Her smile was downright gleeful. “Yes.”
She opened it and pointed. I lifted my chin and stared at the ceiling. Apparently, I’d be going through the window.
I was not graceful about it. I landed in a bush, my shirt falling behind the house. I frowned as my foot landed on a branch, pausing to see if Hazel heard me. I heard her mumble a thank-you and the front door slam.
“Oh my god, it looks so nice in here,” Hazel praised, her voice moving away from the window. “Would you mind making some coffee? I’m dying.”
I could hear Nat’s sigh of relief. “Not at all.”
A sock pelted me in the head. At least I wouldn’t be walking away from this place half-naked. I could hear the sound of thetoilet flushing, then the sink being used as Nat stumbled around the kitchen.
“So I wanted to talk to you about something,” Hazel said.
I zipped up my jeans.
“Sure.”
“That counselor you replaced last year, Lucas? He just reached out to see if we had any roles available, so I figured I’d talk to you.”
Wait, what?
“Talk to me…” The hesitancy in Nat’s voice was nothing compared to the worry running through mine.
“You didn’t know if you wanted to stay the whole summer, right?”
I’d been expecting this a month ago. Nat had a career already, but I’d thought she was having a good time here.
“Sure. I did say that.” Was she hesitant? Or had she been waiting for this?
I tied my shoe and fell over.
“What was that?” Hazel asked.
Nat looked outside, holding back a laugh as she saw me in my state of undress. She closed the window. “A deer.”
The word was barely distinguishable through the glass, which meant that I wasn’t going to be able to hear the rest of their conversation. That fact was confirmed when placing my ear against the siding produced no results.
Was Nat leaving?
My head was fuzzy. It usually took me a solid twenty minutes to wake up, and gazing at Nat had maybe taken up ten.
She’d been so beautiful this morning. And last night. The way she’d looked me in the eyes as we came together. It filled my chest with something I couldn’t name. There was a reason this attraction kept winning out, and I didn’t necessarily want that to stop. The sex was so good. It had gotten to the point thatbeing near her meant I needed to touch her, and that had me wondering why. Was it just our chemistry?
Hypothetically, if I were thinking of extremes, would we be able to make a relationship work?
Why was I even questioning that? We weren’t meant to be together. For one thing, I didn’t even want a relationship. Or at least I’d thought I didn’t want one.
For another, she was here just for the summer. Though it wasn’t like we couldn’t find a way to make that work. I had more downtime throughout the year, and she traveled a lot, but she’d still come home. After all, she seemed to want a place to land. Maybe that place could be here?
Maybe I could put that light in her eyes. It was there last night. Maybe that was a one-and-done, but maybe…
Did that mean something? Of course not.
But the way she’d felt in my arms. And when I was between her legs. We just fit.
This was a problem. Did I have feelings for my former enemy?
TWENTY-NINE
