All those truths I’d been too scared to say—this isn’t the life I want, this isn’t the right kind of love for either of us—had burned the back of my throat for months. I refused to make myself that small ever again.
My heart hammered, but I squared my shoulders anyway.
If we left this hanging with nothing labeled, I was going to implode in on myself like a star.
“So,” I said finally, pitching my voice a little too loud, a little too bright, the way you do when you’re trying to sound casual and land somewhere near deranged instead. “We’re good to blame adrenaline, right? Near-death sledding. Temporary lapse in judgment.”
I winced at my own phrasing.
Lapse in judgment. Great. Nothing sexier than calling a man’s mouth a mistake.
Snow squeaked under my boots as we walked. I thought maybe he wouldn’t answer, that he’d just let it hang there in the air like a weird-shaped balloon and pretend he hadn’t heard me.
Then Wes huffed out a breath that sounded suspiciously like a humorless laugh.
“Pretty sure we were nowhere near death,” he said, avoiding my eyes. “But yeah. Adrenaline works. We don’t have to make it a thing.”
It was absurd how much those words managed to sting.
My body had absolutely made it a thing. My pulse, my mouth, the way every nerve ending had sat up and taken notes the second his tongue slid against mine—they’d all voted unanimously. This was very much a thing.
“Look, I just—” The words tangled, my tongue tripping over all the versions I couldn’t say.I kissed you because I wanted to. I kissed you because you laughed and it broke me open. I kissed you because I haven’t wanted anything this much in a long time and that scared the shit out of me.
His mouth twitched like he wanted to smile and didn’t trust himself with it. He shrugged out of his coat the rest of the way and hung it on a hook, shoulders tightening under the motion.
“I just mean,” he said, looking past me at the kitchen doorway, “we don’t have to overcomplicate it. It happened. Adrenaline. Snow. Whatever.”
There was that word again.Whatever.Like this wasn’t currently rearranging my internal organs.
I cleared my throat and tried again. “The last thing I want is to screw up your friendship with my brother.”
There it was. The safe excuse. The shield I could hold between us and pretend it wasn’t welded to my own fear.
Hayes’s face flashed across my mind—protective, tired, carrying his own stack of guilt about Wes that he never quite put down. The idea of being the reason things got weird between them made my stomach flip in a way that had nothing to do with the sled.
If I wrecked this, I didn’t just lose a kiss.
I risked Wes retreating right back into his house-ghost version. I risked Hayes looking at me like I’d broken something fragile he’d trusted me with. I risked this tiny, flickering version of progress we’d somehow stumbled into.
Wes’s jaw flexed, a muscle jumping near his ear. He finally glanced over, his gaze skimming my face quick, like a touch he didn’t trust himself to hold.
“You’re not going to screw up my friendship with Hayes,” he said. “I’ve done a decent job of that all on my own.”
The words landed heavier than he probably meant them to.
“If this blows up,” I said quietly, “I’m the one who lit the match. Again.” The last word slipped out before I could stuff it back down where it belonged, somewhere under bad memories and broken engagements.
Wes looked at me then.
Really looked.
His eyes were darker in the hallway’s weak light, the color deep behind the sweep of his lashes. I thought I saw something soften there, something almost tender.
“Hey,” he said, brow furrowing. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
I huffed out a brittle laugh. “We definitely did something.”
He exhaled, a humorless little breath. “Yeah. We did.”
