Totally normal.
Just a casual Tuesday morning where I’d kissed a man whose entire identity had detonated ten minutes earlier.
I peeked out from under the pillow.
“Fantastic, Holly,” I muttered. “Really excellent timing.”
I closed my eyes.
Bad idea.
That only replayed the kiss in slow motion.
His breath.
His voice.
The way he’d pulled back afterward, looking tortured and gorgeous and apologetic all at once.
My cheeks burned.
I rolled over and buried my face in the pillow.
“This is a professional disaster,” I whispered into the cotton. “A wedding-planner horror story. I should be writing a risk assessment.”
But even as I tried to joke with myself, my chest pulled.
Because beneath all the adrenaline and mortification, one truth pulsed, steadily, unavoidably:
I wanted him.
And that, that was a problem so large I could have submitted paperwork about it.
I sat up slowly, pulling my knees to my chest as the afternoon sunlight spilled across the bed.
Okay. Get a hold of yourself.
Maybe he didn’t mean anything by it.
A moment of panic colliding with attraction.
Or…
Maybe he meant exactly what he’d said that he’d wanted to kiss me for a long time.
My heart thudded hard enough to knock the air from my lungs.
I pressed a hand to my chest, as if that would make any difference.
This was dangerous territory.
What I needed… was distance. Space. Some clarity.
“Well,” I muttered, “this week just got exponentially more complicated.”
But even as I lay there, trying to will myself into calm, I knew the truth:
This was absolutely not something I could hide from for long.
