Chapter 23 #3
“Doubtful,” I said, holding the coin back out to him. With trembling fingers, I tried to get Beau to take it. “Here. I’m not the kind of person you want to make pacts with. I’m the kind of person who sleeps with her boss.”
I thought getting fired hurt, but something told me losing Beau over Simon was going to be so much worse. But I had made my bed.
I reached for that familiar thought that men are temporary, but it did nothing to soothe me now.
Beau’s eyes flicked down to the coin and then back to me, unspent tension thickening the air. His jaw flexed—only once—like he was absorbing the last of what I’d told him. Then, he gently closed my fingers around the coin.
“You don’t have to deserve it,” he said. “That’s not how this works.”
“The Buffalo Nickel Clause?” I stared at him, waiting for the judgment or the inevitable shift in his eyes. But it didn’t come.
“Us.”
The word made my heart pound.
“You get to keep it, because I gave it to you. And because you don’t have to be perfect to be worth something. Not to me.”
The feeling of my shoulders dropping made me realize how tight I’d been holding myself until now. “You don’t hate me?”
“I don’t think I could ever hate you.” His eyes went a little liquid. “I feel bad for Simon. You’re beautiful and smart and fearless. He blew it.”
Fearless. I didn’t believe it. But I wanted to. I wanted to be as good as he thought I was.
With my secret out in the open, breathing felt easier. I knew exactly what I wanted to do now that I was liberated.
I understood the risks. I’d known Simon for years before things turned personal. Somehow, after a few months, I trusted Beau more. And for the first time since Simon—since that fucking note—I wanted to trust my instincts again.
“I don’t want to talk about Simon anymore.” And as the words left my mouth, my body had already decided. I was moving toward Beau, finally letting the pull between us win.
I saw the flicker in his eyes a split second before our mouths met—surprise, heat, and the ghost of a smile.
As we kissed, I skimmed my thumb across that crinkle by his eye—the one I had told myself I could never have.
And then his hands were on me, one sliding up my spine, the other curling into my hair.
He kissed me like he’d been waiting months for this.
Maybe he had. I had, too.
The kiss was soft for all of one second—one breath—and then it was hungry.
Months of almosts finally breaking. His breath caught when I deepened the kiss, and I felt it like a strike of lightning, hot and sudden, unraveling me from the inside out.
A low sound rumbled in his throat—surprise, maybe, or hunger—and I felt it everywhere.
Down my spine. Between my legs. I gripped the front of his shirt, holding him against me.
After months of fighting the draw to him, months of keeping him at arm’s length, I was finished with that. I wasn’t scared anymore.
I just wanted him.
The kiss broke, but neither of us moved. We stayed pressed together, breathing like the air had shifted around us. My arm ached from being scraped across Paloma Avenue, but I didn’t care. The sting grounded me. Reminded me I was still here.
When I reached for the hem of his shirt, though, he stopped me.
“Let me get a bandage for your arm first.” He smiled and kissed my forehead.
“Stop trying to ruin the moment.” I laughed, and I could hear the hunger in my voice.
“I think the moment will last.”
He was right. It did.
As he bandaged my arm with Scotch tape and a folded paper towel—the only medical supplies in my apartment—I savored the warmth of his touch. We were laughing about it when he cupped my face in his hands and kissed me again like I was already his.
When I led him into my bedroom, our laughter quieted. The air between us fell still as my pulse hammered. Beau kept his eyes on mine as our clothes started slipping away.
We didn’t rush. There was no tearing off clothes or fumbling with frantic hands.
Although the temptation was there, especially when I felt his warm, bare skin on mine.
But he was careful. Maybe it was because my elbows were sore.
Maybe because we both knew this kind of first wouldn’t come around again.
And there was something in his eyes—quiet and steady—like he was committing me to memory.
It was a kind of intimacy I had never let myself want before, and I had to fight not to let it terrify me.
The Simons and the Dylan-not-Damons of my dating life had been placeholders for the real thing.
Doomed from the start. And that was how I liked it.
I had chased sex that felt like power. Sex that felt like escape.
But moving with Beau—pressing my forehead to his and feeling the warmth of his breath against the hollow of my collarbone—wasn’t some guarded exchange.
It was being seen.
Beau had seen me irreverent, ambitious, moody, irresponsible, and clumsy. I had told him the worst thing about me, and here he was wanting me anyway.
That was it. From that day on, I was all in.