Chapter 26
EMILY
My phone buzzed on the kitchen counter, just as I was stacking the last plate in the dishwasher. Maya’s wide-eyed gaze met mine. I reached for my phone with shaky hands.
Girls are down. Come through the side gate when you’re ready.
I stared at the message, my heart doing that stupid fluttery thing that was fast becoming its constant state.
I’d been rehearsing this conversation in my head all day. Trying out different ways to say what I needed to say. Practiced in the shower, in front of the mirror, while I was drying my hair.
None of it sounded right.
“Emily.” Maya knew exactly what I was doing. “Quit stalling.”
“You’re right.” I squared my shoulders and loosened the choke hold I had on my phone.
“Good luck.”
“Thanks.”
“I’ll be here to hug you if it goes pear-shaped.”
“Double thanks.”
I shoved my phone into my back pocket and headed for the back door on legs that felt like jelly. Down my porch steps and across the grass to the side gate. The bolt slid open easily now. Oh, had he greased it? He must have. Somehow the knowledge settled the butterflies rioting in my belly.
Cam was waiting on the back veranda, sprawled in one of the recliners like he’d been there a while.
The porch light cast shadows across his face, highlighting the strong line of his jaw, the slight scruff he hadn’t shaved today.
He looked relaxed, but tension tightened in his shoulders when he saw me.
“Hey.” He didn’t get up, just watched me approach.
“Hey.”
I dropped into the recliner next to his, feeling the warmth radiating off him. How easy would it be to reach over and touch him?
The urge to run bubbled up inside me. If I didn’t start talking right now, I’d give into it.
“I’ve been thinking about the kissing.” The words tumbled out faster than I’d planned.
His gaze locked on mine. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” I twisted my fingers together, forced myself to keep talking. “And I want to be honest with you, because you deserve that. I’m really attracted to you. Like, embarrassingly so.”
A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “That doesn’t sound embarrassing. And ditto, just in case you missed that memo.”
Okay, well, we were off to a pretty good start, but “I’m just so bad at…”
“At?”
I gestured vaguely at my body, at the space between us, feeling the heat climb my neck. “I’m not... I can’t go where you probably want to go. I have limits. Hard ones.”
The silence stretched, thick and suffocating. I wanted to vomit.
“Emily, sweetheart. Just give it to me straight and stop torturing yourself.”
Sweetheart.
“I feel like a tease,” I said, my voice low. “And I don’t want to waste your time.”
There. I’d said it. I braced myself for the polite letdown. The awkward “let’s just be friends” speech.
Cam sat forward, the recliner creaking under his shift in weight. The playful neighbor vibe was gone, replaced by something darker. Something intense that made my breath hitch.
“Is that what you think I’m doing?” His voice was tight. “Checking a watch? Waiting for a payout?”
“I...” I swallowed hard. “I’m just saying it’s not fair to you, that I can’t give you what you want.”
“What do you want?”
“Well, I, uh…” I want you to kiss me fucking senseless.
“Are you saying you just want to go back to being neighbors?”
I shook my head.
“Uh, I see. Well, that is good news.”
“Is it?” My gaze slid to his, then away. This wasn’t going how I’d played it out in my head. “I’m not really sure what’s going on here.”
He let out a short, rough laugh and scrubbed a hand over his face. “Emily. Look at me.”
Swallowing heavily, I forced myself to look him in the eye.
“I’m thirty-eight years old. I’m not looking for a quick score. I know you’re skittish. I see the way you freeze up.” He leaned closer, his forearms resting on his knees. “So here is how this works. You set the pace. You draw the line. My hands go where you put them. Nowhere else.”
My brain was working double time to process what he was saying. “That doesn’t sound like a lot of fun for you.”
“Are you kidding? Kissing you is my favorite hobby.”
That actually made me smile.
“Tell me what you’re thinking.”
“I’m thinking you’re crazy to agree to this. But I’m also thinking I really want you to kiss me right now.”
Without a word, he reached over and wrapped his fingers around my wrist, his touch warm and steady. Then he pulled, gentle but insistent, guiding me out of my chair and into his lap.
I went willingly, my hands finding his shoulders as I settled against him. His arms came around me immediately, one hand splaying across my lower back, the other sliding up to cup the back of my head.
Then he kissed me.
It was gentle. Soft and sure, his lips moving against mine with a tenderness that made it hard to breathe. Like he was reassuring me with the kiss itself, telling me without words that this was okay, that I was okay, that we were okay.
I melted into him, my fingers curling into his shirt, holding on.
And that’s when everything shifted. His hand tightened in my hair, angling my head so he could kiss me deeper, and I opened for him without hesitation.
The gentleness gave way to heat, hunger replacing tenderness as I pressed closer.
He groaned low in his throat, his other hand sliding up my back to pull me tighter against him.
Heat flooded through me, pooling low in my belly, making me forget every reason this was complicated.
His tongue swept against mine and I made a sound I barely recognized, something desperate and needy. He pulled me closer still.
I felt the solid warmth of his chest against mine, the strength in his arms as they held me, the way his heart was pounding just as hard as mine.
When we finally broke apart, we were both breathing hard. I dropped my forehead to his shoulder, trying to remember how to function, how to think, how to do anything besides feel.
His arms tightened around me, one hand moving in slow circles on my back. The same motion he’d used when I’d fallen apart in his arms after the shed. Steady. Grounding. Safe.
“You good?”
“Yep.”
“Good girl.”
We sat like that for a long moment, just breathing together, his arms around me and my head on his shoulder. The night air was cool but I felt warm everywhere we touched. The crickets chirped in the grass. A bird cooed in a nearby tree.
Normal suburban sounds while my whole world tilted on its axis.
Eventually I lifted my head to look at him. His green eyes glittered in the moonlight, searching my face.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
“For what?”
“For being patient with me. For not pushing.”
He brushed a strand of hair back from my face, his touch gentle. “There’s nothing hard about this, Emily. I like you. You like me. That’s all that matters.”
“Okay.” I settled against him again, sighing when he leaned back in the recliner. For the first time in a very long time, the knot inside me loosened.