CHAPTER 44
WOULD YOU LIKE ME TO BE LESS METHODICAL?
BILLIE
He’s making pasta. Something simple, with garlic and lemon and whatever herbs he has in his little makeshift garden. I sit on the counter—my spot, always the counter—and drink a Caesar and watch him cook, but the domesticity of it is different tonight. Charged. Like the air before a storm, when everything goes still and electric, and you can feel the pressure dropping against your skin.
He knows I’m staying. I know I’m staying. The knowing is a living thing between us, pulsing quietly under every look and accidental touch and sentence that trails off into loaded silence.
“You’re staring.” He doesn’t look up from the cutting board.
“I’m supervising.”
“You’re staring, and it’s distracting.”
“Good.”
He glances up, and the expression on his face—half amused, half something darker and hungrier—sends heat down my spine. I take a sip of my drink and hold his gaze, the moment stretching until the air between us is so taut, I can practically hear it humming.
“Dinner first,” he says, and it sounds like a warning. To me or to himself, I’m not sure.
“Obviously.” I cross my legs on the counter and take another sip. “I’m only interested indinner.”
“You’re a terrible liar.”
“I’m an excellent liar,” I jest. “You just happen to be annoyingly perceptive.” That part is true.
He goes back to chopping, but there’s a smile pulling at the corner of his lips, and his ears are pink. I file that away in the growing collection of things about Peter Darcy that make me feel unhinged.
We eat at the table like civilized people. The conversation is easy—his parents, the marina, a story about Leo and Neve’s increasingly absurd and adorable use of the termbabe—but beneath it, there’s a current. Early on, his foot finds mine under the table and stays there. His eyes drop to my mouth when I’m talking and linger a beat too long before snapping back up. I push my sleeves to my elbows while reaching for the bread and catch him tracking the movement of the fabric against my skin as if it’s the most interesting thing that’s happened all evening.
We’re winding each other up without touching, and we both know it, and that makes it worse. Better.
I set my fork down. “I think I’m done eating.”
“You’ve barely had any.”
It’s not true. I’ve had a full serving, but he knows I could go for another.
“I’ve eaten enough. And I don’t wantabbiocco, you know? That carb-coma after eating too much?”
His eyes meet mine across the table, and whatever restraint he’s been holding onto—the dinner first, the casual conversation, the careful distance—snaps. It’s in his jaw, how it tightens. In his hands going still on either side of his plate.In his breathing, which shifts from steady to deeper and more deliberate.
“Come here,” he says, low, and the roughness goes straight through me.
I don’t go to him. Instead, I stand slowly, holding his gaze, and take a step back. Away from the table. Toward the hallway.
His chair scrapes against the floor.
I make it four steps before his hand catches my wrist—not hard, just enough to stop me, to turn me. Then his mouth is on mine, and everything I’ve been holding at arm’s length comes rushing in.
This isn’t new. We’ve done this before—his hands, my skin, our bodies always speaking a language our mouths are too careful to use. But it’s different tonight, and we both feel it. I can tell by his kiss. It’s slower than usual, deeper, like he’s trying to memorize the shape of my mouth. Like this isn’t just want anymore. Like this is something he’s terrified of losing.
His hands frame my face, thumbs tracing my jaw. When he pulls back far enough to look at me, his eyes are so bright and so open that I feel exposed, and it has nothing to do with clothing.
“Hi,” he whispers.
“Hi.” My reply is barely there.
