Chapter Twelve Adam
Eleanor seems to process what we’re doing first. I’m still wrapped up in the moment, one hand lifting to thread my fingers through her hair, to tilt her head and deepen the kiss.
She tastes like honey somehow, though I haven’t seen her consume any today.
I want that flavor on my tongue, always.
My hand tightens around a fistful of hair and my other arm is securely wrapped around her middle as I gently lower her back down.
Her feet touch the floor and just like that, the moment’s over.
Eleanor breaks the kiss as abruptly as she started it.
She shuffles backward a step, her fingertips tracing her lips briefly before dropping back to her side in a loose fist. I’m left off-kilter, like those few seconds were all it took to get used to her weight against me, and now I have to relearn how to stand without it.
“Wow, so—yeah. Cool. We won. Cool, cool, cool.” All of this is said without Eleanor making eye contact. She seems restless, looking out at the audience, crossing her arms only to uncross them a beat later.
It’s surreal, remembering that we are in a public place. Standing outside, some twenty stories up, surrounded by swimsuit-clad strangers sipping cocktails. Sharp laughter carries across the nearby pool, but I can’t look away from the woman in front of me.
“Yeah.” I lick my lips. My brain isn’t fully back online yet. All I can think is that I want to still be kissing her. I have a caveman urge to drag her offstage and into one of the private cabanas lining the pool so we can continue this without an audience.
It wasn’t intentional, the way I memorized every detail of that kiss, but they’re etched in my brain now, right alongside the image of Eleanor wearing only a loose shirt and lacy black underwear this morning.
The other contestants come up to congratulate us and I barely manage to acknowledge them. Jonathan tells us Mae will be over with the prize, and Eleanor nods her understanding, and I stare at the side of Eleanor’s face.
I know how to act casual, I swear I do, so I force myself to look elsewhere while I try to figure out some super-chill way to ask whether Eleanor would like to do that again sometime.
“Do we need to clear the air at all?” she asks. “After that kiss, I mean.”
On the one hand, I suppose it’s reassuring that Eleanor also felt compelled to say something.
Maybe I’m not the only one who still feels the ghost of it on their lips.
Only, clear the air seems like a very deliberate choice of words.
That’s the phrasing you use when something is one-sided, when you feel obligated to let someone down gently.
I’m convinced that’s what’s happening here, right up until she catches her bottom lip between her teeth and eyes my biceps like she’d rather be biting me. It’s only for a second, and then her eyes snap back up to mine, but it’s long enough to bolster my confidence.
“No, I think we’re on the same page,” I say, unable to suppress my smile as color floods her cheeks. “We were both keyed up from the game.”
Eleanor nods along with a tight purse to her lips. This could be wishful thinking. I could be reading the signals all wrong. But if I am—if Eleanor already regrets the kiss, if she never wants it to happen again—then I have nothing to lose. Perfect time to take a gamble.
“Plus, you’ve been thinking about it for so long, it was bound to happen eventually,” I add.
She nods once more, then frowns. “Wait, what?”
“Kissing me.” It’s easy enough to slip on a cocky grin and pretend I already know the answer. I’ve had plenty of practice, though it’s a strategy I’m more accustomed to using with industry blowhards than as a form of flirting. “You’ve thought about it, right?”
“Excuse me?” The annoyed edge to Eleanor’s voice is somewhat undermined by the way she can’t stop fidgeting.
I step closer, knuckles barely grazing the curve of her waist. She looks up at me through her lashes and her lips part. The air between us grows heavier, thrumming with tension.
“Tell me I’m wrong.” My voice drops basement low, turns the statement into a something like a dare.
She doesn’t tell me I’m wrong. For a long-drawn-out moment, she doesn’t say anything at all. She stares up at me and it feels like that moment before a live show, when the lights go down and the crowd goes quiet, breath held while you wait for the first chord to strike.
“ ’Cause I have,” I admit. “I’ve thought about it.” Eleanor’s tongue darts out to lick her lips, and she gets that tiny crease back between her brows, and I’m holding my breath again, still, almost dizzy with anticipation.
I’m so completely wrapped up in this moment, in Eleanor, that I have a full-body jump scare when Mae pops up right in front of us again.
“See! What did I tell you!” She squeals at us, oblivious to the way Eleanor and I startle apart. “Total relationship goals.”
Mae presents us with an envelope stamped with the hotel’s insignia. When neither of us takes it, she gives it a little shake. Chips rattle around inside. I grab the envelope and nod my thanks.
“As promised, I’ve deleted the post,” she adds. I pull out my phone and open the app to double-check. Sure enough, the post has been taken down. “I really am sorry about all of this. You guys helped so much by staying in the game, though. We actually had one couple sign up for a tour of the venue.”
I turn my attention to the chips, opening the envelope and counting them, if only to distract myself from the dull sting under my rib cage when Eleanor refuses to meet my gaze.
It takes a moment for the chip in my palm to fully come into focus. “Wait, what is this?” I hold it between two fingers and raise a brow at Mae. “Nonnegotiable chips?”
Mae’s brow puckers slightly, as if to ask what the issue is. “That’s right.”
“Nonnegotiable?” I repeat, sounding much more exasperated this time.
“What’s the problem?” Eleanor looks from me to Mae. “You said the prize was twenty-five hundred, right?”
“That’s right,” Mae says calmly. “You can use them in any one of the hotel’s casinos,” she goes on, as if this is a selling point.
“You mean… we can’t cash them in?”
“Jesus.” My fingers curl around the chip, squeezing hard enough my knuckles blanch. My fist drops to my side, defeated. “We can only gamble with them.”
“Have fun, okay?” Mae says with a smile. “You guys are still in town another night, right? Hit me up if you want to get a drink tonight!”
With that last delusion, Mae moves away from us. We both stare blankly in her wake, until finally Eleanor turns to face me.
“It’s fine,” she says. “We can just… we can find someone to buy these chips from us, right?”
“Why would anyone want to do that?”
She massages her temples. “I don’t know.”
The feeling of failure settles over me with the weight of a familiar, well-worn blanket.
It’s ridiculous, because I never expected to win in the first place.
But getting announced the winner, and the kiss that followed, and the fact that Eleanor is now standing several feet away with her arms crossed—it’s given me whiplash.
I heave a sigh. “I’ll call in a favor.”
“Oh, suddenly you have a favor to call in? Why wasn’t that on the table earlier?”
“Because now we’re out of time.”
Dempsey will have loaded in and finished sound check by now. They’re probably already on their way to the brewery.
Eleanor eyes me suspiciously. “Who are you going to call?”
The urge to answer, Ghostbusters, is strong, especially because I know she won’t be any more appreciative of my actual answer. “Look, I know you don’t like him, but Billy will—”
Her expression ices over. “Absolutely not.”
Slowly, I let out an exhale. My hands settle on my hips and I squint at the sun reflecting off nearby pool water as I try to draft a convincing response in my head. Eleanor is better at arguing than me, or she’s at least more stubborn than I am, but she has to know we’re out of options.
“Don’t you want this over with?”
“Yes. Obviously. But I’m not going to be beholden to that guy.”
“I won’t mention your name. He doesn’t have to know you’re involved.”
“That’s not—it’s the principle of the thing. And you expect me to believe he won’t needle you for details?”
Honestly? It’s difficult to say. If I told him I needed money, no questions asked, he’d probably respect that. Then again, I could just as easily picture him badgering me for details, assuming there’s some salacious story he’d feel entitled to in return.
“I wouldn’t tell him anything.”
The crease between Eleanor’s brows deepens. It’s more than irritation there—she seems genuinely upset about Billy getting involved. “You know he’s friendly with Griffin, right?”
“What?” That cannot be true—at least not in the way Eleanor’s implying.
I’m sure they know each other, the way anyone who has been in the industry for long enough knows each other.
But Billy has hardly ever mentioned Griffin’s name, at least not outside of the context of Griffin’s involvement with Eleanor.
“They have a standing golf date,” she says. “Like, every month or two.”
I almost ask where she heard that, but the answer readily supplies itself. She was with Griffin for over a year. And if he was as involved in her life as she says, it makes sense she would’ve gotten to know his schedule pretty well in return.
“If Billy did find out about this, then so would Griffin. And I’d really like for that not to happen.”
I grit my teeth against the ugly, possessive feeling rising in me.
I’m not sure what bothers me more, the implication that Eleanor still cares what her shitty ex thinks, or the idea that Billy and Griffin get together and talk about her.
I want to call Billy up and warn him to keep Eleanor’s name out of his mouth.
But that would be counterproductive. So.
Instead, I just stand here, irritated and impotent, wishing I could magic all of Eleanor’s problems away.