“I was such an idiot.”
Elliot reached over Waffle’s warm body and threaded his fingers through hers, his head mere inches away. He was looking at her, his eyes bathing every inch of her face in warm light.
There’d be no way to pass off this moment as casual or accidental. He was moving with intention. The air between them thickened. The look in his eyes pressed against her skin. Her heart stopped, like it was bracing for impact.
His eye contact didn’t waver as he stared at her, his lips partingin something that wasn’t quite a smile but couldn’t be anything else. It made her nervous, this role reversal. But he looked at her like he had plans she wasn’t privy to.
“As your husband, that leaves me with only one option,” he said finally, his gaze still confidently locked on hers. “I have to fight him.”
The volume of her laugh surprised them both. It even woke Waffle—for approximately two seconds before he promptly crashed again. It was the look on Elliot’s face. There wasn’t an ounce of possessive machismo in it. She knew without a shadow of a doubt he’d said it to make her laugh and to declare—in the dumbest way possible—that he was in her corner.
“Hayden is long gone,” she assured him. “The whole thing kind of exploded, and Bree’s parents announced that, moving forward, the Groff Retreat would be child-free.” She rolled her eyes at the way her poor instincts managed to topple an entire program. “But I appreciate the empty gesture.”
“Empty? You don’t think I could take him?” he teased.
His thumb trailed along the back of her hand in delicate movements. She wasn’t sure she’d ever felt so physically connected to a person by a single point of contact. Their palms were welded together, fused by the heat and pressure of the air in the truck cab.
“No, you could. His eyebrow did this waggle-thing when he corrected people’s grammar. Very punchable. And you’re surprisingly fit.”
His brows shot up. “Surprisingly? Wow.”
“It was only a surprise at first. Because of all the sweaters.” His grin overwhelmed his face while her own felt like it had been transported to the inside of an oven. “Now, I know. Not like…I don’tknowknow. But I know.”
“What do you know?” He was so pleased with himself, and she wanted to hide her head in Waffle’s fur. Yet somehow, she couldn’t look away for even a second.
She swallowed, her desire stirring. “You shouldn’t fish for compliments. It’s unattractive.”
“You’re not attracted to me anymore, Davis?”
“Who said I was in the first place?”
“Come on.” He smirked, not missing a beat.
This would’ve been the moment to pull their hands apart. Instead, he turned her fingers in his, admiring them with soft eyes. “Sometimes when you look at me, it feels like no one’s ever looked at me before. Like I didn’t exist before I met you and you made me out of nothing…the way you make everything out of nothing—a roof, a table, that stag sculpture in the backyard.”
She mirrored his posture without thinking—head tilted, knees angled toward his on the other side of their fluffy companion just as his were. “You think it’s a stag?” Lainey hadn’t known what was revealing itself from the remnants of the dead tree down by the lake, but now that he mentioned it, the animal began to take shape inside her mind.
“I just said all that, and you want to talk about my take on your sculpture?”
“I have my priorities straight,” she teased.
He smiled. “That’s one of the things I like best about you. You have this single-minded determination. I admire it.” Her chest tightened from the simple feeling of being recognized so clearly by another person. “That and your freckle right here.” He brushed his thumb over the space above her lip, a hair to the right of her cupid’s bow.
“I have a freckle there?” The question sounded like a breath of air.
He nodded. “It’s ruining my life.”
Her breath caught in her throat. The heat of his gaze wrapped around her body like a silk ribbon. No one had ever looked at her like that. She wasn’t sure anyone had ever looked at anyone like that—with such naked want—and the longer he did, the more receiving his desire began to feel like agony. Like when something was too good, too right, it had to hurt a little for the sake of balance.
“Why don’t you tell your friends about me?” she asked, her aching vulnerability twining each word.What am I to you? What will I have meant to you when this arrangement inevitably ends?
He adjusted his glasses with the hand that’d just been touching her face. He was buying time.
“I have.” He swallowed hard. “They already know about you…from before. They know about the woman who drove me to the gas station. And how I felt about her.”
Lainey’s heartbeat slowed to a crawl. She shouldn’t push, but she couldn’t help herself. She had to know.
“How did you feel about her?” Her heart was folding in on itself as she waited for his answer.
