3. Ellie #2
“Your hair is shorter,” he said, when I didn’t respond. The lull in conversation had likely been torturing him. His brain moved faster than mine.
I nodded, hating how I could both feel the old rhythm between us and also how disrupted it was. The moments of awkwardness that intercepted it. “It is.”
“You, uh, look good,” he added, taking me aback. Mostly because there was gruffness in the way he murmured it. His eyes rounded, a slight flare. As though my presence, and the way I looked, were a dare. And he was annoyed about it.
“Thank you.” I raised a brow. “Although you’re making me feel like I should be apologizing.”
“Yeah, well, it is a little bit infuriating.” His eyes trailed over me, making my knees feel like they might give out. “How good you look.”
Maybe I should be annoyed, but I muttered, “I can understand.”
“Can you?”
I pushed a breath between my lips. Shit, this was not going well.
“Can we not do this, Sawyer?”
“What?”
“This.” I toggled my finger between us. “This conversation.”
He gestured to the elevator doors. “We’ve established that I’m not holding you hostage.”
No, he wasn’t. It had never been his style.
And still, I wasn’t leaving.
Heavy silence lingered, thinly veiling a sense of want.
“If you don’t want to talk…” Sully ventured, his words both hesitant and anticipatory, “is there something you do feel like doing in this elevator?”
Sully’s voice was huskier when he spoke, and it scrambled my insides. I knew that voice, and I knew what it meant when he used it.
“With you?”
A flash of irritation crossed his face, as though it would be absurd to consider anyone but him. Which, I supposed, it was, considering we were the only ones here.
“With me, Eleanor.”
There was a possessiveness in his tone that I had to assume my brain concocted on its own. Years had passed, and I’d never once heard from Sully after the breakup. I’d assumed he wanted nothing to do with me, and yet…
I stared at him, trying to assess this situation where neither one of us seemed willing to move, except to get closer.
One foot dragged in front of the other, until I was hovering a few paces from the elevator wall, almost in the middle.
Sully slid his hands into his pockets and did the same thing, sifting through the static space, closing some of the distance between us.
And staring. He was staring, too. Like he’d forgotten what I’d looked like and had to re-memorize the details of my face.
“You’re not seriously suggesting…” I let my words drift off, but we were closer now. I had moved closer.
“Well, you don’t want to talk. But clearly, you don’t want to walk away,” he said, accurately assessing me.
As usual. “Do you not want to be alone, El? Because I get it.” He said it like he really got it, and oxygen vanished at the thought of Sully being lonely.
“Not a single person at that party is going home without someone to spend the night with.” His hand came to cradle my cheek as he tried to rationalize why we were still standing here, tried to rationalize touching me, like it had nothing to do with us and everything to do with human need and nature.
I appreciated that, even if we both knew it was somewhat of a lie.
Especially considering I had to stifle a gasp at the graze of his fingertips.
My resolve crumbled, right then and there.
All it took was a brush of contact.
I melted into Sully’s palm, pressing into it without thinking. He made a noise in the back of his throat, like he knew that even this innocent touch had been a mistake, but instead of pulling away, I let my eyes flutter shut, and he allowed his thumb to brush over my cheekbone.
My body was ruled by his touch—exactly what I was afraid of.
“And…well, it’s going to be a sleepless night either way,” Sully finished softly, and I held my breath while staring at the inside of my eyelids, afraid of what his expression might say if I looked at him.
“Says who?” I asked.
“Eleanor,” he murmured, admonishing. The please was silent. Everything was silent, actually. But the way his hand curved to the back of my neck, fingers dipping into my hair, was so very loud. “What do you want?”
He was being gentle with me when I didn’t deserve it. When I suspected he didn’t want to be.
“You should walk away, Sawyer.”
“Hm.” I could feel him twirling his finger around a strand of hair. “That didn’t answer my question.”
“This is a terrible idea,” I tried, but my body was now pressed against his.
I wasn’t sure when that happened. Wasn’t sure who moved closer to whom, but I suspected it might have been me.
Through our clothes, I could feel his warmth.
It lit a match somewhere deep in my bones and my muscles and everything that connected them, spurring it all to life.
I opened my eyes. Tilted my head. Pressed a hand to his chest, where I was greeted with the thumping of his heart. “I should walk away.”
“I won’t stop you,” he said, solemn and true. The reminder dampened my mood, ever so slightly.
“We know that from experience, don’t we?”
Something flickered in Sully’s eyes that seemed an awful lot like confusion. But I’d meant what I’d said; I didn’t want to talk. I didn’t want to open something that would be painful to close again, and it was easier to keep things surface-level.
Like the way Sully’s fingertips were dragging across my skin’s surface, down my neck.
Yeah, just like that.
I licked my lips, and his gaze dipped momentarily to my mouth.
Somewhere in the background, a phone rang.
“That’s probably the hotel,” Sully rasped, a little unsteady. His touch traced the length of my spine until he found the clasp of my dress. “Or an operator.”
“The elevator’s ringing?” To my hazy brain, that didn’t make a whole lot of sense.
“The elevator’s ringing,” he confirmed. It felt like he was fidgeting with my zipper, and it was so familiar I wanted to cry. “What should I tell them?”
“Don’t answer,” I begged.
A spell hung over us, and I didn’t want reality to break it. Other people didn’t belong in our bubble; they never did.
“El—”
“My room number is 423.”
In mere moments, the elevator doors were open, and I was nearly six feet and five inches off the ground, flung over broad shoulders.