Chapter 22 Becky #2
How could she feel this way about him? They’d been friends for all their lives.
She’d spent so much time with him. She’d helped paint his kitchen.
She’d planted up half his garden. They’d met up in wine bars and restaurants.
They’d walked along the river together in sunshine and rain.
They’d kissed hundreds of times over the years, but they’d never kissed until today.
She’d known him forever and yet right now she felt as if she didn’t know him at all.
Her body and mind were reshaping everything she knew and felt.
Deeply unsettled, she tried to rationalize the way she was feeling. Will was attractive, there was no doubt about that. She saw the way women looked at him when he walked into a room. The lingering glances when they went for long walks together.
Her reaction was just a logical, physical response, that was all, and no doubt so was his.
“So how are you feeling?” He murmured the words into her ear. “We haven’t had a chance to talk properly. Are you finding it difficult?”
“Difficult?” Yes, it was difficult. She couldn’t think when he was this close. Her usually sharp mind had softened and blurred. Her concentration was severely impaired.
“Seeing Declan after all this time. You were dreading this moment. You’ve been avoiding family gatherings.”
Declan?
He was asking her about Declan?
She’d barely given Declan a second thought since the moment Will had kissed her, and hearing his name now was disorientating.
What did that say about her? Ever since the day of the wedding she’d believed she was in love with Declan, but now she couldn’t access those feelings. Where had they gone? What had happened?
“I—it hasn’t been difficult. Thanks to you.” She lifted her gaze to his, expecting him to smile and say no problem , or something similar. Instead he held her gaze and they exchanged a long look, the attraction between them a palpable, living thing.
And she was engulfed in a delicious confusion. Was he still pretending? Was that intense look in his eyes for the benefit of the people watching? She had no idea.
Her heart was thudding so hard she was sure he must be able to feel every beat. She hoped her reaction wasn’t obvious. She didn’t want to give their parents any more fodder for their gossip.
“I don’t suppose you feel like getting out of here?” His voice was rough and soft. “I’m finding the scrutiny a little wearing. I’m sure you are too.”
She glanced across the room and saw her grandmother and Audrey watching them.
And she had a feeling that this time she’d really given them something to talk about. They’d probably been able to feel the heat and chemistry from across the room.
Over by the door her mother was in deep conversation with her father, both of them smiling, as if they were celebrating something.
Were they talking about her? Thinking about her? Planning her future?
She wasn’t looking forward to the conversations that were no doubt going to come her way.
“You’re right, we should get out of here. Should we tell people we’re leaving?”
“No.” His answer was clipped. Brief. As if other people were the last thing on his mind.
Without letting go of her hand, he led her out of the room to the stairs and this time she didn’t look left or right because she didn’t want to know who was watching them leave or imagine the level of speculation.
And anyway now she had something else to think about, something more immediate and pressing. Sharing a room.
She kept telling herself that this was no different from the night before, when they’d shared a bed in the hotel. But it felt different. It felt as if everything had ratcheted up several notches.
Earlier in the day when she’d been unpacking and wrapping presents, Will had disappeared home for an hour and returned with a small suitcase which he’d stowed in her bedroom.
She stared at that case while she was getting ready for the party, its presence in her bedroom a glaring reminder of the mess she’d managed to create.
And she no longer knew what was fake and what was real, and she truly had no idea how Will was feeling so when they reached the door of her bedroom she stopped.
The moment they stepped through that doorway the pretence would end. No more dancing. No more long looks. No more people watching. Stepping through the door meant stepping back into reality. Which was maybe why she hesitated.
She had her hand on the door handle when she heard voices on the stairs.
Before she even had time to react, Will turned her to face him, slid his hand behind her head and lowered his mouth to hers.
Excitement engulfed her in a whoosh, and she melted against him, grateful to whoever it was who had chosen to use the stairs at that moment.
She heard the slam of a door in the distance and understood dimly that he was doing this for someone else’s benefit, but she didn’t care about that. She only cared that he was kissing her again and that it felt every bit as good as it had the first time.
She clung to the front of his shirt and he nudged her gently into the bedroom and shouldered the door closed behind them.
She expected him to immediately release her, but he didn’t. He kept kissing her, his hand in her hair, locking her mouth against his and she thought that if all she did for the rest of her life was kiss Will then it would have been a life well spent.
He shifted his hold on her and she wrapped her arms around his neck, off balance both physically and emotionally. She’d learned how to keep her emotions and senses under control, locked inside, but now there was no containing them.
But then she remembered that he was doing this for her. To help her out.
Harnessing all her willpower she eased her mouth away from his.
“Do you think they’ve put a camera in this room? Are they watching through the keyhole?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t care.”
She closed her eyes as his mouth brushed the tender skin of her jaw and then her neck. “All I’m saying is, you don’t have to do this.”
He paused long enough to speak. “Do I look as if I’m being coerced?”
“Will—”
“Forget them, Becks. Forget all of them. What do you want? Should we stop?” His mouth was so close to hers she couldn’t focus. “Is that what you want?”
He was asking her to make a choice. To decide. No more acting. No more fake.
“No. I don’t want to stop.” Of course she should be asking herself why. A tiny part of her knew that this was just going to make a complicated situation even more complicated, but she didn’t care. Her need for him overwhelmed everything.
She’d known him her whole life, but this was a different Will. He felt familiar and yet at the same time deliciously unfamiliar. His kiss was hot and hungry, the brush of his fingers slow and deliberate as he touched her jaw and then her throat.
She was consumed by a raw and visceral longing and so was he. She felt it in his touch and tasted it on his kisses. Her knees felt wobbly as he urged her back to the bed and gave up supporting her altogether as he stripped off her clothes.
She tumbled back onto the soft covers of her bed, her fingers divesting him of his shirt and then his belt, his hands removing their underwear, their movements uneven and urgent.
And then there was nothing but heat and urgency and an intimacy that she knew was going to change everything.
With every brush of his fingers and touch of his mouth he reshaped their relationship and she did the same, and during those secret steamy moments in the semidarkness of her room she discovered new things about him but also new things about herself.
And afterwards, when all the lines between them had been blurred or redrawn, she lay with her eyes closed, reluctant to open them because her eyelids formed the only barrier between her and the real world.
She didn’t want to step back into reality.
The real world meant confronting what had happened, making decisions, thinking about other people, thinking about what was right.
The real world meant stress and pressure and expectation.
For a short time she’d done what had felt right, and she’d done it just because it had felt right and for no other reason.
What had started as fake had become real, or maybe it had always been real but she’d refused to see it.
She’d slotted him firmly into the friend box because he was an important part of her life and she wanted it to stay that way.
Friendship had a longevity that didn’t always come with romantic relationships.
How could she ever have thought she was in love with Declan? Her feelings for him were a pale, insignificant shadow of what she felt for Will.
She loved Will, and this time there was no doubt. No confusion. No question about what she was feeling. She’d never been so sure of anything in her life. And understanding that made everything clearer.
She could see now that it had never been about Declan. It wasn’t losing Declan that had shaken her that day of the wedding, it was losing Rosie. Her twin. The entire emotional landscape of her life had changed and she hadn’t been able to decipher her feelings.
But she was clear about her feelings now.
Her heart, her soul, all of her belonged to the man lying next to her.
She didn’t regret what they’d shared. Not for a moment was she regretting her choices, but she was under no illusion as to what had just happened under the soft sparkle of Christmas lights.
Yes, they were lovers, but she knew that for him at least it changed nothing.
It was complicated, but in some ways not at all complicated.
For him their night together had been no more than a surrender to physical chemistry, a union of two people who’d made a choice and knew exactly what they were doing.
What they were giving. And she wasn’t going to pretend otherwise.
She wasn’t going to let herself think of fairy tales or happy endings, because in the delicious blur of memory, which she knew she’d relive over and over again, there was one thing she couldn’t ignore.
He hadn’t said I love you . Through the whole wild, desperate encounter where he’d whispered words against her mouth, he hadn’t said anything that might indicate that his feelings had changed.
The chemistry between them was honest and real, but he hadn’t pretended even for a moment that it was anything more.
In their moments of deepest intimacy, he hadn’t spoken those words even though at one point she’d willed him to.
And now what?
She wanted to stay here, pressed against his warmth, wrapped tightly by the memories of the love they’d shared.
Tomorrow was Christmas Eve, but for once she didn’t want Christmas to come. It was going to be hard to pretend that nothing had changed, and yet that was what she had to do.
She’d play the game, hold his hand, smile into his eyes and act like a woman in love, and that part would be easy because it was real.
And when the time came to let him go, she’d play her part as agreed. She’d let her heart break privately, and hope that all his experience with that particular part of the human body didn’t give him extra insight into her feelings.
The irony of the situation hadn’t escaped her.
She’d pretended that she was with Will to avoid complication. She hadn’t anticipated that it would make things a thousand times worse.
But she wasn’t going to think about that now.
She was going to keep her eyes closed for a little longer.