Chapter 17 #2
“This is the dumbest prize I've ever received,” I said, tucking the elephant under my arm.
“You're welcome.” He was smiling, and the expression was so open and genuine that I felt my chest tighten with want I couldn't afford to name. “You hungry? We could grab food.”
We found a food truck selling poutine that was probably terrible for us and sat on a bench near the edge of the fair, eating and watching people drift past in the warm glow of the string lights.
The conversation flowed easy, jumping between hockey and music and the chaos of our respective lives, and I let myself pretend for a while that this was normal.
That we did this all the time. That the ease between us wasn't complicated by years of grief and wanting and all the shit we still hadn't said out loud.
“Where are you staying tonight?” Rook asked eventually, wiping his hands on a napkin. “The band got you a hotel?”
“Yeah, our manager booked us at the Marriott downtown. You?”
“That's where the team's staying.” He looked at me with an expression that was equal parts amused and resigned. “What floor?”
“Seventh.”
“Of course you are. We're on seven too.” He laughed, shaking his head. “What are the fucking odds?”
“Apparently pretty good.” My pulse kicked up at the realization that we'd be sleeping a few doors down from each other, separated by nothing but hotel walls and increasingly fragile self-control.
We headed back to the hotel together, the band and the team naturally clustering into their own groups but with enough overlap that nobody questioned why Rook and I were walking side by side.
The lobby was busy with guests and staff, and we made our way to the elevators in a pack of loud voices and laughter that made the space feel smaller than it was.
Rook and I ended up in the elevator alone after everyone else peeled off on different floors, and the second the doors closed the air between us shifted into thick and charged that made breathing feel difficult.
I was acutely aware of how close we were standing.
How the space suddenly felt too small and too intimate.
How I could smell his cologne mixing with the faint scent of the fair still clinging to both of us — sugar, cold night air, the specific warmth of a crowd.
Standing next to him in this box of mirrored walls, I could see the tension in his jaw from three different angles and none of them were easier to look at than the original.
Rook was staring at the elevator doors like they held the secrets of the universe. I could see him fighting with himself about a thing he wasn't saying, and I wanted to ask what he was thinking but didn't trust my voice not to give away how badly I wanted him.
So I watched the floor numbers instead and tried to remember how to stand normally.
“Soren,” he said finally, and my name came out rough enough to send heat straight through me.
“Yeah?”
He turned to look at me, and the expression on his face was complicated — want and confusion and conflict all sitting on top of each other in ways that made my chest pull tight. “I need to tell you a thing, and I don't know how to say it without sounding like I've lost my mind.”
“Try me.”
“I've dated women my whole life. Been attracted to women in ways that made sense and felt normal and never questioned it once.” He said it like a confession, and I felt my stomach drop all the way to the lobby.
“Okay.” I kept my voice carefully neutral even though hearing him say that out loud hurt more than it had any right to at this point. “That's — I mean, I know that, Rook. You don't have to—”
“But I can't stop thinking about you.” The words came out in a rush, like he'd been holding them back for too long and the pressure had finally won.
“I can't stop thinking about that kiss in the club.
About how your mouth felt against mine. About how I've spent the past week trying to convince myself it was just the heat of the moment or the alcohol or anything other than what it was.”
My heart was hammering so hard I could feel it in my throat. “What was it actually?”
“Me wanting you so badly I can barely fucking think straight.” He laughed, but the sound was strained and a little wrecked. “No pun intended. And I don't know what that means about me or my sexuality or anything else, but I know I can't keep pretending I don't want to kiss you again.”
I should have said it was a bad idea. But all I could think about was the way he was looking at me and my mouth made its own decision.
“So kiss me,” I said, and the challenge in my voice was deliberate. “If you want to so badly, then do it.”
For a second I thought he wouldn't. Then he moved, closing the gap between us in one decisive step and kissing me like he'd been storing it up for a week and had run completely out of room.
His mouth was demanding and desperate and warm, tongue sliding against mine with a hunger that made my knees go genuinely unreliable. I grabbed the front of his shirt to keep myself vertical, fingers twisting into the fabric, and he made a noise low in his throat that went straight through me.
He turned us without breaking contact and my back hit the elevator wall and I felt it in my whole spine, the solidity of it, the fact that there was nowhere to go and he was right there.
One of his hands braced against the mirrored surface beside my head and the other gripped my hip hard enough that I felt it through my jeans, and the kiss deepened into frantic and a little desperate, both of us trying to say something through it that we hadn't figured out how to say with words yet.
I could feel how hard he was getting pressed against my thigh.
“Fuck,” he breathed, pulling back just far enough to look at me, and his eyes were dark and a little dazed in ways I wanted to memorize. “What the hell are you doing to me?”
“Nothing you're not doing to yourself.” My voice came out shakier than I'd meant. “Rook, you don't have to — if this is curiosity or experimentation or—”
“It's not.” He cut me off cleanly, and the certainty in his voice was enough to shut down every backup argument I'd been queuing. “I want you, Soren. I've wanted you since I found you again, and I'm done pretending I don't.”
Then he kissed me again before I could say anything back, which was probably smart on his part because what I'd been about to say was embarrassingly close to then take whatever you want and I had at least a shred of dignity left.
His hand moved from my hip to my ribs, pressing flat against my side through my shirt, and I felt the heat of his palm like it was going straight through the fabric.
He was bigger than me in a way I'd always known intellectually but was now experiencing in specific and unhelpful detail — broad shoulders blocking the rest of the elevator out, the wall of his chest against mine when he pressed in close — and the instinct to dig my hands into him was so strong I stopped fighting it.
I got both hands under the hem of his jacket and gripped his sides through his shirt, feeling the shift of muscle when he moved. I dragged my hands up his back and felt him inhale sharply against my mouth.
“You have no idea,” he said, rough and quiet, and I wasn't sure if he was talking to me or himself.
“About what?”
He pulled back long enough to look at me, and there was something in his expression that made me want to hold very still.
“How many times I told myself it was just old history.
That standing next to you didn't mean anything. That whatever I was feeling was something I could put away and leave there.” His jaw was tight. “I couldn't.”
My hands tightened against his back without me deciding to do that. “Rook—”
“I watched you perform tonight and I couldn't look at anything else.” He said it simply, like he was reporting a fact he'd already made peace with. “The whole set. I kept waiting for it to feel normal and it just didn't.”
“That's—” I stopped. Swallowed around the tightness in my throat. “You're very bad for my self-control, you know that?”
The corner of his mouth curved. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” I pulled him back in before the conversation could do any more damage to my composure.
This kiss was slower, which was worse in all the best ways.
He moved his hand from my ribs to my chest, palm flat, and I could feel my own heartbeat pushing against it, which felt unfairly exposed.
His thumb pressed into the muscle there like he was mapping it, learning it, and I exhaled against his mouth in a way that wasn't quite a sound but wasn't quite not one either.
I got my hands into his hair.
“Soren.” My name again, rough at the edges.
“Still here.”
He gripped my hip with both hands and walked me back harder against the wall, no real force but a lot of intent, and I felt it through every point of contact when his body pressed flush against mine.
My head dropped back against the mirror and I felt his mouth move to my jaw, my throat, the side of my neck, and the drag of his lips there was slow and deliberate in a way that made my hands grip his hair tighter.
He pressed his hips in closer in a way that I was fairly certain he hadn't fully thought through because he went very still after doing it, like he'd surprised himself.
“Okay?” I asked, keeping my voice steady by an act of will.
He pulled back enough to look at me, and whatever he found in my face seemed to settle something in him. “Yeah.” He sounded a little stunned. “Very okay.”
“Good.” I pulled him back in.
His hands moved from my hips to my thighs, warm through the denim, and I felt his thumbs press into the muscle there in a grip that was more possessive than he probably realized.
I got my hands on his chest. Felt the hard flat of it, the shift of muscle when he breathed, and worked my palms down to his stomach without breaking the kiss.
He tensed under my hands, not pulling back, just reacting, and the small involuntary sound he made when I pressed my fingers into the firm plane of his abdomen through his shirt went straight through me.
I slid one hand around his side to his lower back and pulled him in by the small of it, closing whatever gap remained between us, and the low groan he made against my mouth was quiet and wrecked and completely undone, like I'd gotten somewhere he hadn't prepared a defense for.
“Soren.” My name in his mouth had gone low and a little helpless.
“Yeah,” I said, not a question.
He kissed me again, deep and slow and thorough, and his hands moved up from my thighs to my waist and around to my lower back, mirroring what I'd done, and the warmth of both his palms pressed against my spine through the thin fabric of my shirt made me shiver.
He felt it and held tighter, which made it worse, which made it better.
I bit his lower lip, not hard, and felt the breath leave him in a rush against my mouth.
His hands dragged down to my ass without any particular hesitation, gripped, and pulled me closer, and I made a sound that I would have been embarrassed about under any other circumstances.
As it was, I was a little too busy registering the pressure of his hands and the heat of him against me to care much.
I got both hands into his hair again and held on while he kissed me like he was trying to make up for every week of pretending he hadn't wanted to.
His hips moved against mine with a rhythm that was probably more honest than he intended, and I rolled mine back to meet it and felt the low, bitten-off sound he made in my throat because he was close enough that there was nowhere for it to go except into me.
I felt him start to pull back before he did it, the slight change in tension, and I loosened my grip on his hair enough to let him breathe.
He rested his forehead against mine. His chest was moving faster than usual. I could feel his heartbeat where his body pressed against my chest — elevated, rapid, real.
“I don't know what I'm doing,” he said quietly, and it didn't sound like doubt. It sounded like honesty.
“Neither do I,” I said. “But I don't think that matters much right now.”
He pulled back just far enough to look at me, and I watched him work through something, turning it over, and then make the decision. His hand came up to the side of my face, thumb brushing my jaw, and the tenderness of the gesture after everything else hit me somewhere I wasn't prepared.
He kissed me again, slower this time, and I let my eyes close and my hands rest against his chest and stopped thinking about anything past this moment, this small moving room, the warmth of him, the way his thumb moved against my jaw like I was something worth being careful with.
The elevator dinged for our floor, and we broke apart just as the doors opened. The hallway was empty and quiet in a way that felt too loud after the chaos of the fair, and we stood there staring at each other like neither of us knew what to do with the next ten seconds.