothing. “We bring the fire back, bank it, and then…”
“Share the bed,” Carter said, which was a surprise. That wasn’t where my train of thought had been going atall.
“Come again?”
“We share the bed,” he said. “We won’t both fit on the couch and it’s… it’s die-of-exposure cold outside. We’ll be a lot more comfortable sharing body heat.”
He wasn’t wrong. I was just surprised that he wassuggestingit.
“Look at you,” I said, trying not to think about how exciting the thought of curling up next to him was. “Mr. Survivalist.”
Carter rolled his eyes, but the tiniest proud smile made the corner of his lips twitched. “Quit giving your loving boyfriend shit,” he said as he stood up, throwing my own words back at me.
Only my little bi heart wanted them to be sincere so badly that I couldn’t even laugh.
Guilty as I still felt, as Carter’s shoulder brushed against mine while we stoked the fire, adding logs carefully, one at a time so we didn’t smother the flames, I couldn’t stop thinking about kissing him.
About how soft and warm his mouth was and how there’d been wine on his breath but I didn’t really mind, about how warm his body had been.
It was still warm now, so close to me I could smell his aftershave mingling with the wood smoke, warm and inviting. I wanted to press my nose to his jaw and inhale, hold his body close—
If we were sharing a bed tonight, I needed to stop that trail of thought right there.
“It’s okay that you kissed me,” Carter said as we both sat staring into the fire, warming ourselves up before we made the dash across the room to bed. “And I asked Kieran if we could. Y’know. To see if…”
If I liked it.
He didn’t have to say it out loud for the words to hang in the air between us.
“And?” I asked, curiosity getting the better of me.
“Kieran’s like a brother to me, so it was kinda gross.” Carter wrinkled his nose. “Stupid test now that I think about it.”
“Stop me if you don’t wanna talk about this,” I said. “But uh. You ever think to find out how you felt about it with someone else?”
We were socloseto getting somewhere. I knew exactly what Carter wasn’t saying—that he was still curious, and I was piquing his curiosity.
But I couldn’t say itforhim. This was the kind of conclusion he had to come to himself, or it wouldn’t mean anything.
“If you’re gonna interrogate me, I get to interrogate you,” he said.
