Chapter 19 Lewis Hamilton at the Sink, with a Hand Towel
19
Lewis Hamilton at the Sink, with a Hand Towel
Thwap!
Mara slams our score sheet on the table. The sound breaks the spell we’re under, and our bodies snap forward. Her finger pounds into the tabletop. “Risky Fuckness has a perfect score!”
“Oh look, Mar. We only missed two questions. That’s not so bad,” I say, my voice drenched with the disappointment of Adam releasing my leg.
Mara fusses with her necklace. “You think Evil Incarnate cares we only missed two?”
Adam’s hand drifts to the back of my chair like the sharp November breeze. “Wow. You really hate those guys.”
“She’s pretty competitive,” I respond, still catching my breath.
“I’m in love!” Chelsea announces, bouncing into her seat. “There’s a guy at the sink who looks exactly like Lewis Hamilton. It’s uncanny. He’s my future husband.”
Adam grabs his drink. “Do you follow Formula 1?”
Chelsea shakes her head. “The Netflix show.”
Mara plops into her chair “It’s a docuseries that follows the sport, but it’s a year behind. If you know what’s happening in real time, don’t spoil it for her.”
Chelsea cranes her head toward the bathroom in search of her racing lookalike. “I’m very invested in the future of Mercedes racing—except last year. Do you think that guy’s British?”
“He didn’t speak?” I ask.
“He offered me a paper towel, but I wasn’t listening until I looked at him.”
“I’m getting a beer. Do you want anything, Ali?” Adam touches my back when he asks.
“I’m fine, thanks.” I look at Mara and Chelsea, exposed by my creeping blush.
Chelsea mouths Ali as Adam walks away.
Mara raises an accusatory brow. “Al, what’s going on with that?”
“I’m sorry, I think you mean Ali .” Chelsea’s in a full-on giggle fit.
I sip my beer for cover. “You’re the one who invited him.”
Mara rolls her eyes. “I’ll invite anyone with a pulse if it gives us a shot at winning.”
I shove a tater tot in my mouth. “We were supposed to be having a girls’ night—not falling in love at the communal sink.”
Chelsea flutters her lashes. “I can only watch you making love with your eyes for so long before I have to get back in the game.”
I gag on a tot. “Don’t say ‘making love.’?”
“Are you gonna hook up with this guy? Because he’s very interested.” Chelsea’s face is plotting our pathway to the bathroom stall for our unsanitary quickie, but Mara eyes me over her glass.
“It’s complicated. We may have kissed again. Then it got weird. Now it’s not, and I’m not sure why.” I sip my beer, noticing it sounds fairly uncomplicated when I put it like that.
“They’re announcing the top three now,” Adam says from behind me, casually placing a hand on my shoulder and sitting down. The warmth of it skitters across my skin.
Darren announces Otrivia Benson: SVU’s second-place victory, but I barely register it. My body is buzzing with anticipation. We walk out of the bar into the late November air, and the cold wind hits my face like a slap. I gasp, and Adam rubs the sides of my arms with his thick leather gloves. I shiver under the weight of his hands.
“This coat isn’t warm enough for a night like this. Don’t you have a parka?”
“This is it. I just have to flip it inside out,” I say wryly.
He gives me an admonishing head shake but can’t hide his amusement.
We walk to my apartment two by two, knuckles grazing. Chelsea gives me a big, dramatic hug before hopping into Mara’s Jeep, and Mara studies Adam and me with an inscrutable look before pulling away, Chelsea in the passenger seat.
I turn to Adam. He’s leaning against his truck with his hands in his pockets. He’s phenomenal at leaning. As the silence stretches, Adam looks at me.
He just looks .
The chill is biting, but I don’t make a move. It feels too heavenly to be looked at like this. By him . If I collapse on this sidewalk of hypothermia, I’ll accept it. I’ll have died how I lived: happy, aroused, and with poor circulation in my little toe.
“I liked seeing you tonight…with all your friends. I’m glad you invited me.” There’s a sweet vulnerability in his voice.
“Technically, Chelsea and Mara invited you.” I nudge his arm teasingly, and lit by nothing but the glow of the twinkle lights, it feels like an accelerant.
“I like Chelsea. Mara too, but I’m not sure she likes me.”
“Any weirdness was more about me. We argued the other day…” I should let the conversation drift off—let him drive home—but I can’t let go. “And she doesn’t know what to make of us.”
“I don’t know either,” he says thickly.
I go completely still. “We’re friends,” I tell him. Who kissed yesterday, I finish within the privacy of my mind. Replaying the kiss while staring into his eyes feels too filthy, so I do it quickly at three times the speed.
“I don’t know. I don’t think about my friends the way I think about you.”
“How do you think about me?” I lick my lips, knowing I’m playing with fire.
I don’t need him to answer. Everything I need to know is written all over his face. He reaches out and lightly grabs my mitten-covered hand in his. My body heats despite the freezing air. The juxtaposition of the hot and cold is too much to bear. I stare back at him, preparing to combust.
He pauses, closing his eyes to consider my question. “I imagine your every detail. Constantly. God, imagine the things I could accomplish if I could think about anything other than you: my favorite person.” He tilts his head down to mine, and his gaze buries itself into my lungs. Basic breathing becomes difficult.
“I’m only your favorite new person.”
“No, you’re not,” he answers, refusing to let me back away from this.
A shiver chases up my spine. If he steps back now, I might fall over the precipice of whatever comes next all by myself.
“Just tell me I’m crazy,” he whispers, pressing his forehead to mine. “Tell me you don’t think about me the way I think about you. Tell me you don’t want me, and I’ll drive home, and you’ll never see me again.”
My eyes flutter shut. I could end this. I could stop everything right here. I’d never have to watch him realize I’m not enough, like Sam did. I open my eyes before my mind’s made up. It’s a mistake—or a miracle—because his expression is so bare and vulnerable, like what I say next is as vital as water or air. When his eyes flash down to my lips, his mouth quirks, pleased by whatever he sees in my expression.
“Adam…” Our hot breaths mingle, and I feel his every shallow inhalation like it’s my own.
“Do you want this?” His voice is hushed.
I do. Every molecule in my body has been pulling me toward him since we met. It doesn’t matter if I was with Sam or when I was with Sam, how it ended or when, because this—right here, this moment—feels inevitable.
Seconds pass, but he doesn’t move. My chest rises and falls, and I feel my last bits of self-control leave me with each exhale. “Yes. I want this. You. So badly.”
When we pass the threshold of my studio, the place has never looked more like a room with a bed—the overhead light a spotlight for the single feature in the space below.
But then he hooks his hand into my coat pocket, expertly spinning me around and pressing me against my front door with his body. It isn’t even fully closed before he’s kissing me against it, but I hear it click under our weight.
With the door against my back, we remove our boots, scarves, coats, and other winter bits, trying our best not to fully break contact. His lips move down my jaw, onto the hollow of my throat. I smile into his hair at the feel of him against me.
His fingers tug at my sweater, and I gasp when he brushes my bare skin. He pulls it over my head so I’m in my entryway with nothing but a lavender lace bralette. When he starts to toss my top on the floor next to our boots, I risk breaking the moment to grab it.
“I like this sweater, and it’s kind of wet over—”
“Yeah, yeah.” He speaks into my mouth. “I wasn’t thinking. I can’t think.”
“We should make it to the bedroom at least.”
“Isn’t this all the bedroom?” he teases, and I rebuke him with a bite to his lip, pulling him toward the bed.
Adam grabs me by the hips, and I pull myself on top of him. Everything about this kiss is different. His mouth is slow, languid, sensual. There’s no desperation. No fear. Just us. Bodies alone in the dark.
My world has shrunken down to the space between us. Need flows into my fingertips. I need to feel the roughness of his beard beneath them, comb my hands through his hair and grab the back of his neck.
His calloused hand greedily scrapes up my stomach before he pauses. “Will this feel good?”
I look down to see his thumb is grazing the bottom of my breast. “I can’t…I don’t feel that,” I answer, referring to the featherlight touch of his thumb.
A knee-jerk apology plays at the back of my throat, but in the face of his worshipful expression and the tender way his hand moves to cradle my head, nothing comes out. I’m just me—literal scars and all—and he’s looking at me like I’m enough. Like I’m everything.
“I can sometimes feel the pressure of, uh—”
I consider how to say it—how to explain it—as he waits patiently while kissing my neck, like he can’t bear the momentary loss of contact. I laugh into the pillow beneath him, and he smiles into my clavicle.
I feel my fear and apprehension fall away with the thin top sheet. “I want you to touch me the way you want to touch me. It feels sexy to be wanted by you, even if I can’t feel every part of it. Is that okay?”
“Yes. Very.” He yanks off the last bits of fabric between us, and there’s not a moment of hesitation in his eyes, his hands, his mouth. There’s nothing between us. No one between us. Just Adam and me. Nothing has ever felt so much like mine.