Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-Five
Ben
H allie is pretty wrung out after our talk, so I pour water on the fire, and we gather up the rest of the blankets to carry up to the house. Hallie goes to throw them in the laundry room while I grab her big tumbler, filling it with ice and water. Her look of gratitude last night over me doing something as simple as filling her water cup the way she likes it makes me want to do as many things for her as I can. Hallie Evans has done too much on her own for far too long. She needs someone to take care of her, and I want that someone to be me.
She comes back in, and I hand her the cup. She sets it on the kitchen counter and then throws her arms around me. I wrap mine around her and hold on, resting my cheek on top of her head and breathing in the cherry vanilla smell of her shampoo mixed with a hint of bonfire smoke. She loosens her hold and steps back but doesn’t let go of me, and I don’t let go of her. We stand frozen, the air around us so charged that I feel my skin prickle with it. I see in her eyes the emotion that my entire body is humming with. Desire .
For a split second I think it’s going to happen right here in the kitchen of my parents’ lake house. That I am going to lean in and kiss her like I have been thinking about doing almost every day for the last eleven years. But, at the last minute, it’s me who pulls away, dropping a kiss on Hallie’s head and pushing a lock of hair back behind her ear. My fingers graze her ear and then linger on her cheek for a second longer before I drop my hand, eyes never leaving hers.
“Goodnight, Hallie.”
“Goodnight, Ben,” she whispers.
And then she’s gone.
Behind my closed bedroom door, I pace my room. Through the entire shower I just took and now as I wear a path on my bedroom carpet, my only thought is what an idiot I am. The moment was right there, and I hesitated. I know what I saw in her eyes. On her face. I’ve been waiting eleven years for Hallie to look at me the way she was looking at me in the kitchen.
It’s after midnight, but there is no way I’m going to fall asleep tonight after that, knowing that Hallie is just downstairs. The past couple of days have required more restraint than I was aware I possessed. Tonight, down in the kitchen, I reached my limit. It’s probably a stupid idea to do this in the middle of the night, and it might end up backfiring spectacularly, but I can’t wait anymore. Decision made, I leave my room.
I pause for a second outside my door. This could all go terribly wrong. I could be about to make a mistake that will cost our families decades of easy, uncomplicated friendship. It could screw up my relationship with my sister when I make her feel like she has to choose, at least temporarily, between Hallie and me. But I have come this far, and after our talk by the fire and the moment in the kitchen, I am surer than ever that even if Hallie doesn’t feel exactly what I feel, she sure feels something. There’s no turning back now.
I take off barefoot down the stairs, avoiding the creaky second step, and walk to Hallie’s bedroom door. Praying that I don’t completely fuck up my life in the next ten minutes, I lift my hand and knock. A second later, Hallie opens the door, and her eyes go wide when she sees me. It’s only then that I realize I’m wearing low-slung sweatpants and an old t-shirt so worn it’s practically transparent, and my hair is a disaster from running my hands through it for twenty minutes straight while I paced my bedroom.
Hallie’s hair is piled up on top of her head, damp from the shower, and her face is a little pink with that just washed look. Jesus, she’s pretty. She is dressed in tiny sleep shorts and an oversized t-shirt. My traitorous eyes drop to her chest, and it’s clear that she isn’t wearing a bra. Fuck.
“Ben,” she stammers, crossing her arms over her chest when she realizes exactly what I’m looking at. “What are you doing here?”
“We need to talk, Hal.”
“About what?”
“I think you know what.”
That seems to get to her. She stiffens and steps back, letting me into her bedroom and closing the door behind me. She stands there for a second, her hand resting on the now closed door, before she turns back around to face me.
“About what happened in the kitchen…” I start.
“It’s okay, Ben, really.” And then a flood of words comes out of her mouth. “We don’t have to do this now. Or ever. I know things have been weird lately, and it’s probably my fault because I’ve been so off with everything I have going on. You’re my best friend, and I can talk to you about things I can’t talk to anyone else about, and you really see me, and we’re here with all the lake magic, and I just started to feel…” She slams her mouth shut, and her cheeks heat, as if she hadn’t meant to say that last thing. But I heard it. I knew I hadn’t imagined it. Everything inside me lights right the fuck up.
I take a step towards her. “What did you feel, Hal?”
She takes a step back. “It’s nothing. Really. Like I said, it’s just being here, at the lake. The whole atmosphere. That’s it.”
“You sure about that?”
She swallows, visibly. “I don’t know what you want me to say, Ben.”
“I want you to tell me what you feel.” My heart is beating so fast that I wonder if she can hear it and if it’s possible I’m going to die of a heart attack before we finish this conversation.
“Why don’t you tell me what you feel, and we can compare notes.”
“No, Hal. I asked you a question, and I need you to answer it. What. Do. You. Feel?” With each word, I take one step closer to her and I see her take a sharp breath, see the pulse fluttering in her throat. Oh yeah, this is not the look of someone unaffected by what is happening.
“I need words, Hallie.”
“I don’t know, honestly.” She takes two more steps backwards until her back is pressed against her bedroom door and she has nowhere left to go.
“I think I might know,” I say, feeling like I’m standing on a ledge one hundred stories in the air, about to jump.
“Well, then could you enlighten me so we can finish this, and I can go to bed?” She says the last part of the sentence in a whisper.
We stand there for a few seconds, staring at each other, both of our chests rising and falling rapidly. We’re close enough that each breath she takes flutters over my skin, and I can feel the warmth radiating from her body. It wraps around me and empties my brain of everything except for Hallie and me and this singular moment where everything is about to change.
“I just have to…” I trail off, not sure how to finish that sentence.
“You have to what?”
I know it has to be me. I have to make this move. It’s now or never, and it has to be now.
“Fuck it,” I say, before grabbing her face in both of my hands and laying my lips on hers. She stands absolutely frozen for a second, and I panic that I misjudged her. But then she winds her arms around my waist and starts kissing me back.
My brain fuzzes, and something loosens in my chest, and my only thought is, “yes, this.” I push my hands into her hair, stroking her jaw with my thumbs as I tilt her head back to take the kiss deeper. And she lets me. A groan slips from me when I run my tongue along the seam of her lips and she opens for me, letting my tongue sweep into her sweet mouth and tangle with hers.
Hallie Evans is in my arms, and I am kissing her, and she feels exactly as good as I always thought she would.
In that first touch of my lips to hers, my entire world unspools. We are the friends we always have been, but in this kiss, I can see all the possibilities of what we could be. What I always hoped we would be. It is heady and intense and the closest to a holy moment as I have ever had in my life. I am all feeling and instinct, and we are electric together just like I thought we would be, and all I can think is now that I have her like this, I will never be able to let her go.