Chapter 28 #2
He’s wearing his shirt but he’s rolled up his sleeves, undone a few buttons and kicked off his shoes, like this is him for the night.
‘I wasn’t expecting to see you,’ he says. ‘I thought you were on a date.’
‘Well, you thought wrong,’ I reply.
‘Pete seemed to think it was a date,’ he counters.
He’s trying not to let it show, but he definitely seems bothered. I mean, yeah, anyone would feel bothered if they made a plan with someone, then turned up to see them doing it with someone else, date or not, but Jordan seems really bothered. Upset maybe, or disappointed – maybe a bit of both.
For a few seconds we just stand in silence as I think about how to explain myself. The truth is a good start, obviously, but I need to make sure it comes out right.
‘I didn’t ask Pete out on a date,’ I say eventually.
‘He said you were talking on WorkM8,’ he replies.
‘Yeah, and we were,’ I continue. ‘Just about work and stuff, until earlier today, when you called me new girl – that’s my username on there – so I stupidly assumed I had been talking to you, and that was your way of letting me know.’
He doesn’t respond at first. He just looks at me, his expression totally unreadable.
‘I swear, I wouldn’t have…’ I break off, shaking my head as I try to find the right words.
‘I wouldn’t have made a plan with Pete knowing that it was him.
I really thought it was you. I thought we were…
picking up where we left off last night.
That’s why, when you mentioned it to me in person, I gave you the same time and location. I felt even more sure it was you.’
‘So, for no reason other than me calling you the new girl, you assumed you had been chatting to me on an app?’ he checks. ‘You didn’t know the name of who you were talking to?’
‘Well, only the username – MrLoveByte,’ I reply.
He tilts his head slightly, still not really giving much away.
‘You really thought that I would have the username MrLoveByte?’ he says in disbelief.
‘Okay, when you say it like that…’ I rub my face with both hands. ‘I didn’t really think that bit through.’
Finally, a flicker – the slight curl at the corners of his mouth. I narrow my eyes at him, trying to read him. Eventually he starts laughing.
‘I am on WorkM8, but under my actual name,’ he tells me. ‘MrLoveByte wouldn’t make a great name for the boss, would it?’
‘Probably not,’ I reply. ‘So… you’re not mad at me?’
‘Mad?’ he says. ‘Why would I be mad? You’ve explained, it makes sense, all good.’
‘All good?’ I say in disbelief.
‘Do you want me to shout at you or something?’ he asks. ‘Get really jealous and punch a hole in the drywall?’
‘I mean, to the second one, kind of, yeah, because that sounds hot as hell,’ I reply.
‘I’m surprised, that’s all. You’re taking this really well.
In my experience, things don’t usually go smoothly.
Or end well. It’s just my luck, to have things go tits up, and really unlikely that they’ll simply go right again, by magic. ’
‘Well, perhaps this isn’t your luck,’ he replies. ‘Perhaps it’s mine.’
I smile at him.
‘Maybe,’ he continues, walking slowly towards me, ‘it’s not going right by magic. Maybe everything is fine – better than fine. Great, even.’
The air between us shifts. It doesn’t just warm – it heats up rapidly. He’s close now – not too close, but close enough that my breath feels heavy.
‘It’s only a misunderstanding,’ he replies. ‘One that is easily explained. It doesn’t need to be a thing, just, you know – MrLoveByte? Really?’
I laugh.
‘I really thought it was you,’ I insist.
He stops in front of me.
‘And here I was thinking I was special,’ he continues.
‘You are,’ I say immediately, too honest to stop myself.
He watches me, his eyes darting back and forth between mine and my lips. ‘I thought you’d be able to tell. That if you were talking to me, you’d know…’
‘Looking back, there really was no reason to think it was you,’ I practically whisper. ‘But maybe that was just… wishful thinking. I mean, everything so far has felt like a fairytale. And wouldn’t it have been the most magical thing, if it was you?’
He laughs softly, shaking his head.
‘Not everything’s a fairytale, Lib,’ he says.
Oh, I like it when he calls me Lib. He’s so close now I can feel the warmth coming off him. He brushes my cheek with the backs of his fingers, his voice much lower now.
‘If we’d kissed on that rink,’ he says, pausing for dramatic effect as his hands find my waist and he pulls me closer, ‘with the music and the fairy lights then, yeah, maybe it would’ve been a fairytale.’
His eyes lock on mine. I feel like he’s looking into my soul.
‘But if I kiss you now, here… with that bed just feet away’ – he leans in, his lips so close to mine I swear I can feel them – ‘then I can promise you, it wouldn’t be a fairytale, it would be a different sort of movie altogether.’
There’s nothing coy or sweet in the way he’s looking at me. Nothing Cinderella about it – unless you’re spelling it with an S.
It feels like we’re at a point of no return. That all of the cat and mouse games, the flirting, the dates – like it’s all led to this moment.
I swallow hard, my heart pumping at a million miles an hour, and say the only thing I can think to say – the only thing that feels right – is…
‘Prove it.’
And then he does.
He kisses me like he’s been waiting all week – all month – for permission. Like everything we’ve been through has been nothing but foreplay and, if it was, wow, it worked.
His hands are on the small of my back, in my hair, on my face, like he can’t decide where to hold me so he tries everywhere. And then he starts kissing my neck and I know I’m done for.
I don’t know whether he pushes me back onto the bed or if I throw myself, but I’m on my back now, him kneeling between my legs as he carefully lowers himself on top of me so that we can keep kissing.
He’s right, it would have been a lovely first kiss, if we had done it at the ice rink like he planned, but this is something else. Something so much hotter. Something that tells me the last piece of the puzzle is in place, that we have that sexual chemistry that is such a vital ingredient.
I fumble with the buttons on his shirt as we kiss – something I don’t think I could have got away with at the ice rink – and then I feel him lifting my dress so that it’s up around my waist. Yep, okay, that one I’m certain you can’t do in public.
Everything we’re doing just feels right though.
Just so easy, and sexy, and somehow in the moment, but full of possibilities, like the better it gets, the more excited I am for the next step, here in this bed and in the future.
I’m imagining having his hands on me every day, and it sounds like heaven.
And most importantly of all, what there is absolutely zero sign of is my pesky ick alarm.
It’s definitely never let me get this far before.
I don’t even feel like it approves of Jordan, or like it’s a thing at all, it’s just gone.
I feel fixed. Like I’m not pretending any more, or trying too hard to make something feel right – it is right. What more could I want?