Chapter 5 #3
“Good—just checking.” He slid a little lower, thighs splayed in a way that briefly caught my attention without verging into obnoxious territory.
“No, what I meant was… From what you told me about Charley, she’s definitely going to throw some surprises at us.
Maybe we should, uh…” He glanced at the cabbie, then back at me.
“Maybe we should just get the awkward first kiss out of the way now.”
It… Uh. It made sense.
“We probably should,” I agreed.
Neither Tay nor I moved. City traffic thrummed in my belly, and whatever, I’d kissed plenty of people.
Mostly strangers, though. And never with the intention to spend the next nine days with them, twenty-four seven, two of them traveling and seven on an island straight out of a brochure for the Financial Times crowd.
I studied Tay across the shadowed back seat—his dark, messy hair and equally dark eyes, his full mouth and a nose that might be a hint too wide for conventional beauty but worked for him.
He was scorching. Not a surprise, yet somehow, it tripped me up.
“Later?” I asked, and Tay nodded quickly.
“Yeah, yes. Got a whole day of travel ahead of us, don’t we?”
“Just about. Some fourteen hours to Phnom Penh, then a domestic flight, and a speedboat transfer.” Why was I spelling out what Tay already knew? “So, you know. We’ve got time to do this.”
This. Like I was a blushing virgin, like kissing a hot guy I happened to genuinely like was some insurmountable task. What the fuck was wrong with me?
A grin flickered across Tay’s face. “Maybe I’ll just grab you when you least expect it and plant one on you.”
It made me laugh—my ribs still a little tight, face hot. “Who says you’ll be doing the grabbing?”
Tay’s mouth twisted into a smirk that was all challenge, edged with something sweet that I was coming to associate with him. “I guess we’ll see,” he said.
I tipped up my chin and countered with a smirk of my own. “You’re on.”
This was my first time flying business class.
I’d like to think I hid it well—unlike Tay, who seemed uncertain what to do with the concept of bypassing the line.
“Feels rude to cut,” he whispered to me right after we were waved through a fast-track gate.
“I’m more of a ‘wait my turn and say thank you’ kind of guy. ”
“Not when you’ve got money to spare,” I murmured back.
“I don’t.”
“Good thing you’re fake-dating me, then.”
He stopped in the narrow gangway that led to the plane, suddenly enough that I nearly ran into his back, and turned with a grin. “And on that note…”
“On that note…?” I prompted as people approached from behind me, their steps thudding on the metal floor. We were blocking the way, should move over—only Tay swayed forward and pecked my mouth, then darted away again. Featherlight contact, gone before it registered.
His smile glinted like fireflies. “Gotcha.”
I blinked myself out of a half-beat moment of stupor. It hadn’t been anything, far too brief, the idea of a kiss more than the actual thing, yet something about the energy of it lingered, how he’d pushed into my space, the spike of energy in my blood.
“That wasn’t a kiss,” I told him, tamping down the urge to clear my throat. Other travelers were almost upon us, so I nudged him to keep moving.
“Oh?” he said, all challenge, an impish gleam in his eyes. “Think you can do better?”
It felt a tiny bit like those questions he’d proposed—daring me out of my comfort zone to match him answer for answer.
I’d never met anyone quite like that. Most people didn’t care enough to poke at my protective layers, and with the rare few like Gregg who did, it took time. Tay just… crashed right through.
“I know I can,” I told him. “For one, it’s only polite to give the other person a chance to react.”
He started walking backwards, his mouth one self-satisfied little curve. “Or maybe you’re just slow.”
I knew he was deliberately goading me. Didn’t make it any less effective. “Remember when you found me intimidating?” I asked.
His grin didn’t diminish even as he turned and kept moving toward the plane’s dedicated business-class entrance. “Rings a bell, yeah.”
“I kind of miss those days.”
“That’s a lie,” he stated with casual confidence.
It was.
I hesitated for half a second, then laughed softly. “Yeah, it is.”
He didn’t reply, but the smile he tossed me fizzed in my belly, brighter than the champagne we were served once we found our seats.
I watched him take a selfie, glass raised and beaming at his phone, delighted like a newly minted emperor on his throne.
When he was done, I snapped a picture of him just like that—catching the exact moment he realized I was doing it and ducked his head, sheepish yet no less happy for it.
“It turns into an actual bed,” he told me, like I didn’t already know.
“The seat. That’s, like, a bit excessive, right?
I mean—” He stopped abruptly, glanced around, and then leaned closer across the gap between our seats.
“It’s cool, don’t get me wrong. Just makes me feel like I don’t really belong here, you know.
Like I should have dressed up for the trip. ”
“How very working class of you.” I let one corner of my mouth hitch up. “From what I’ve seen, the rich never worry about fitting in. They just show up and assume the world’s been laid out for them like a picnic selection of oysters.”
He snorted. “So you’re saying I should act like I’ve got a suitcase full of Gucci and just couldn’t be bothered?”
“Nailed it.” I winked at him. “You and me both, by the way. We’ll fake the lifestyle along with the boyfriend part and mock them behind their backs.”
“Feels ungrateful when your sister and Theo are making this possible.”
“Theo’s parents, more like. But no—no mocking them because one, she’d have my balls, and two, Theo’s a nice guy.” I sharpened my smile. “Some of his friends, though? You’ll find their pictures next to the dictionary definition of ‘entitlement.’”
“Then all bets are off,” Tay said around an exaggeratedly dainty sip of champagne, sampling it like a wine connoisseur.
I raised my glass with a quirk of my eyebrows. “To us, my dear.”
“To us,” he echoed, clinking our glasses together, and something about his smile made warmth bubble up in my chest. And yes, of course—Tay was attractive. But more importantly, he was fast becoming a friend, someone I trusted with the darker layers of my life.
I didn’t have a lot of people like that.