CADE: answer me, Pip
My thumb hovered over the button. I knew what answering meant.
I knew this was not project territory. Not friendship. Not accidental chemistry we could laugh off later and pretend had gotten away from us. This was a choice. Mine. His. A line we were both looking at with our hands already reaching.
I answered.
Cade filled the screen in low light, hair damp and messy, jaw tight, eyes so dark I forgot how to breathe for half a second. He was in his room, propped against his headboard, one arm braced behind his head like he had been trying and failing to look relaxed before the call connected.
The second he saw me in his hoodie, his expression changed into something hotter. Hungrier. More honest.
“Hi,” I whispered.
His eyes moved over my face, then lower, catching on the oversized black fabric swallowing me whole.
“Hi, Pip.”
My stomach flipped at the roughness in his voice.
For a few seconds, neither of us said anything. We just looked at each other through the screen while the room around me felt too quiet and too loud at the same time.
Then Cade’s voice dropped.
“You still want fair?”
My breath hitched and I nodded before I could make myself speak.
His gaze sharpened. “Tell me, Pip.”
Heat rushed straight through me.
“Yes.”
His expression softened for one second, just enough to remind me that underneath all that intensity, he was still watching me carefully. Still leaving me the door. Still making sure I was choosing this.
“Then we go slow,” he said. “And if you want to stop, you say stop.”
My throat tightened. “Okay,” I breathed.
Cade’s eyes held mine through the screen, dark and steady and full of a restraint that somehow made the moment hotter instead of safer.
“Good,” he murmured.
12
Bliss
“Good,” he said, and the way his voice dropped around that one word made my entire body go still beneath his hoodie.
I hated how quickly he could do that to me. One second I was trying to act like I had any control over this situation, and the next Cade was looking at me through a phone screen with damp hair, bright eyes, and that rough, restrained voice that made every smart thought I had scatter like smoke. The room around me felt too quiet now, wrapped in rain tapping softly against the window and the faint hum of my ceiling fan above me, while he filled the screen like something I had wanted too badly and too long to keep pretending I didn’t.
“You’re nervous,” he said.
I let out a shaky breath and pulled the sleeve of his hoodie over my hand. “I’m not nervous.”
His mouth barely moved, but I saw the smile anyway. “Pip.”
I swallowed hard. “Okay. Maybe a little.”
