Chapter 8
COOPER
“I did warn you he was heavy-handed,” I said, glancing sheepishly at Felix as we stepped off the front porch and into the cool night air. Mom and Dad had insisted that I walk Felix home while they put Benji to bed.
I knew a setup when I saw one. It wasn’t going to work, but I wasn’t about to fight it, either. I hadn’t spent this much time with an adult not related to me since I’d moved back home.
Spending time with Felix felt good. I didn’t want the night to be over just yet.
“I’m fine,” Felix said, licking the inside of his mouth. “Or I will be, anyway. Tastebuds probably grow back.”
I snorted, and got a smile in response.
“It wasn’t actually that bad,” Felix said. “I was just surprised.”
“Benji is full of surprises,” I said, which was one of my better attempts at understatement. Everything about him had surprised me when I went from only seeing him at family get-togethers to seeing him every single day.
I wouldn’t have traded any of it for anything. Even if I sometimes felt like I was drowning.
“I bet.” Felix tucked his hands into his pockets—incredible, given how tight his jeans were.
Not that I was looking, obviously.
Not more than a little, anyway.
“I’m impressed, you know,” Felix continued, drawing my attention away from the fit of his jeans.
“Impressed?”
Felix nodded. “The more I think about it, the more impressed I am. Taking on a six-year-old like that, full time, all of a sudden. It’s a lot.”
I shrugged. “Felt like the only choice to me. Aaron—my ex—he, uh. When Benji came to live with me—us—he put up with it for a while, but… when I told him I’d have to move back to Otter Bay to get Mom and Dad’s help with Benji, ‘cause I couldn’t do it alone, he told me he wasn’t moving to a crappy little town where nothing ever happens.
That he didn’t sign up for a kid, and it was him or Benji.
He hadn’t even finished saying it when I said Benji.
He’s six years old. What was I meant to do? ”
“What about Benji’s dad?”
I shrugged. “Deadbeat. Always was. Took off the minute Laura got pregnant and we never heard from him again.”
Felix wrinkled his nose. “Something else we’ve got in common. Mine left when I was four. Never saw him again.”
Asshole.
I didn’t say it aloud—I wasn’t sure how Felix felt about his dad, but I was instantly, completely sure how I felt about him. The same way I did about Benji’s. Like the world would be a better place if they’d waded into the sea and never come back.
“Yeah, well, I wasn’t about to be one more person who’d abandoned him, either,” I said instead. “He deserves better than that.”
Felix shook his head, but he was smiling. He looked up at the sky—it was a clear night with a nearly full moon—and let out a long breath. “You can’t even hear how amazing that sounds, can you?”
“Apparently not.” I smiled back at him, tiny but honest.
Felix looked at me for another heartbeat, then looked around at the street again. “Stupid question, but are those crickets?”
“Cicadas,” I said, gesturing at the trees lining the street.
They were singing their little hearts out tonight.
“We don’t get them every year, but when we do, they’re always early.
Something about the bay protecting the area or something, so it gets warmer sooner?
I dunno, someone explained this to me when I was a kid, but… ”
“You were a kid,” Felix finished for me. “Definitely not crickets?”
“Definitely not crickets,” I said, smiling wryly.
“Damn. Avery was right.”
I laughed. “You really are a city kid, huh?”
“Actually, I’m from Iowa,” Felix said. “Tiny little town no one’s ever heard of.
But I got a ballet scholarship and moved to New York when I was twelve and never looked back.
I barely remember my hometown other than that it was small and everyone always knew everything I was up to and I wanted out more than anything.
That was nothing compared to the world of ballet, though.
You can’t sneeze without someone running off to tell someone else about it.
I got a ladder in a pair of tights once during a rehearsal and found out about it through the gossip getting back to me before I actually noticed. ”
“Wow.”
“Your dad’s gonna love it,” Felix teased, looking up at the sky again. He probably hadn’t seen so many stars in a while.
A shiver ran through him as I was thinking that, and I stopped to shrug my shirt off.
“Here.” I offered it to him.
Felix raised an eyebrow.
“It’s mostly clean,” I defended, suddenly self-conscious. “Better than freezing.”
“We’ve got less than fifty yards left to walk.” Felix nodded toward the end of the street, where he’d rented the apartment above the currently vacant store there. Not that he’d told me—I knew because no one could keep a secret around here.
Small town living would make great training for big-time ballet, apparently. At least Benji would have a head start on it. If he decided ballet was what he really wanted.
“Take it anyway.” I took a step toward him, holding the shirt almost to his chest.
Felix looked up at me, eyes glinting in the moonlight as they darted over my face.
“Okay,” he said, turning away.
For a second I couldn’t figure out why, but then he raised his arms, and I got the idea.
Earlier today I’d picked him up without thinking about it, stretched his leg out without registering anything but whether or not I was making myself useful.
Helping him into my shirt was different.
He wasn’t as broad as me, but under my hands his shoulders felt strong, hard, the muscles shifting easily as I ran my palms over them to tug the shirt on.
The warmth of his body seeped through the fabric as I smoothed it in place, lingering a beat or two longer than I had to.
This close, he smelled of fresh, masculine aftershave, just strong enough to pick up now that I was inches away.
My hands curled around his shoulders without asking my permission, as if they were magnetized.
A soft sigh escaped him as I gave a careful squeeze, letting go after barely a heartbeat.
My hands felt strange as they moved away from him, itching to touch again.
How long since I’d touched anyone like that? Anyone who wasn’t Mom, Dad, or Benji?
Since I’d moved here. Eight months.
Too long.
“Thank you,” Felix said. I might’ve been imagining the roughness of his voice. I had to be, didn’t I?
“Welcome,” I replied as he turned, wrapping the shirt around himself.
After another heartbeat, we went back to walking in the direction of his apartment.
It was different now, though. There was a charge in the air, the same prickle at the back of my neck as before a lightning strike.
The hairs on my arms were standing on end, and it wasn’t because I wasn’t wearing my shirt.
It was more because Felix was wearing it. It was at least a couple of sizes too big for him—not trailing after him like my shirts did on Benji, but hanging off his narrower frame. Obviously not his.
Mine.
It wasn’t until he looked at me again that I realized I’d been staring at him. I looked away, heat rising to my ears again. My hand went to the back of my neck, rubbing nervously. I was so aware of him. Every one of my nerve endings seemed to be on high alert.
“This is me,” Felix said, stopping in front of the dark, empty storefront.
I stood facing him, still rubbing the back of my neck.
The night was over.
I didn’t want it to be. I didn’t know what I wanted, but I knew that what I didn’t want was to walk away from Felix right now. What could I say to keep him here?
“I know,” I said, which probably wasn’t it. “Small town.”
“Small town,” Felix repeated, lips quirking as he tilted his head just a little to look up at me.
I stared at them, wetting my own. Say something. Anything.
“I hope, uh, you had a good night?” I asked. It was weak, but it was conversation. It was another moment of connection.
That was the thing. I felt connected to Felix in a way I couldn’t have explained. I wanted…
More. More of him. The thought was so clear, once I’d had it, that it felt like a burst of fireworks going off in my brain and lighting up the whole dark sky.
Felix’s smile widened. When his face was still, it was perfect—every line, every feature was exactly as it should have been, in ideal proportion. He was beautiful, in the way paintings in museums were beautiful, in the way glaciers and snow-capped mountains were beautiful.
When he smiled, though, smiled up at me the way he was smiling now, the breath caught in my lungs. He was more than beautiful then. I needed a different word for it, a better word, but if there was one, I didn’t know it. When he smiled at me, my heart soared.
“I did, actually,” he said. It sounded distant over the rush of blood in my ears, but I nodded.
“Good. Good, that’s—”
“Coop,” he interrupted, taking my hand. His fingers were cooler than mine, and a whole lot softer and more delicate.
I remembered the time we’d met—properly—when I couldn’t bring myself to touch him because I was afraid I’d ruin his pristine dance outfit.
But now he was standing in front of me, wearing my worn plaid shirt over his clean, neat dress one. Holding my hand.
“Coop,” Felix repeated.
I looked up from his hand to his face just in time to see his unimpressed brows soften.
Anticipation buzzed in the air between us, tying my stomach into knots like it was trying to make a macramé plant hanger out of it.
“Come upstairs,” Felix said, brushing his thumb over the back of my hand.
For a moment, the words—or the meaning, at least—didn’t quite register.
“Upstairs?” I repeated.
Felix rolled his eyes. Then his other hand came up, cool fingertips resting on my cheek. My breath hitched.
Felix broke into another smile, one that made his eyes crinkle at the corners. The warmest smile I’d seen on him.
I was so busy admiring it that the kiss came as a surprise.
Our noses bumped together at first, but then Felix tilted his face and we slotted together like puzzle pieces.
All the knots in my stomach unraveled at once as his lips pressed against mine, as his fingers squeezed my hand—reassurance I didn’t realize I needed until it made all the tension I’d been holding melt away.
Felix was kissing me. He smelled clean and masculine and his fingers were stronger than I thought they’d be where they were cupping my jaw, tilting my face for a better angle, for more closeness.
The inch or so of air between us heated so fast I was glad I’d taken my shirt off.
When Felix pulled back—just far enough to breathe, our noses still touching—the whole world spun around me.
“Upstairs,” Felix confirmed. “Now.”
What was I meant to say to that?
“Okay.”