Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
I drop my head to the back of the couch. I gave myself permission to sit in No-Man’s-Land for a minute, and it is splendid. I’m exhausted .
I had no idea there were so many children in this neighborhood; there weren’t when I was growing up. I usually chose to trick-or-treat with Liss anyway, as the candy haul on her side of town was significantly better than here.
There were so many knocks tonight, I didn’t even get to watch Jeopardy! Lovie was frustrated with all the interruptions, so after a quick conversation with Adam, I sat on the front porch instead, intercepting potential doorbell ringers and passing out candy.
I recognized a few people. Went to school with them , as Lovie would have said. Some have children of their own now, which is a whole other thing I’m too tired to touch. But it was nice to catch up, the way you never can master via social media. A few of them listen to the show. One guy asked for a picture together. Adam was getting Lovie ready for bed when I came back in, the bowl of candy mostly depleted.
A husky laugh makes me jump awake. “It was the last little tiger that did you in, wasn’t it?” Adam leans in the threshold, stethoscope still around his neck.
“It was terrifying. Took ten years off my life.” I’m about to fall asleep staring at him.
He’s quiet for a few minutes, so I let my eyes close. When he speaks, it’s soft enough not to startle me again. “You didn’t eat dinner.”
I yawn, rubbing my cheek against the back of the couch. “Not to be dramatic, but I’d rather starve than get up right now.”
He harrumphs but doesn’t say anything else, and I think I’ve won the battle.
I force myself to sit up anyway. Falling asleep like that would give me the worst crick in my neck. I swipe the remote from the coffee table.
I’ve just found Hocus Pocus on television when Adam reappears, carrying a precariously balanced plate with a bowl stacked on top, two slices of crisp bread hugging its curves.
“Dinner is served,” he says, bending at the waist in a sketch of a bow.
There is an explosion in my chest.
I extinguish it quickly by looking more closely at the food. The soup, from what I’ve seen and smelled of it, is thick, tomato based. Stain inducing. I never would have been allowed to eat this in the living room, even at this age. “Lovie will be scandalized,” I hedge.
A small smile lifts his mouth. “It’s a good thing she’s not here, then.” He sets the plate on the coffee table, his grin slipping off just as fast as it came. “Seriously. You need to eat.”
To appease him—and my grumbling stomach—I slide to the floor and tug the table my way. He sits in his normal spot, on the right side of the couch, over my shoulder.
“What movie is this?” he asks. I’m already stuffing my mouth, too busy moaning to answer. His foot nudges my hip as he shifts. After I’ve inhaled several bites, I finally come up for air.
“ Hocus Pocus . Have you seen it?” I click the volume a few notches higher, nibbling on a corner of buttery French bread.
“Maybe when I was younger.”
I rest my chin on my shoulder to look at him. “Have you ever taken your nieces trick-or-treating?”
“I usually do,” he admits. He absently scratches through the dark shadow on his jaw. “But I’m working this year.”
“You can ask for a day off whenever you want, Adam. I’m sure your girlfriend would appreciate it.”
“I’m sure she would.” Guilt sluices through my middle and down to my legs, which now feel like they’re made of rubber. “If I had one.”
I nearly knock over the soup with my jolt of shock. “You do have one,” I protest. “She’s a petite blonde.”
Confusion fills his face, and I flounder. “But—you were with a woman when I asked you to come back that first weekend. I heard her on the phone.”
“Sister.” Adam tilts his chin, mouth smoothing into a straight line. “Exactly how much of that conversation did you hear?”
“And then,” I continue, bowling over his question, “you left the other day to take care of something. You said things were ‘about as good as it ever is.’ ”
Oops. I didn’t mean to reveal how often that particular interaction plays on loop in my mind.
His eyes tighten. “Same sister. One of the girls was sick. I … made a house call.”
I bite my lip. “Is she okay now? Your niece.”
“Yeah. She’s much better.” This brings some levity back to his expression, the edges of his face softening. It does the opposite when he looks at me.
His dark eyebrow tips toward his hairline, an easy smile dancing along his mouth. “Elle?”
I’m still not used to the way he says my name. Like he thought about each of its four letters carefully and decided there was simply no other way. He can’t not say it.
“Adam?” I question, my lips parting. Waiting to see why, this time, he felt the need to use it at all. We are the only two people in this room. The only two people awake in this house.
His knee knocks into the back of my shoulder. I could kiss it if I wanted.
“Eat your soup, please,” he says, “and watch the damn movie.”
That statement—or maybe his touch—does what he intended. I grab the remote and start over from the beginning.
After a few minutes, my soup and bread are gone, and with nothing to fill my mouth, my most burning thought makes its way out. I’ve said it before: sugar makes me sort of blurty.
“Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine I’d be sitting here with Adam ‘Wears Socks to Sleep’ Wheeler, watching a children’s Halloween movie.” Eyes on the screen, I haul myself up to the couch.
“In your wildest dreams?” Adam murmurs, closer than I’m expecting. I’ve somehow ended up in No-Man’s-Land again, his thigh skimming mine. His heat scalds me more than the soup did. “Does that mean you’ve fantasized about me?”
The rasp of his voice vibrates through all my sensitive places. I press back, either in challenge or invitation, I can’t tell. With no Petite Blondes in the picture, things look a little different. “You wish.”
Lovie is asleep. Our arrangement should be paused right now. We’re not acting that way, though. Part of me wonders if we’re acting at all.
This isn’t just playing with fire—this is touching live wires.
A deliberate choice to do something dangerous, just because we can.
In the beginning, we’re side by side. Not quite to the level of a middle school first date, but close. I don’t move from the middle sofa cushion. Our feet are arranged just so on the coffee table, in a way that has us bumping toes and ankles whenever we shift or talk. Footsie Lite.
About fifteen minutes in, Adam pauses the movie and comes back with the candy bucket from earlier, the graveyard of wrappers from what I’ve already ingested. I can’t tell whether the unsettled feeling within my ribs is a stomachache or butterflies. I wonder if it isn’t both.
He sets the bucket between us, one half on each of our legs, and we pick through it as we talk about the plot.
“My first movie crush was on Max,” I offer.
“Weak. The kid’s a virgin.”
“Does that matter?”
Adam snorts, ripping open a Milky Way. “It’s the entire point of the movie, Elle.”
“Firstly, you’re so incredibly wrong I’m not going to waste my time explaining why. And secondly”—I snatch the Milky Way from his fingers and pop it in my mouth before he can stop me—“virginity is a social construct that means absolutely nothing .”
I smile at him, full stop, with chocolate smeared on my teeth and across my mouth.
He blinks in slow motion, his lips separated by just a sliver of space. I stick my tongue out at him. With an eye roll, he places two fingers under my chin to push my jaw closed. “Didn’t anyone ever teach you not to chew with your mouth open?” It’s a whisper of a touch, but the ghost of it is still there, stinging. Burning.
I shake my head, licking at the chocolate. “Never. I was raised in a barn. It’s behind the fence. You can see it from Lovie’s room if you know where to look.”
He slings his arm across the back of the couch. He doesn’t touch me like during Jeopardy! but he’s close enough that he could. His warmth ghosts across my neck, my shoulders. So many ghosts tonight.
He grabs another mini candy bar from the bowl. No sweet tooth, my ass. I steal that one too.
Adam stares at me so long, I miss my favorite scene in the movie because I’m so distracted. There must still be chocolate on my face.
I poke his thigh. “Focus. The love of my life is speaking.”
Some growl-type noise brews in his throat. The shift of his weight has my body listing toward him. “I thought we weren’t allowed to talk about your fantasies.”
“Watch the movie,” I say.
I don’t know if it’s the spices from dinner, warm in my belly, or the heat from the man next to me. Maybe the fatigue of talking to approximately ten thousand kids under ten. Or that I’ve been home an entire month and we’re no closer to a permanent solution for Lovie than when I got here.
But something tells me, about halfway through the movie, it would be a fabulous idea to rest my head on Adam’s shoulder, let my eyes close for a few blissful seconds.
Sleep tugs at my body harder and harder, and I burrow deeper into my makeshift pillow.
“Shit,” someone says faintly. Hardly audible above the movie.
More ghosts, probably.
After all, it is Halloween.
I wake up when Adam shifts.
I blink back into reality, becoming increasingly aware of our positioning. My head on Adam’s chest, his arm that was on the back of the sofa draped across me, hand resting on my hip with his thumb on my bare skin. Confusion draws the corners of his eyes tight.
The movie is paused not far past where I remember. I swallow, trying to add moisture to my suddenly parched mouth. “I’m sorry. I didn’t—”
He nods, that single, succinct dip of his chin. “I know.” I go to sit up, but he tightens his hold on my hip. Reaches for my face. “Wait.” Determination sets his jaw with hard, harsh lines.
There’s no question: when this man wants something, he gets it.
Right now, I think he might want me.
And then Adam tugs at a lock of my short red hair wrapped around his stethoscope. “We’re tangled.”
We’re something, that’s for sure. “Tangled like, your hand on my hip?”
His nails scrape my skin as he pulls away, and a lightning bolt of heat shoots up my spine. I grind my back molars to prevent letting out a sound that betrays how good that felt. A whimper escapes anyway.
Lines from Adam’s scrub top are indented in my cheek, and I rub tingling fingers over them as he stands. He swipes my dirty dishes off the coffee table. I follow behind with the candy bowl.
We’re quiet now, which in some weird way is overstimulating. The only sounds are my breathing. His footsteps. My own heartbeat, drumming in my ears. I drop the bowl on the island; he sets the plates in the sink.
He’s right there , not three feet away. An emotion I don’t have access to yet crosses his gaze.
Do I want access? To know what he’s thinking, the fantasies he has?
Adam takes another step forward, and yes . Right now I want that very much.
“You make …” He chews his lip. “You make me want to make mistakes.”
Something flashes in his face, and my brain wants to register it as regret, a half-formed apology.
But I don’t get the chance, because that’s when he kisses me.