29. Zara
ZARA
The last thing I expected after I left Simone and Lucas’s house was that Garrett would show up at my apartment, and I would declare we should kiss again.
The words had slipped out without thought. And once they were freed, I didn’t want to snatch them back—especially not after he’d agreed we should kiss.
But we weren’t talking about the brushing of lips, like the accidental one more than two weeks ago. That kiss left my body tingling, and I couldn’t stop thinking about Garrett’s lips on mine.
And we weren’t talking about the second kiss, which had been not much more than the brief touch of our lips.
This one is…it is…there are no words to describe it.
Of all the kisses I’ve experienced over the years, none of them compared to that third kiss with Garrett.
It’s the type that ruins a girl for all the ones that follow. Other men’s kisses. Kisses that don’t belong to my best friend, the man I’m in love with.
We keep going, as if afraid to stop. Once our mouths separate, there likely won’t be another kiss between us. Another chance for more of whatever this is to flourish .
For the first time in weeks, with Garrett’s lips on mine, I feel like for now I’m on solid ground. I’m not walking across a frozen lake, unsure when and if the ice will crack under my weight. Leaving me stranded, unable to get to shore.
I hook my arms around Garrett’s neck, the pain in my shoulders giving me a moment of peace. I don’t let my brain analyze what the kiss means. I just enjoy it for as long as I can.
But eventually, I loosen my hold on him and step away, ending the kiss, fighting to regain my senses. Because. Well…I…wow. Um. Wow.
Garrett looks at me like I’m a math problem he’s trying to solve, except math was never his strong suit.
It was mine—and even I can’t figure out what just happened and what it all means.
“I needed that.” Garrett’s voice is an awed whisper. His warm brown eyes remain locked on mine.
“Me too.” My voice is not much louder, my pulse thundering in my ears, waiting for his next words, his next decision. Waiting to see if he plans to slice me across the heart, to leave me to bleed out.
“So,” he drawls, as if he’s as lost as I am. I want to kiss him again, to feel his lips on mine, to prove to myself I didn’t dream what just happened. But that wouldn’t be a good idea.
Not until we have talked.
“So,” I say, echoing Garrett’s unspoken question.
He returns to pacing, telling me without words he needs to think.
I make myself comfy on the couch, legs curled to the side, and I watch him figure things out for himself. I’m clearly not the only one whose thoughts are a tangled mess over what just happened. But I also get the sense the kiss isn’t all that has him conflicted.
“How’s Peony doing?” I ask after a long, agonizing beat.
That question is all it takes to get him to stop pacing, and he drops down next to me.
The exhaustion in his eyes vanishes, replaced with a spark of excitement.
“She let me read her favorite book to her before bedtime.” The grin that curves across his face is so bright, it would have brought me to my knees if I weren’t already sitting.
“That’s great. So things are getting better between you two? ”
His grin and the spark in his eyes falter, clinging to a fraction of their previous brightness.
“Because of my deadline, it’s been hard to spend as much time with her as I should.
But we’re slowly getting there.” He turns his gaze to the ceiling, his neck resting on the back of my couch.
“And I’m currently looking for a therapist for her.
She gets nightmares.” Heartbreak for his daughter furrows his brow, pulls down on the corners of his mouth. “She had one before I came here.”
His reason for being in my apartment now makes sense. He’s so stressed out at whatever his daughter is going through, he needed a distraction. No matter how small it might be.
A dopamine rush. That’s what the kiss was about. Nothing more.
“A what?” Garrett asks, eyebrows lifting, his gaze back on me.
Oh, shit. Please tell me I didn’t say that out loud. “Huh?” I reply, playing innocent.
“You said something. What was it?” He gives me the look that warns me he won’t let it go until I tell him.
I could lie, but he and I don’t lie to each other—other than the part about how I’m in love with him.
“Our…our kisses. They’re a dopamine rush. A stress reliever.”
He huffs a sound that says he’s never thought of it that way until now. “I could sure use the stress relief with everything going on.”
That makes two of us.
“So maybe…um…maybe that’s what you need. To kiss. More often.” I mentally kick myself at the suggestion. Way to go on telling him to kiss other women.
He slowly nods, as if contemplating my idiotic comment. “Except I’m not interested in dating anyone. I have a daughter to think about now. The last thing I need is to get messed up in a relationship.” A raw emotion crosses his expression, but it’s gone before I can further dissect it.
“I know what you mean. I’ve got enough going on without worrying about a relationship too.” Especially after what happened with Joseph. And the last thing I want is to end up with another jerk like him, who thinks chronic pain is all in the head.
Sure, I could quiz the men prior to dating them about their opinion on chronic pain, but if I haven’t told my friends and family about it yet, why would I tell a stranger?
“So maybe this shouldn’t be a one-time thing.” Garrett sits up straighter. A hopeful smile curves his mouth, gleams in his eyes.
“What do you mean?”
“You and I”—he points between us—“we kiss whenever we need it. Purely for stress release. For the dopamine rush.”
Part of me wants to laugh out loud at the ridiculousness of what he’s suggesting. But the other part is nodding, one-hundred-percent on board. “That’s not a bad idea. And anytime one of us needs a hit of dopamine, they go to wherever the other person is and we kiss.” It might work.
My heart groans that it’s a stupid idea. I ignore it. What does it know? In college, it thought it would be a brilliant idea for me to fall in love with Garrett, and look where that’s gotten me.
“Right. But we should probably keep this quiet,” Garrett says. “Just between us. We don’t tell anyone, including your brothers and my brothers, or Simone, Jess, Emily, and Avery.”
“Good idea.” Simone and Em would think it was a bad idea or would get things all wrong.
They know my feelings for Garrett go deeper than they probably should.
And my brothers…they just wouldn’t understand.
“The only people who have to know about our deal is you and me.” I hold out my hand to shake on it.
Garrett has different plans. His mouth christens mine with a stamp of approval, and I sink into the kiss, wondering why we didn’t think of doing this sooner. We really should have done this sooner.
My brain doesn’t allow me to lose myself in the kiss for long. It screams, We need to set ground rules, boundaries, if this will work .
I want to bat it away, tell it to get lost.
But it does make a valid point, even if I would prefer it made that point after we finished kissing.
I pull away ever so slightly, my breathing and heart rate already runaway trains, and rest my forehead on his. “We need ground rules.” My voice flows out husky and low.
“What kind of ground rules?”
Willing my heart to get control of itself, I shift away from him on the couch.
I need distance between us if I’m going to get this out.
“This is just about us kissing. No sex.” I’m not sure our friendship would survive if we took it that far.
Not with how I feel about him. This proposition is risky enough as it is.
A flicker of something crosses his face. “Okay. Kissing only.”
“And if one of us should find someone else”—if he should change his mind about Athena being more than Peony’s nanny—“our kissing experiment ends.”
“Right.” His lips squish in the way that tells me something else is on his mind, but he doesn’t plan to tell me what it is. “Anything else?”
Lord, this is crazy. But crazy or not, it might just work. I snicker. “If I were a lawyer, I’m sure I’d come up with something. But I’m not my brother, soooo…”
Garrett coughs out a laugh. “I can only imagine the long list Jerome would come up with.”
I lean in and kiss Garrett again, not wanting to give him a chance to list some of those things. It’s a deep, knee-wobbling kiss that is all tongue, my hands threaded through his hair. I could get addicted to Garrett’s kisses, which is probably not a good thing.
Well, more addicted to them than I already am.
Temporarily sated, I reluctantly pull away, an inch separating our mouths.
A long shaky breath fans over my lips—his breath—and his eyes slowly open, as if he needed the extra moment to regain his senses.
“I should get going.” Garrett pushes to his feet. “I’ve got a few more hours to write before calling it a night. And I want to make sure Peony is okay.”
I begrudgingly unfold to a stand. My muscles ache at the effort, but the intensity is nowhere near as bad as it was this morning. I keep the wince off my face, though I can tell from Garrett’s frown I didn’t do a good job.
“I’m just getting old.” The lie floats out on a chuckle. When his frown doesn’t smooth away, I add, needing to distract him from the truth, “I really am fine, Garrett. Just tired.” That isn’t a lie.
I walk him to the door. “Well, have fun this weekend with the warriors.” I kiss him, deeply again…to further distract him from the reason behind the wince.
And because I can.