Chapter 25
25
Sybil
“This is my last chocolate one.” I leaned a hip against the counter and popped the final bite into my mouth. “I didn’t think it was possible for me to get tired of these,” I said, taking in the tray of frosted chocolate donuts, some with sprinkles and coconut, and one notably missing from the neat and even rows.
“I don’t believe you are sick of chocolate,” he said, finishing his rotation, cleaning everything. “You just ate a third one.”
“Two and one-third. That middle one was small and kind of deformed, so it didn’t count.” I grinned, crossing one ankle over the other. “And I didn’t say I was sick of all donuts. I’m just saying I’ll have a different kind next time.”
“That makes more sense.” Kieran laughed to himself, something he’d done a lot that night. He had a nice laugh, like it was a secret he was slowly revealing. “And you can have all the donuts you want.”
“I’ve been waiting for you to say that. It’s all I’ve ever wanted any man to say to me.” I touched the spot on my lip where he’d brushed flour earlier. I didn’t even notice I was doing it until I caught him following my movement, and I let my fingers fall away. “I guess you’re the guy I’ve always been looking for.” I leaned against him in a faux swoon.
Kieran’s hands rested against my arms, holding me. “I’m sure that’s not true.” His voice was more gravelly than I expected. I looked up, our gazes meeting, and took in the way his eyelashes framed his dark eyes, making me want to argue, but he coughed into one hand and helped to right me with the other. “That’s what we need everyone to believe.”
His hand hovered near my forearm until I regained my balance. The ghost of his touch had me in my feelings, and I smoothed my palms down the front of my shirt for something to distract myself. “On second thought, I might pass on that next donut. I’m feeling wired after all this sugar.”
Kieran’s movement in the corner of my vision caught my eye. He stretched, raising his arms over his head. “Thanks for your help.” He still had a swipe of flour along the side of his face and a bit on the tip of his nose. I didn’t even want to guess what I looked like, because he’d been a fiercer competitor than I thought he would be.
“You know,” I said, brushing the back of my hand along my forehead, finding it smeared with flour when I pulled it away, “that was fun.”
“Yeah.” He paused his movements and ripped a paper towel from the roll near him, running it under the tap in the sink for a moment. He motioned for me to stand between his spread knees and placed two fingers under my chin. “You missed like…” His eyes roamed my face. “Like seven spots. May I?”
I nodded as he dabbed the paper towel against my skin. He’d used hot water, and each drag felt a little like a kiss. “I’m surprised you played along,” I commented, letting my eyelids fall closed as he slid the wet towel along my cheekbone.
“I am, too.” He wiped across my eyebrow and then down along the skin in front of my ear. The paper tickled when he reached the edge of my jaw. “It’s been a long time since I played. I guess you bring it out in me.”
I opened my eyes, taking in the shape of his brows and the furrow between them as he cleaned flour off my face. “I’m glad,” I said, carefully resting a palm over his heart. “Sometimes I think you’re so serious, you’ll get sick of me and my shenanigans, you know?”
His gaze snapped to mine. “No.” He dabbed at the space between my nose and mouth. “I mean, you are…something, but I like having you around.” He tossed the paper towel aside but kept his hand against my jaw. “Shenanigans weren’t part of my life before you.”
I swiped two fingers over his forehead to erase the smear of flour there. “Why is that?” The flour was gone, but I stroked the spot between his brows again anyway.
I thought he might step away, clam up, or start working again, but when my finger slid down his nose, he closed his eyes, the gesture showing a side of him I hadn’t seen before. He had softened.
“My mom was always chasing the next big thing, the next relationship, the next big high…” He blinked a few times, and I stroked his face again, tracing his cheekbones. “There wasn’t really time to play, because I had to look out for Lila while Mom played, and then school took all my focus and there wasn’t any time left over.”
I dragged my fingertips down the column of his throat, over his Adam’s apple. “Oh,” I said, continuing my path toward the roundness of his shoulder under an impossibly soft and worn-in shirt. “So is school fun for you?”
Kieran’s eyes closed again, and I stroked a finger over his brow. “It’s not fun, but it’s…” He seemed to search for the right word. “It’s a step forward. When I finish and do my residency, I can have fun. I can do research. I can take care of my family. So…” He trailed off, and I pulled my hand away as he opened his eyes. “I’ve been putting fun off until later.”
“We still have to practice getting comfortable with each other for real. Like, touching each other,” I added, realizing I’d been bringing my finger to my lips again. “That could be fun.”
His expression was unchanged, though. “Yeah.”
“Don’t sound so excited. Pretending you want in my pants shouldn’t be that challenging.”
“No, it won’t be.” His posture relaxed, and he rolled the stool closer to me, his gaze flicking down to my tight T-shirt and back up. “You’re…well, you know what you look like.”
His direct answer took me by surprise, but before I could respond, he added, “That’s not intimacy, though. Not convincing intimacy, anyway.” As if in slow motion, he extended his hand, sliding a fingertip down my arm, making goose bumps rise as he trailed down my forearm, past my wrist, and to my own fingertip before crooking his finger into the belt loop of my jeans and tugging me forward to the space between his spread knees. “If we’re going to keep this up, it should seem like I want into your heart,” he said, slowly raising his palm to my hip, where it settled.
I leaned in to where his finger was tucked into the belt loop and nodded, swallowing back a stammer. “My heart and not my pants.”
His palm moved from my hip up to my side, fingers slipping under the shirt, tracing tiny rivers on the map of my skin. “Your heart and your pants, Syb.”
“How do we do that?” I gave a sharp inhale as his fingers neared the underside of my bra and then slid back to move down my side. “I’m…pretty clear on the pants part. But how do we fake the heart side?”
“I don’t know.” His gaze was on my face, chin tipped up as he stroked my side. “Like this, I guess.”
I dragged the tip of my tongue along my lower lip. “By letting me talk you into shenanigans?”
“Pretty sure pretending to date is a shenanigan, and you already talked me into that.” His fingers flexed at my waist.
“I’m convincing.” I barely recognized my voice, which was breathy and close to a whisper, and I stepped forward into his arms.
“You make me feel…” His fingertips grazed my side as he spoke, and I held my breath. He searched my face like he’d find the right word scribbled somewhere on my features, and when his gaze fell to my lips, I slid my tongue over them again. I tipped my chin up, waiting. This was the moment of anticipation before a perfect kiss—the energy pulsing between us as I swiped a fingertip along his chin, catching the last bit of flour. Then his face dipped toward mine, and I waited to sink into this moment.
“Still here?” Lila’s voice carried ahead of the squealing of the door, and we leaped apart. “Wanted to see if you two still needed help.”
I stumbled over my own feet and fell, my body hitting the linoleum hard after I’d let go of Kieran. His sister had a real knack for finding the worst moment to show up.
“Are you okay?” Kieran stretched out his hand to help me off the floor, which might have been romantic and a cute opportunity to end up back in his arms, save the way I’d slightly rolled my ankle before crashing into the floor, elbows first. I’d let out a string of curses set to the tune of a high-pitched wail.
I pressed my fingers to my ankle gingerly. “Peachy keen.”
“Peachy keen?” He crouched down. “You just let out a stream of expletives so creative, I don’t think I know what all those words mean. Peachy keen?”
Lila hurried to the freezer and retrieved an ice pack, rushing back over.
Kieran reached for my ankle. “Can I see?”
I pulled my leg back. “Nah. I’m fine.” I brushed his hand away, knowing nothing good would come of him touching me again. “I should go.”
“Let me keep ice on it.” He reached for my elbow. “To stop the swelling.”
I struggled to my feet, keeping my ankle up. “I look good with swelling.” I fumbled around for my purse, which was luckily within reach on a nearby chair.
“That doesn’t make any sense.” He tried to guide me to the chair, but I flashed a big smile, blinking back the multiple layers of cringe from the fall and the almost kiss between us.
“You’ll learn I rarely make sense. It’s part of why people like me so much.”
“That’s not true.” His palm moved up and down my forearm, and his voice dipped low. “You’re only not making sense in this instance. I told you, you don’t always have to make yourself the joke.”
“I didn’t park far away.” I took a limping step toward the door. I pulled on it, stumbling back at the weight, and then pulled again. The door was jammed hard into the frame. “Damn it.”
“I got it,” he said from behind me, his chest pressed to my back as he reached around me to grip the door’s ancient handle and yanked. He called to Lila over his shoulder, and Kieran’s body was still pressed to mine as the cool air blew in. The juxtaposition of sensations was jarring but pulled me out of my lust haze.
“I had fun,” I said. “Making the donuts and the other shenanigans with you.”
He grabbed something from behind the door and stepped with me out into the cool air, shoving keys in his pocket and shrugging into a jacket. “Let me walk you to your car. It’s past two.”
The nearby streetlight cast his face in shadows, even standing close to me, and I admired the way his brows moved as he searched my face again. “Thank you.” I dug in my purse for my keys, pawing past what felt like three ChapStick tubes—were they multiplying?—and what I knew was a month’s worth of receipts I’d shoved in there. “And thank you for saying what you said, about me not being a joke.” I pulled the keys from the very bottom of the purse—always a mystery to me how they wound up there, since they were the last thing to be tossed on top. That kind of compliment from Kieran was like someone giving a speech about my talents. I hadn’t known him long, but I knew he didn’t say things he didn’t believe. “It means a lot.”
His cheeks pinked, visible even in the dark, and I grinned.
“You seem much more comfortable when we’re touching, too,” I said, brushing my fingertips over his hand. “I’m glad we sorted that out. But we probably shouldn’t…”
“Yeah,” he said. “We almost…”
“I blame the donuts entirely.” I grinned, knowing he’d felt it, too, that electricity of a kiss about to happen. “But we shouldn’t let things get out of hand. Just pretend out of hand,” I said with a smile, squeezing his hand and then stepping into my car. “We’ve got two more months. So maybe just think of me as a cousin until then. Unfuckable.”
His eyes widened at my terminology, but after a moment, he saluted and stepped back, closing my door for me and waiting on the sidewalk. Thank God the car cooperated this time and started on the first attempt. “Put ice on that when you get home, and elevate it. And take some ibuprofen.” He pointed into the car, and for a split second, I thought he was pointing to the apex of my thighs, where I’d definitely needed cooling earlier—the twisted ankle was really battling with the melty feelings I’d been enjoying before Lila arrived. It felt very responsible and very disappointing to agree nothing else should happen with Kieran. “Hey,” I said. “Before Lila came in, you said being with me made you feel something, but you never finished your sentence.” I waited for the heat to kick in. “Feel what?”
“I don’t remember.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and shifted his weight from foot to foot. “It’s not important.”
“You sure?” I tossed the car into reverse, and he stepped back with a nod, watching me pull off before starting the short walk back to the store. He was lying. I caught him in my rearview mirror as I stopped at the corner, and admired the way his silhouette moved in the dim light, how his legs and arms looked in shadow, and I thought back to how they’d felt wrapped around me earlier in the night. Which was a good way to ignore my throbbing ankle, because that made other areas tingle in direct opposition to how I’d asked him to think of me like a cousin.
Mainly, though, I imagined how he planned to end that sentence. For a while there tonight, I’d seen something new in Kieran, and I got the sense most people didn’t get to see him open up like that. And it felt important that he was so comfortable around me. So why had my honest, ethical-to-a-fault, and new-to-shenanigans man lied to me just now?