14. Astrid #2
I stop at the bottom of my porch steps and turn to face him. “Thanks for filling in on the team. Maybe I should’ve asked you before telling the guys.”
I’m not sure why that’s what I start with. For one thing, I’m actually not sorry that I didn’t ask him first. For another, that’s not what I want to talk about at all.
“But if you had asked me, that would’ve defeated the purpose, right?” he asks.
He tucks his hands into his pockets, looking completely nonchalant while my heart is pounding in my chest, and my skin is in that perpetual state of tingly-slash-itchy.
“The purpose?” I ask, feigning innocence.
“The purpose of annoying me? The purpose of making me throw up my hands and agree to the annulment?”
This is one of the things I like best about him. He’s smart, used to going toe to toe with his rivals, and has never met a challenge he didn’t face down with a cockiness I both admire and relate to.
Cockiness isn’t about always knowing you’re the best. It’s about convincing everyone else that you’re the best—even when you’re scared or confused or completely in over your head.
We have that cockiness in common.
I shake my head. “I figured it might take a few days,” I say. “Getting to you on day one would have been disappointing.”
He steps closer. My breath lodges in my chest.
“And you’ve, evidently, been disappointed in how I’ve handled other things?” he asks.
“Is that your way of saying you’re sorry for being so stubborn about divorcing me? I forgive you. Let’s sign the papers tonight.” My stupid voice is a little breathless.
He lifts a hand and takes a strand of my hair between his thumb and index finger. He drags his fingers along the length, before tucking it behind my ear. “I’m not divorcing you, Astrid.”
He’s touching your hair, not your clit. Get a grip.
But apparently when it comes to Declan, my hormones and nerve endings don’t care if he’s touching the tip of my pinky toe or my nipple. It all gets the same reaction.
I swallow hard. “Give it a little more time.”
He moves even closer. “I don’t think so. After all, you don’t want me to leave you alone, right?”
I have to take a breath before answering. Yep, he definitely heard, and took note of, what I said at the cafe.
“That was for—” I have to stop and clear my throat. “That was for Beckett. With Andi.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Dammit. He doesn’t even need to touch me when he’s talking like this. His voice is low and gruff. He’s standing close enough that I can smell his body wash and the cologne on his shirt. The same scent combination I use to get myself off.
“It was—”
“Don’t lie to me,” he says, interrupting me. Firmly.
I press my lips together. When I should be arguing, or sassing back, or telling him to fuck off and not talk to me like that and then stomping up my front steps and into my house, I press my lips together and stop talking.
He cups my cheek.
My nipples tighten, my pussy tightens, my chest tightens.
From him touching my cheek.
This is really bad.
Or maybe it’s really good. I haven’t been touched sexually by another person in so long. And I want this man to touch me more than I’ve wanted anyone else to. Ever.
It can’t go anywhere. You’d be leading him on. That’s not fair.
“Don’t lie to yourself either,” he says, interrupting my thoughts. “If I’ve been doing this all wrong, if leaving you alone has been wrong, tell me.”
It’s a firm command.
And from his tone and the look in his eyes, he already knows the truth.
He just wants to hear me say it.
Oh…fuck. I’m in trouble.
I somehow unstick my tongue from the roof of my mouth and say, “I haven’t been lying to myself.”
He frowns. “You seem happy here, I’ll admit that. But if you—”
“I admitted to myself a long time ago that I wish you hadn’t just left me alone.”
There.
That was the worst thing I could have said, and I just said it.
“Well, about a month after I moved to Louisiana,” I say softer. “So, I’m not lying to myself.”
The way he’s looking at me is intense. And it reminds me of that day in Cara. The day he said we were getting married no matter what.
He looks like he’s barely holding himself back.
“But I don’t blame you for letting me go. For not knowing how I felt. I didn’t tell you that because you coming after me would have made things complicated. Us being apart has been easier.”
“The fuck it has,” he says gruffly.
My whole body responds to that, heating and feeling like I’m melting. “It has, though,” I insist. “Believe me.”
“I wanted you to be happy.” His voice is ragged. “So…I let you go. But—”
“I appreciate that,” I interrupt.
He frowns. “Do you?”
“Mostly. Because it was hard being there, close to you.”
“Did I scare you? Upset you?” He looks positively pained at the thought.
I shake my head, which causes my cheek to rub against his palm.
Which causes a cascade of sparks to shower through me from my cheek through my pussy to the soles of my feet.
“No, of course not. I left because I thought it would help me breathe. But…” I shouldn’t tell him this.
But he seems so worried. So I take a breath and say, “I was wrong. I liked breathing your air.”
His eyes flare with heat and…relief?
“But you’re happy here?” he presses.
“Very.”
“So I’ll just move here. We can share the air here.”
My heart turns over in my chest. If only it was that easy.
“Being with me is very complicated.”
“I don’t care. I’m very good at complicated.”
“Is this marriage what you want it to be?” I ask. “If things stay just like they have been, but you live here, is that really what you want?” Then I find myself holding my breath. I want him to know that I’m talking about sex—or rather, no sex—without me saying it.
And in that moment, I realize that I don’t want him to want our marriage as it is—on paper only, just to make his grandfather happy.
But if he says that he wants more, I’m in big trouble.
Because I’m going to have to admit I haven’t seen a human penis in a very long time, and I’m not sure that I can even do anything fun with it if he wants to show me his.
“This is definitely not what I want it to be,” he tells me, his voice gruff.
“Because?” I ask.
Because now he has to be here in Louisiana in the heat and humidity dealing with ducks and otters and—
“Because I’m crazy about you.”
My windpipe feels like it just constricted, and I can’t take a breath. I stare at him.
Of all the things I thought he might say, that wasn’t even on the list.
Clearly reading my shock, he brushes his thumb over my jaw. “I think you’re incredible. I have for a long time, but even more so since I’ve gotten to know you better. And,” he takes a breath. “Even more since I’ve been in Rebel.”
I laugh, a little hysterically. “It’s been one day!”
He shrugs. “I like your neighbors. And your ducks, and hissy cat, and ugly-but-not-ugly house, and crazy hockey team. I can stay here. With you. Happily.”
Forcing air into lungs that have forgotten how to work is painful, but I do it and say, “You weren’t supposed to like any of that.”
“I’m not sorry.” He gives me a little smile.
I press my lips together and shake my head. “Nothing about you being here has been what I’ve expected.”
“Good.”
I let out a soft breath of laughter. He still hasn’t mentioned sex.
But maybe that doesn’t matter.
How can it not matter, though?
“You don’t actually know what you’re getting into. Not after just one day,” I say.
“Maybe not. But now I do know something very important.”
“What’s that?”
His voice drops lower, and his thumb brushes over my jaw again. “That you don’t want me to leave you alone.”
Well, looks like I’m going to have to figure out what to do with a human penis again.
I need to call Thea and go in for a therapy check-in.
Immediately.
She won’t mind if I text her tonight even.
His thumb slides over my jaw again, and the soft friction makes my belly swoop.
Okay, I need to call Thea first thing tomorrow.
“No,” I say softly. “I don’t.”
His hand slides from my cheek to the back of my head, his fingers tangling in my hair, and then he says that word again.
“Good.”