Chapter Twelve
Drew
For a guy who’d spent the last few months getting the cold shoulder, I sure as hell hadn’t expected the night to end like this.
Her lips on mine, her hands clutching my shirt, and the world falling apart in the best possible way.
Melanie Sauser, woman of a thousand snarky comebacks and one hell of a temper, was kissing me like she’d been holding her breath for weeks and finally remembered how to exhale.
And I was gone. Completely, utterly gone.
Everything else, snowstorm, spaghetti, self-control, faded into white noise. The only thing that mattered was her.
Her lips were soft but fierce, the kind of kiss that didn’t ask—it claimed. She tasted faintly of peppermint chocolate, like Christmas and chaos rolled into one. Her fingers slid into my hair, tugging me closer, and I couldn’t stop the low sound that escaped me.
If this were a dream, I didn’t want to wake up.
I’d spent months trying to get her to look at me like this again, to drop the walls, the distance, the carefully measured sarcasm. And now she was here in my arms, under my hands, and all I could think was, don’t mess this up.
So I memorized everything.
The tiny sigh she made when I deepened the kiss. The way her eyelashes fluttered against my cheek. The warmth of her body pressed against mine.
Because there was always that voice in the back of my head whispering that this might never happen again. That tomorrow, she’d laugh it off, call it a “blizzard-induced lapse in judgment,” and go back to pretending we were nothing more than friends who couldn’t stop arguing.
So I kissed her like a man who’d already missed her once.
Her hands slid down to my chest, fisting in my shirt. I felt her heart hammering against me. It was fast, frantic, and alive, but it hit me how long it had been since I’d felt this way. Since anyone had made me feel this way.
When she finally pulled back, her cheeks were flushed, her lips red and a little swollen, and her breathing was as uneven as mine. For a second, neither of us said anything.
Then she glanced past me at the counter, where the pasta still sat steaming.
“The spaghetti’s getting cold,” she said softly, voice still a little breathless.
I couldn’t help it, I laughed. A full, unguarded laugh that broke through the tension like sunlight through clouds.
“Mel,” I said, brushing a thumb across her cheek, “there’s no way anything in this apartment is getting cold after a kiss like that.”
She rolled her eyes, though I caught the smile tugging at her mouth. “You’re so corny.”
“Corny?” I echoed. “That’s what you got from that?”
“Don’t ruin your streak,” she teased, trying to step back.
I caught her wrist before she could. “What streak?”
“The one where you say something ridiculously smooth and somehow make it work.”
“Ah,” I said, tugging her a little closer again. “You mean my charm.”
“Your arrogance,” she corrected.
“Same thing.”
She was smiling now—soft, shy, dangerous. The kind of smile that made me want to say something stupid just to keep her looking at me like that.
Before she could think of another comeback, I leaned in and kissed her again.
Slower this time.
No urgency, no rush…just warmth. A promise.
She melted against me, her laughter caught between our mouths, and for a moment, everything outside the walls of that tiny apartment stopped mattering. The snow could’ve buried the whole damn town, and I wouldn’t have noticed.
When we finally broke apart again, she rested her forehead against my chest, her breath still unsteady.
“You’re going to burn the garlic bread,” she murmured.
I glanced at the oven timer, which was somehow still ticking. “Worth it.”
She swatted my arm lightly. “You’re driving me bonkers.”
“Still sounds like a compliment.”
“Drew,” she warned, but there was no bite left in it.
“Melanie,” I said, smiling into her hair. “You’ve been either ignoring me or barking at me for months. I think I’ve earned a little flirtation time.”
She tilted her head up to look at me. “Don’t push it.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
We stood there another beat, just watching each other, the silence between us filled with the soft hum of the heater and the muffled whistle of wind outside.
But she shook her head like she was shaking off a spell and took the bread out of the oven.
“All right,” she said, stepping back, though I noticed her fingers lingered against mine before she let go. “Dinner. Before you make another cheesy comment.”
“Too late,” I said, grinning. “Pretty sure the entire night’s been a cheesy comment.”
She snorted and grabbed the pasta bowl from the counter. “Then it’s on brand.”
I grabbed plates and followed her to the small table near the window. The twinkle lights Lydia had hung reflected off the glass, turning the room a soft gold. It felt like stepping into some Christmas card I didn’t deserve to be in.
She set the bowl down and sat across from me, tucking her legs under the chair, the corner of her mouth still curved in amusement.
“Well?” she asked, twirling her fork. “Moment of truth. The pasta might be cold now, but at least I didn’t burn it.”
I took a bite, mostly just to humor her, and made a show of considering.
“Verdict?” she prompted.
I met her gaze and smiled slowly. “Perfect.”
“The pasta?”
“The night.”
She groaned. “There it is. The line.”
“What?” I asked, feigning innocence.
“The one where you ruin a perfectly normal sentence by making it sound like a movie trailer.”
“Not my fault you bring out the poetic side of me,” I said.
She pointed her fork at me. “That’s it…you’re washing dishes.”
“Fine by me,” I said, leaning back in my chair, grinning. “As long as you promise not to ban me from your kitchen again.”
“We’ll see how the dishes survive,” she said, shaking her head, but she was smiling now. Really smiling.
And damn, that was a sight worth every burned garlic bread, every sarcastic jab, every cold shoulder she’d thrown my way.
Because that smile, the one she gave when she forgot to guard herself, was the kind of thing that could keep a man warm all winter.
She caught me staring and arched a brow. “You’re staring again.”
“Can you blame me?”
“Yes.”
“Won’t stop me.”
She laughed, and the sound filled the small space like a spark catching.
Outside, the snow kept falling, blanketing the world in silence. Inside, the air still hummed with the echo of that kiss.
I didn’t know what tomorrow would look like…whether she’d wake up and regret it or pretend it hadn’t meant anything. But sitting there across from her, watching the light dance in her hair and her cheeks pink from laughter, I knew one thing for sure.
We ate like we were trying to pretend the world hadn’t just tilted.
Forks moving, glasses clinking, the storm pressing its palm to the window.
The flirty jabs kept sputtering up, with her calling me impossible and me turning it into praise, but each one landed softer, then softer still, like a fire easing back to embers.
The pasta was good. Comforting. I told her so.
She said, “Told you,” but her smile didn’t quite make it to her eyes.
I knew that look. The one that crept in after we’d laughed too loud or stood too close. The second-guessing look. The what did we just do look. It slid over her face now, almost apologetic, and my chest tightened like someone had hooked a line through my ribs and yanked.
I reached for the wine and stood, needing motion. “Top-off?”
She hesitated, then nudged her glass toward me. I poured, listening to the soft ribbon of red, buying myself a few more seconds before I had to do the thing I knew would make or break the rest of the night—ask the question out loud.
I set the bottle down, took my seat, and said, as gently as I could, “Why are you wishing you hadn’t kissed me?”
She flinched, barely, but I felt it. For a beat, the only sound was the radiator ticking and the wind dragging a branch across the glass. Then she lifted her eyes to mine and, for once, didn’t deflect.
“Because,” she said, voice steady in that way people get when they’re walking into a truth that scares them, “I don’t want to screw up something that could mean something.”
The fork slid out of my fingers and tapped the plate.
“You know I wouldn’t move here,” she went on before I could answer. “And I know you wouldn’t move to Seattle. And it just…” She shook her head, helpless and a little angry with herself. “The situation confounds me.”
I exhaled a breath, half laugh, half self-defense, and rubbed the back of my neck. “Aw, one of those big-city words.”
Her mouth opened, then shut, then curved despite itself. “Don’t do that.”
I tipped my head. “Don’t do what?”
“Act like you’re some country bumpkin who isn’t smart and…” She searched my face, and the word landed like warm hands on cold skin. “Sexy.”
That one went through me. Lighting me up and hollowing me out at the same time.
I stared at her, at the seam of her pajama top where it crossed her collarbone. At the tiny sauce fleck at the corner of her mouth. Every part of me wanted to stand, close the space, and kiss the rest of that sentence right out of her.
Instead, I took a slow sip of wine and put it down carefully, as if setting it down cautiously could keep the whole thing from tipping.
“You’re scared of messing this up,” I said. “So am I.”
“That’s not what I said,” she replied, quickly. “But yes.”
We sat in it. Not the silence of people with nothing to say. The silence of people with too much.
“You know what the worst part is?” she asked after a moment, twisting her napkin. “I liked tonight. I like… you. It’s not nothing. It’s never been nothing.”
“Not for me either,” I said, and it came out rougher than I meant.
The relief that flickered across her face made me want to be a better man than I had any idea how to be.
“But wanting something,” she said, “doesn’t always mean you can have it. I have a life, Drew. An apartment that isn’t this adorable shoebox. A job. A pace that makes sense to me.”