Chapter 13
Adam
An hour later, I mounted the stairs with recyclable grocery totes hanging from each shoulder, a paper bag packed with takeout from Guac in one hand, and Josie Wade’s mail in the other. I’d stayed in business mode while I scuttled from place to place and refused to interrogate why I was doing this.
When I’d mentioned to Ethan that I couldn’t do dinner tonight, he’d been curious. When I slipped and admitted I was taking a half day from work, he was absolutely ready to pop some popcorn and pull up a seat for the show. He had this doofy look he’d always used to get me to talk as a kid, like he hung on every word I said but was also on the verge of a laughing fit.
For a guy who had a crush on the girl I was hanging out with so much, he was remarkably fine with me helping her. But maybe it was due to my very solid reasoning—I felt responsible. I’d taken her on the hike, so it was my job to help her recover.
He gave me a skeptical look—literally, he sent me five GIFs in a row of various versions of the look—but ultimately told me I was being a good friend. I chose not to read it sarcastically.
Helping friends was a normal choice for a grown man to make. I’d learned how to manage relationships in my life—I’d learned how to care about people. I hadn’t always understood that, so why would I feel bad for being capable of it now?
When I opened the door, Jo had her hand on her cheek while she stared at her laptop where it balanced on her lap. The ice I’d put on her ankle was still there.
“Did you keep that on the whole time I was gone?” I asked as I set bags down and began putting food away.
“No, sir. I did twenty on, twenty off, and I’m just about to finish my last few minutes of twenty on again.” She arched a brow at me.
“Good.” I almost said it again, and clearly, it’d been… notable. And now that we’d discussed our age difference, maybe it was just downright wrong. So… just good.
We chatted while I finished putting groceries away and then plated up our food. Her fajitas looked good, but I was all about Javier’s barbacoa tacos and would be unlikely to order anything different now that I’d discovered them. After setting the table, I reached out a hand to her.
She startled, then took my hand and eased off the couch.
“Sorry, I was in the zone again.”
She’d had her hand on her face once more, and I wondered what that was about.
“Can you tell me what you’re working on?” I asked, easing her into her seat.
“Uh, sure. I’m editing their first kiss scene, and I’m just trying to make sure I get the details right.”
Heat flashed through me for some unknown reason. “How do you get the details right?”
She loaded grilled chicken into a soft tortilla as she explained. “Well, most of the time I see the scene in my mind, but actually, when you gave me a piggyback yesterday, I realized I hadn’t described it very well in a scene I’d written. It made me want to sort of… check my work on the physical stuff I include.”
Physical stuff. In a romance.
Check her work.
Check it like try it? Check it like… reenact it? That sounded dangerously appealing and also like something I shouldn’t be thinking about, but oh, I already was. Images flashed through my mind at warp speed: laying her down and kissing and touching and?—
I cleared my throat.
“How do you—” I cleared my throat again. “How do you check your work?”
Wait, did she do the things that’d just seeped into my head with someone else? Who? How did I not realize she—Who was it? And was jealousy actually problematic, because it squeezed my chest mercilessly at the thought of someone touching her… of someone else checking her work.
After swallowing a bite, she fit her hand to her face like I’d seen her doing. “Well, for this, it started with the hero’s hand on her face, so I was just trying to mimic that and see if I could describe it more effectively. It’s tricky with other things since I can’t mirror everything, of course, but in this case, I can just use my right hand on the left side, and it’s the same as the hero’s hand, if that makes sense.”
She lifted her right hand and settled her fingers under her opposite ear, thumb at her cheek.
My hand twitched.
“Good idea.”
She shrugged as she chewed another bite. “Maybe. It can be frustrating, but I don’t really want to be like, ‘Hey, Winnie, can you and Tristan make out in front of me so I can take notes on where you put your hands?’”
I coughed, only managing not to eject the food from my mouth because I’d covered it with a napkin as I blinked against the desire to laugh and breathe until I could swallow first.
“Okay, didn’t expect that,” I said, voice strained from the coughing.
She tucked a wisp of hair that’d escaped her bun behind an ear. “Well. The glamour of writing romance, right?”
I grinned, enjoying her humor and the bold side of her, then remembered her mail and jumped up to retrieve it. “Speaking of, you have some devoted fans. You’ve got a whole stack of fan mail.”
It wasn’t until I returned to the table and sat down that I realized she’d gone completely quiet and her face had paled.
“You don’t like fan mail?” I asked, holding it out to her.
“Uh, yeah, of course. I just… I try not to open it unless I’m going to respond so I don’t lose track. So, you know… maybe after dinner.”
An edge had entered her voice, and she didn’t move to take the letters.
More than odd. Concerning. “What’s wrong?”
She shoved a bite of food into her mouth and chewed, raising her brows like, “Huh? I can’t talk now, gotta eat!”
“Josephine, tell me what’s wrong with the fan mail.”
She guzzled down her entire glass of water before wiping her mouth and saying, “Nothing. Really. It’s fine.”
For a woman who seemed to truly love being a writer and marveled at the bourgeoning success she was experiencing, this spotlighted the presence of an issue.
“Listen, you can tell me. Are you being harassed? Did someone send you something inappropriate?” I would find them and give them a little lesson in etiquette. Or at least, I’d help her report it if necessary and help her figure out if she could file a cease and desist.
“Not… harassed. Just… yeah, some inappropriate stuff.” She kept her eyes on her food.
“When? How often? What kind of stuff?” I demanded.
She exhaled sharply. “About once a month for the last six months. Mostly it’s letters, handwritten, but sometimes there are… weird cobbled together collages of stuff from magazines.”
My jaw clenched but I worked to soften my tone. “Have you reported it?”
“I don’t think there’s anything to report. I mean, he’s sending these to the mail service in Arizona and then they forward to me, so it’s not like he knows I live here. And… I just throw them away now.”
“I can help you with this. Show me the letters and I can use the databases to look this guy up, make sure he doesn’t have any history with stalking or?—”
“Stalking? No. No, it’s not a big deal. Please, Adam, I just… I don’t want to think about it.” Color had returned to her cheeks and deepened them to a flush.
Everything in me wanted more information so I could help her, fix this, make it go away. But I saw the frantic energy zipping through her, the way her eyes were almost glassy with anxiety, and I accepted that, at least for tonight, we could table this.
“Okay. Okay,” I said, trying to calm myself as much as appease her, and then changed the subject.
We talked about some of the books people bought at the store earlier, then after dinner, I took a look at her ankle. It was bruised and still a touch swollen, but not nearly as bad as I would’ve expected for the end of day two post-injury.
Her energy had fallen since the discussion of mail, and I didn’t want to leave her focused on that. I wanted to sit next to her on the couch and turn on a movie, or maybe read while she wrote. Instead, I cleaned up everything I could and grabbed my keys.
“I’ll get out of your hair now.”
“Thank you so much for everything, seriously. You set me up for the week, and tomorrow’s my day off anyway. So thank you.”
“My pleasure, truly.” Heroically, I didn’t cringe at the cliché.
She seemed sad as her dark gaze flicked up to meet mine, then dropped back to her computer, and I spoke before checking the impulse, the need to make things better for her overriding any shred of logic I owned.
“I could help you.”
She huffed. “Thank you, but I don’t?—”
“I mean, with the book. Sort of like I did before, but you can just tell me what you need me to do and I can… do it.”
She did the thing where her beautiful lips parted slowly but no words emerged for a few seconds, until finally she said, “Oh. Um… Okay. Yeah. That’d be really helpful, actually.”
I nodded, swallowing against a weird tightening in my throat at the sound of her almost breathless response. “Good. Okay. Well. What can I do?”
She bit her lip, thoughts heavy and unreadable, before finally speaking. “I’m trying to figure out how the hero’s hands would be if he was holding the heroine’s chin. He’s kind of… physical.” Her cheeks burned.
Nothing could’ve stopped me from asking, “How can I help?”
She swallowed hard. “Uh, I guess you could… try it. On me? You know like how you explained things step by step after I hurt my ankle—that was perfect. It kept me calm, yes, but it also helped a lot with knowing what I’d need to write for my character, and why.”
Damn, but her eyes were so trusting and sweet. I had to look away as I approached, sucking in a breath and steeling myself against whatever was to come. This was a terrible idea, but if it helped her move away from the upsetting thoughts about the fan mail, I’d do it.
“Whatever you need,” I said, as though this was all a normal day and even being this close to her didn’t throw me.
She cleared her throat and her eyes flickered around the room before settling on me. “So, um, they’ve had an argument, and he’s trying to get her attention, but he’s not.. rough. He’s just… tactile, you know?”
You know?
Good grief, did I know.
How many times had I shoved my hands in my pockets instead of sliding my fingers through her ponytail? How many times had I stopped myself from tracing the curve of her shoulder blade or sliding a thumb over the slope of her neck?
Innumerable.
Countless.
Okay, so she was the writer, and it was probably for the best.
None of those things fit the relationship we had, and yet the longing to touch her, to be close her, to know her, had been there since day one.
She swiveled on her barstool until she faced me, elbow resting on the countertop behind her.
“So, he just kind of, slides his hand here”—she brushed her fingers along her neck and the curve of her jaw—“and then takes hold of her.”
I didn’t speak but stepped between her knees and just… did it. If I’d thought about it any longer, I might’ve heard the objecting, blaring warning signs begging me not to give in to this indulgence, but I didn’t.
It wasn’t intimate or sensual. It was her work combining with mine. And even that thought didn’t send a weighty, risky feeling into my gut. It was all just the mechanics of the thing—just like checking her ankle and stabilizing in her boot. Just like that…
My hand brushed past her collarbone and slipped up her neck, grasping firmly but gently with fingers to one side and thumb to the other, and pulled her forward.
Her breath gusted out.
“Like that?” Just epidermis and pulse points and platonic contact. Not skin and nerve endings exploding and racing hearts and wanting.
She blinked in rapid succession and nodded. “Yep.”
The tension in her voice lit fire under my palm, and I released her, stepping back out of her space and away from the glorious temptation being near her created.
I should’ve said goodbye, left it there, but my mouth formed words before I checked them. “I’m working the rest of the week, but I can help again sometime—maybe this weekend?”
“Yeah, sure. I just have something Friday, but I’m off otherwise.” Her smile was small, but it seemed genuine, even as a fierce blush still painted her face.
“Good. Alright then. I’ll see you soon.”
And with that, I left, banishing myself from her presence and the chance to do something stupid like kiss her forehead—or her lips—even though I’d just done something far worse.
I needed to get my head on straight before next weekend, or I would have to cancel.