Why did he have to be so breathtakingly gorgeous? I didn’t deserve this. I was a good person, deep down, and this kind of torture was unfair.
“Can I kiss you?” he asked, and I could’ve melted into the floorboards, a happy pile of goo who just wanted affection all the time.
I swallowed past a sudden lump in my throat. “Sure,” I said. “Consider this perpetual permission.”
Carter took a half step closer, standing with just an inch or two between us, looking into my eyes for long moments.
His knuckles brushed against my cheek, the fresh, inoffensive scent of the hotel body wash lingering on his skin.
He was sowarm.
Carter’s nose bumped against mine, gentle, playful, a smile spreading over his lips as they made contact, the softest, sweetest kiss I’d ever been given.
This wasn’t a kiss that saidlet’s have sex later.
It was just a tiny display of affection, an unspoken promise that he still liked me and that he was coming back.
For sex, I hoped.
But that wasn’t what was running throughCarter’smind. He didn’t kiss like a man thinking about how he was going to get off with me.
I wasn’t really sure how to handle that.
“Thank you,” Carter murmured as he pulled back, fingertips still resting on my cheek.
I raised an eyebrow. “For letting you kiss me? Because I mean it about general permission. Kiss me whenever you want. I’m not gonna be mad.”
Carter looked at me like I’d just offered him the moon. If the moon was something he’d always really wanted but hadn’t ever imagined actuallyhaving.
“I meant for pushing me to go see my dad,” he said. “But I’ll take that offer.”
He swooped in for one last kiss, barely a peck on the lips, and then backed away from me and headed for the door, looking back as he got to it.
“Go,” I said, shooing him. “Tell your dad I say hi.”
Carter smiled a blindingly pretty smile at me, slipped through the door, and disappeared.
17
Carter
“This is a pleasant surprise,”Dad said as I found his table, looking up at me with warmth in his eyes. “I was expecting Aiden.”
“Sorry to disappoint,” I said, but I’d heardpleasant. Aiden was right. Dad did want to see me.
“You’ve never disappointed me,” he said, meaningfully, as I sat down.
“Take it you’ve heard I’ve been kicked out of the wedding, then.”
Dad smiled wryly. “At length,” he said. “You’d think a divorce would save me from having to hear it, but no. No, I went and got myself cornered while I was trying to give your sister hersomething old.”
“Sorry.” I focused on the bottle of water between us.
Dad reached out and took it, pouring for me first and then himself. “Don’t be. Proud of you. Not just for standing up to your mother, but for sticking up for your friend.”
Friend.
Right. Dad knew how things stood, more or less, didn’t he?
