Noah rolls his eyes, but from what I can tell, the man has never met a bet he wouldn’t take. He hooks his arm around Savannah’s shoulders, pulls her in, and places a kiss to thecrown of her head. She laughs, already halfway to the door and everyone else follows behind them, leaving Maverick and me alone in the kitchen.
“Make you another drink before we go out?” Maverick looks at me, and even over the Lil Baby song blaring with a mix of a hundred different voices, when his eyes settle on mine, it feels like we’re the only two people here.
I nod and hop up onto the spot that Savannah just left. The laminate is cool under my palms and the backs of my thighs, and I settle into it, grateful to take away some of the heat now coursing through me.
Maverick turns back to the makeshift bar, and I can’t pull my gaze away from his arms as he works. He lifts the bottles and slices the limes, unhurried. The muscles in his forearms flex as he works around the limited counter space. Close enough that I can feel him without ever touching him.
“Hockey player by day, bartender by night?” I ask, mostly to focus on something other than his arms.
He glances over his shoulder with an easy grin. “Something like that.” He squeezes the lime over the cup, drops it in, then hands it to me. Our fingers brush, but that unmistakable brush only affects me because nothing in his face changes. I take a sip, keeping my eyes locked on his over the rim of the cup. It’s lighter than I’m used to, but Savannah’s drinks have ruined me. They didn’t give her the nickname Heavy-Handed Alvarez freshman year for no reason.
I’m about to slide from the counter and suggest we go find her when the kitchen door bursts open.
A guy barrels in, loud and fast, shouting a greeting at Maverick. In one second, I’m offering a small wave, and the next, he’s yanking open the refrigerator door, forcing Maverick to move.
Straight into me.
His body slots between my knees as he sidesteps the door, pushing himself further against the counter where I’m sitting.Instinctively, I scoot back, but there’s nowhere to go. The cabinets behind me dig into my neck just as his hands bracket my hips, catching himself.
“Hall, they told me you're up next,” the guy says.
Maverick answers him over his shoulder, the picture of calm. While I hold my breath, twisting to focus on something other than the way his body feels hovering over mine, I latch on to anything I can. The faded curtains hanging in the window, the sink stuffed with bags of ice, the glow of the lights in the backyard.
“See ya out there,” the guy calls out, followed by the door swinging shut.
The kitchen goes quiet again, and slowly, I turn my head.
Maverick doesn’t move. His hands are still placed on either side of my hips, and his chest is close enough that I can feel the heat coming off him.
I inhale and his warm scent fills my head. My pulse stutters and my tongue wets my bottom lip without permission. We’re close enough now that I don’t know where his breath ends and mine begins.
His thumb brushes along the side of my leg, so soft that I can’t tell if it was intentional or not.
“Chloe.” His voice is caught somewhere between a question and plea.
Before I can answer, the music gets cut off followed by a collective groan. Sound rushes in, pulling me back from the edge through my chest, leaving me gasping for air.
What the hell am I doing?
I slide off the counter, skimming the front of his body on the way down, and don't leave even a second to consider the hard length of everything I just rubbed against before darting to the sliding glass doors.
“Chloe, wait.”
I feel him reach for my elbow but I swivel my arms over my head, hurrying my steps outside.
The cool night air smacks me in the face, and I gulp it down like it might turn me back into the person I was before I felt Maverick’s body pressed up against mine. Beyond the deck, a crowd forms around a beer pong table. There's a mini tiki bar in the far corner, with a guy who looks barely eighteen working the bar and wearing a slutty maid costume. A plastic kiddie pool is filled with some sort of mystery liquid that everyone keeps dunking their cups into as they walk by, and on the other side of it, is a line ten people deep ready to take on an ice luge.
I walk to the edge of the deck, fingers gripping the railing, and inhale. In one breath, the music is back on and the scent of him fills the space at my back.
“Chloe,” he says my name carefully, like how I would imagine he would talk to a scared dog.
I squeeze my eyes shut, take a breath, and when I open them, I put on my everything’s-fine smile.
“I really just needed some air,” I assure him. “I’m good. It was just a lot with the party, and your friends…” I’m grasping at straws here, but anything sounds better than admitting to him that his close proximity was almost enough to make me lose control.
“Do my friends make you uncomfortable?"
“Well, yeah?—”
