Chapter 30 #2
Scottie’s throat was too tight to speak, so she just nodded.
“You’re really special to me too,” Willow confessed in a whisper. “But I’m not sure I can do this.” She gestured back and forth between them. “I’m as bad with relationships as I am with electronics. I never managed to make either last—and this time, with you, I really want to.”
Scottie’s heart leaped hard against her ribs. She gave Willow a tremulous smile. “You’re in luck. I’ve been told I’m great at both. At least that’s what I thought before Tanya sat me down and—”
“Forget Tanya!” Willow said, a fierce fire in her red-rimmed eyes. “She was a fool for letting you go. I don’t want to hurt you like she did, but I’m not sure what would end up hurting you more: not even trying or investing your heart and it not working out.”
“I think you know me well enough by now to have a good idea what option I’d choose, right?” Scottie asked softly.
Willow nodded. She drew a shaky breath and raised her gaze to meet Scottie’s. “Then we should…maybe give it a try?”
Wild hope swirled through Scottie, but she needed to be sure they were on the same page. “You’re not just talking about another trial date, are you?”
Willow shook her head. “No. I’m talking about a real one.”
Everything around them went very still. The distant hum of traffic seemed to fade away.
Scottie’s pulse tripped, her heart hammering, wild and full of wonder. The corners of her mouth lifted into a beaming smile. “I’d love that.”
“Me too,” Willow whispered.
They stood in the middle of the hotel parking lot and smiled at each other. The same emotions spinning through Scottie were reflected on Willow’s face: disbelief, nervousness, but mostly joy.
Scottie lifted a hand and tenderly brushed away a tear that still clung to Willow’s cheek.
Willow’s lashes fluttered, and she leaned into the touch.
“I know this isn’t how it’s supposed to go,” Scottie murmured, still drinking in the delicate curve of Willow’s cheekbones, the vulnerability in her eyes, and the fullness of her lips.
“I mean, people don’t usually kiss before the first date, but…
” She realized she was rambling and cut herself off. “May I kiss you?”
“No!”
Oh. Scottie’s shoulders slumped.
“I mean, yes! Yes! But wait! First, I have to…” Willow put her hand on the Civic.
Scottie blinked and tried to grasp what Willow meant, even though her brain felt a bit hazy. “But I touched you already.” She gestured at the soft cheek she had cradled a moment ago. “No one got zapped, so I think we can skip that step.”
“Oh. Right.” Willow’s brain didn’t seem to be in full working order either. “Well, can’t be too safe. I really don’t want to hurt you.”
“You won’t,” Scottie whispered, sensing that Willow wasn’t just talking about a little zap. She leaned in slowly, her gaze fixed on Willow’s face, taking in the way her pupils widened and her breathing sped up as the distance between them narrowed to a mere inch.
Warm puffs teased Scottie’s mouth, increasing her anticipation. The air around them felt charged, but not with static.
Their lips met, gentle and tentative at first.
This time, there was no painful jolt. Just the softness of Willow’s mouth beneath hers.
Scottie lifted one hand to rest it in the small of Willow’s back and pull her closer as she deepened the kiss.
Willow parted her lips. A tiny noise escaped her. She slid one hand up the front of Scottie’s coat and curled her fingers into the lapel.
Their bodies fit together as perfectly as they had on the dance floor.
Scottie touched her tongue to Willow’s, then—at Willow’s enthusiastic response—caressed it with sensual strokes. Willow tasted faintly of champagne, chocolate from the dessert station, and something intoxicating that made Scottie’s head spin.
When they finally broke apart, Willow’s face was flushed, but this time, it wasn’t from crying. Her red-rimmed eyes shone bright, and her lips curved into a happy grin.
Scottie immediately wanted to kiss her again.
But before she could, rain began to fall in a steady stream, soaking them both.
“Damn. I think that’s our cue to stop.” Scottie nodded toward the hotel. “Do you want to go back inside?”
Willow shook her head, her gaze not on the sky but on Scottie. “I want to stay right here and kiss you again.”
Scottie didn’t hesitate for a second. She cupped Willow’s face, cradling it tenderly between her palms, leaned forward, and kissed her again, rain be damned.
~ ~ ~
By the time Willow made it home an hour later, she was soaked to the bone. Her wool coat clung to her like wet seaweed; her hair was plastered to her skull in dripping strands, and her pumps made little squelch-squelch sounds with every step as she entered the house.
She barely managed to kick them off before Fiona appeared at the end of the hall in her pajamas. “Hey. I was starting to worry. You don’t usually stay at an office party this lo—” Then she took a closer look at Willow and stopped dead. “Oh my God! What happened?”
“It’s called rain,” Willow replied. She wasn’t yet ready to share the details of her evening, not even with her sister.
Not before she’d had the time to sort through the whirlwind of emotions twirling through her.
Most of what had happened tonight was so completely out of character for her—breaking down and crying in Scottie’s arms, telling her about her weird effect on tech, throwing caution to the wind and suggesting a real date, and kissing her in the middle of a hotel parking lot…
and then again…and again at Scottie’s front door.
“Ever heard of umbrellas?” Fiona looked her up and down. “And why did the rain smear your lipstick and make your lips all puffy?”
Heat shot into Willow’s chilled cheeks. “Uh, I… I’ll explain in a minute. But first, I need a hot shower.” Or maybe a cold one. She slipped past Fiona and headed down the hall toward the bathroom.
Fiona rushed after her. “Oh no. I’m not letting you escape before you tell me what happened.” She followed her into the bathroom and sat on the closed toilet lid while Willow stripped off her dripping coat. “Tell me everything. Start from the beginning. How was the party?”
Willow peeled off the rest of her clothes and stepped beneath the hot spray, buying herself a few seconds. “A disaster. They gave me an award for causing the most paper jams.”
“What? Who would do that?”
“Our CEO. He thought it was funny, and so did everyone else.” Willow’s cheeks burned at the memory, and she knew it wasn’t from the hot water. “I left.”
“Oh, Will.” Fiona sounded seconds away from pushing back the shower curtain and climbing in to give her a hug.
Quickly, Willow added, “Scottie followed me out. I told her everything. About me. My tech thing.”
Fiona let out a loud gasp. “You told her? Wow. Did she freak out? Give you a rational, sciencey IT explanation?”
“No. She just…believed me.” Willow still marveled at it.
Scottie hadn’t doubted her, hadn’t provided alternative explanations for the weird phenomenon, hadn’t even asked a ton of questions.
She had simply accepted it as if it were the most normal thing in the world.
“She said there’s nothing wrong with me.
And I just…I completely lost it. I cried all over her like a big, snotty mess. ”
For a moment, Fiona was uncharacteristically quiet. “You…you cried? On her shoulder?”
Willow could barely believe it herself. “Literally.”
“How did she react?” Fiona asked.
“She was wonderful. Just held me.” Willow could still feel Scottie’s strong arms around her and her warm shoulder against her face. “And she said I’m so much more to her than a problem she has to fix.”
Fiona sucked in an audible breath. “Ooh, this is getting good.”
“Fi!”
“Don’t Fi me! Tell me what happened next!”
“She… We… We kissed.”
Fiona squealed. “Yes! Yes! Yes! How was it?”
Willow shut off the water and reached for a towel while she searched for the right words. “It was…everything. Unexpected. Tender. Hot. Wonderful.” She swallowed. “Right.”
But another word came to mind too: terrifying. Because if their very first real kiss already felt like this, how was she supposed to ever recover if things didn’t work out?
A shiver went through her. She wrapped herself in her fluffy towel and stepped out of the shower.
Fiona paused in the middle of her victory dance. “What happened then? You didn’t run, did you?”
“No. We talked, and I drove her home.” Willow reached for a second towel and wrapped it around her wet hair.
Fiona studied her through the steam that filled the bathroom. “How do you feel?”
“Remember when you took me bungee jumping for my twenty-first birthday?” Willow asked.
“Of course I remember.” Fiona laughed. “You stood on the platform forever, nearly peeing your pants, and then screamed the entire way down, but afterward, you admitted it was fun.”
“I didn’t scream,” Willow said in mock offense. “Okay, maybe a little. I feel kinda like that now. Like I’m stepping off the edge, loving the rush, but not entirely sure the cord is going to hold.”
“Oh, Willow. You’re falling, aren’t you?”
They both knew she wasn’t talking about bungee jumping anymore.
Willow swallowed heavily. “I could…if I let myself. She’s really special, Fi.”
“I figured. Otherwise, you never would have told her about the tech thing. I still can’t believe you did.”
A shaky laugh escaped Willow. “Me neither.”
Fiona gently grasped Willow’s bare shoulders and gave her an earnest big-sister look. “Please don’t run from this. Give your hot IT lady a chance.”
Willow no longer protested Fiona calling Scottie that. After all, Scottie was hot—and if her tech affliction didn’t mess things up, maybe she really would be Willow’s. “I’m trying to. We’re going on a date tomorrow—a real one.”
Another squeal from Fiona nearly pierced Willow’s eardrums.
“That is, if I don’t lose my hearing before that,” Willow muttered.
Fiona squeezed her shoulders. “I’m so happy for you!”
“Hey, I said date, not wedding!”
“Still, it’s a big deal.”
Yeah, it really was. She hadn’t been on a date in ages, and the last one she’d been on had been a disaster. “Any sage advice?”
“Just one thing.” Fiona squeezed her shoulders one last time, then let go and sauntered to the door. “Stop worrying about the bungee cord and just enjoy the fall.”