7. Hallie
HALLIE
My hands won't stop shaking.
I press them against my thighs, hard enough that my fingernails bite through the fabric of my dress, but it doesn't help. The tremors run deeper than skin, too raw, too exposed.
Caius's truck rumbles beneath me, the engine a low growl that normally I find comforting. Tonight it just reminds me that we're in an enclosed space, that he's close enough to touch, that the air between us feels charged with something dangerous.
"You okay?"
His voice cuts through my spiral. I glance over, finding his profile lit by the dashboard glow. Strong jaw. Dark stubble. That furrow between his brows that appears whenever he's worried about something.
Worried about me. About us. About whatever this thing is that we've unleashed between us tonight.
"Yeah." My voice comes out scratchy, unconvincing. I clear my throat and try again. "I'm fine."
"Hallie."
Just my name. That's all he says, but the way he says it, low and rough and disbelieving. Like he can see right through the careful mask I'm trying to hold in place.
"I'm fine, Caius." I aim for firm this time, going for the tone I use with patrons who insist the library should be open on Sundays. It lands somewhere closer to brittle. "Really. It's been a long night, but I'm okay."
He doesn't call me on the lie, but his knuckles go white on the steering wheel.
We drive in silence through the empty streets of town, past the darkened library, past the diner where tomorrow morning Mrs. Chen will gossip about tonight's party, past all the familiar landmarks that normally make me feel safe.
Right now I just feel small.
She's not the type to go for someone like you.
Kyle's words play on repeat in my head, vicious and cutting.
The worst part? There's a tiny voice inside me that agrees with him.
The same voice that's been whispering my whole life that I'm not interesting enough, not exciting enough, not enough of anything to be loved the way other women get loved.
I'm the reliable one. The good girl. The one who shelves books and hums Tupac and goes home alone every night to write fantasies about the kind of passion I'll never actually experience.
Except.
Except Caius looked at Kyle tonight like he wanted to commit violence. Like the suggestion that we weren't real, that I wasn't his, physically hurt him.
And that kiss. God, that kiss in his barn, the one that was supposed to be practice but felt like everything.
The truck slows. We're outside my little rental cottage, the one with the porch swing and the window boxes I keep forgetting to water. Caius kills the engine but doesn't move to get out.
"Want me to walk you in?"
I should say no. I should thank him for playing the part so convincingly tonight, tell him I'll see him at the next wedding event, maintain the careful distance we've been pretending exists between us.
Instead, I hear myself say something completely different.
"Ryan's away for the weekend." The words hang in the air between us, and I'm not even entirely sure why I said them.
Maybe because my brother being gone means no one will know Caius stayed over.
Maybe because I need him to understand that there's no safety net tonight, no big brother to interrupt whatever this is becoming.
The silence that follows feels heavy, weighted with all the things we're not saying.
It stretches between us like taffy, pulling thinner and thinner until I think it might snap.
Caius's hand, which had been reaching for the door handle, probably intending to do the gentlemanly thing and see me safely inside before leaving, freezes mid-motion.
His fingers hover there, not quite touching the chrome, caught in the space between staying and going.
"Hallie." My name comes out rough, almost strangled. It's a warning and a question and a plea all rolled into one word.
"Just come inside. Please." My voice cracks on the last word. "I don't want to be alone right now."
He looks at me then, really looks at me, and whatever he sees in my face makes his jaw tighten. He nods once, sharp and decisive, and climbs out of the truck.
The walk to my front door feels endless.
My keys jingle too loud in the night, and I fumble with the lock twice before getting it open.
Caius follows me inside, filling up my small entryway with his presence, and suddenly I'm aware of how intimate this is.
How I've never had him in my space like this, just the two of us, no buffer of other people or fake relationship rules.
He closes the door behind him with a gentle push, and the soft click of the latch engaging sounds oddly final in the stillness of my apartment.
Like we've crossed some invisible threshold we can't uncross.
The air between us feels different here, charged in a way it never has before, crackling with something unnamed.
"You want to talk about it?" he asks quietly. There's a carefulness to his tone, like he's approaching a skittish animal.
"No." The word comes out sharper than I intend, and I watch him flinch slightly.
"Hallie." He says my name like it's a complete sentence, heavy with concern and something else I can't quite name. His dark eyes search my face in the dim light spilling from my kitchen.
"I want to talk about the kiss." The words tumble out before I can stop them. "The one at your place. The practice session."
His expression shutters completely, like a wall slamming down between us, those dark eyes going carefully blank in a way that makes my heart ache. "What about it?" His voice is measured, controlled, too controlled for someone who's supposed to be my friend.
I take a shaky breath, my fingers twisting together in front of me, nails digging into my palms. My heart is hammering so hard I'm sure he can hear it in the silence of my entryway.
"Was it practice for you?" The question comes out smaller , vulnerable in a way that makes me want to take it back immediately.
But I don't. I can't keep doing this, pretending I don't feel what I feel, that his touch doesn't set me on fire, that I haven't been replaying that kiss in my mind every single night since it happened.
"Hal, we talked about the rules." There's a warning edge to his voice now, a defensive note that I've heard him use before when he's trying to deflect, trying to keep people at arm's length.
He runs a hand through his dark hair, making it stick up in ways that shouldn't be endearing but absolutely are. "We agreed?—"
"Screw the rules." I step closer, and he goes very still. "I'm so tired of following rules, Caius. Of being the good girl who does what she's supposed to do, who doesn't make waves, who lets people like Kyle walk all over her because she's too afraid to ask for what she wants."
"What do you want?"
Everything. You. This. Us without the pretense.
But I can't say that, not yet, so instead I close the area between us and put my hands on his chest. His heart pounds under my palm, rapid and hard.
"I want to feel something real," I whisper, though it feels like the words echo off the concrete walls.
My fingers curl into the fabric of his shirt, anchoring myself to him, to this moment, to the terrifying vulnerability of finally admitting what I need.
"Even if it's just for tonight. Even if tomorrow we have to go back to pretending, to dancing around each other, I just... I need to know what this could be."
"This is a bad idea." His voice is rough, strained, but his hands haven't left my waist. If anything, his grip has tightened, his thumbs tracing absent circles against my sides through the thin cotton of my cardigan.
"Probably." I meet his gaze, refusing to look away even though every instinct screams at me to retreat, to laugh it off, to be the good girl who doesn't put herself out there like this. "Most of the best things usually are."
"Your brother will kill me." There's something almost desperate in the way he says it, like he's grasping for any reason, any excuse to maintain the boundaries we've built between us. "Ryan's in Boston until Monday, but when he finds out?—"
"Ryan's in Boston until Monday," I interrupt, my heart hammering so hard I'm sure he can feel it. "That gives us time to figure this out. Or not figure it out. Or just... be."
"Hallie." My name sounds like a prayer and a curse. "If we do this, I can't... I won't be able to go back to pretending."
"Then don't."
He makes a rough sound low in his throat, and then his hands are in my hair, tilting my face up, and his mouth crashes into mine.
This isn't like the barn. That kiss was controlled, measured, a careful exploration of boundaries. This is desperation and hunger and months, maybe years, of wanting compressed into a single moment of surrender.
I gasp against his lips, and he swallows the sound, backing me up until my spine hits the wall. The impact jolts through me, but I can't care about anything except the solid weight of him pressed against me, the way his fingers tangle in my hair, the scrape of stubble against my jaw.
"Tell me to stop," he breathes against my mouth. "Tell me this is still practice and I'll walk away."
"Don't you dare."
He groans, the sound vibrating through my chest, and kisses me again, deeper this time, thorough and claiming.
His hands slide down from my hair to my waist, gripping hard enough to leave marks, and I arch into him because I want this, I want the evidence that this happened, that I was brave enough to reach for something I wanted.
My own hands find the hem of his shirt, shoving it up, desperate to feel skin. He breaks the kiss long enough to yank it over his head and toss it somewhere behind him, and then he's back, lifting me easily, my legs wrapping around his waist on instinct.
"Bedroom?" His voice comes out gravelly, wrecked.
"Down the hall. First door."