Chapter 11 #2
He noticed that too, and pulled me in closer, one arm firm around my waist now, not enough to trap, enough to steady.
That somehow made it more romantic.
When we finally broke apart, it was only because breathing had become medically necessary.
I kept my hands in his shir and he kept his forehead against mine, holding my waist.
Neither of us spoke but then his thumb moved once against my skin.
Then again.
He lifted his head enough to look at me.
Moonlight hit one side of his face. My breath was still wrong. His wasn’t much better.
And because I was incapable of leaving myself any room to recover with grace, I said, “This was probably a terrible idea.”
“Yes.”
“You’re supposed to disagree.”
“Why? It was a terrible idea and I’d do it again immediately.”
“That does not help.”
“It wasn’t meant to help. It was meant to be honest.”
“Your honesty is a liability.”
“So is your mouth.”
“Excuse me?”
“Your mouth is a liability. It was before the kiss and it is significantly worse now.”
I laughed once, shaky and breathless and not okay.
Then I studied him properly again and saw the same wreckage in myself reflected back at me.
“I hate how much I wanted that,” I admitted.
“Why?”
“Because it complicates everything.”
“It was already complicated.”
“I was pretending very successfully and you’ve just ruined that.”
His gaze dropped to my mouth and came back up.
“I don’t hate it,” he said.
“Of course you don’t. You started it.”
“You stepped forward.”
“That is technically true and I resent you for remembering it.”
That sent another pulse through me so hard I tightened my grip in his shirt.
God.
“Xerses.”
He looked at me like he wanted me to keep saying his name until the ocean changed color.
Not helping. “I know.”
“No, I don’t think you do.”
One side of his mouth moved again. “We can’t do that again tonight.”
That was so specific I almost laughed in his face.
Instead I stared at him. “Tonight.”
His hand at my waist flexed once, enough to make my body remember everything .
I closed my eyes.
“See,” I whispered. “This is what I mean.”
He exhaled against my temple, almost a laugh and not remotely amused. “I know.”
I took one shaky step back.
He let me.
He kept leaving the final inch to me and I kept choosing it anyway.
“Kelly.”
He stood there barefoot in the sand, hair wind-tossed, mouth slightly bruised-looking from the kiss, and if there were a more reckless sight available to women on this earth I did not want to be introduced to it.
“We’re not pretending that didn’t happen,” he said.
I laughed softly. “No. I don’t think we are.”
“Good.”
I looked back at the ocean because that answer was too much and too honest and exactly the sort of thing that would make me kiss him again if I let myself stay facing him much longer.
Silence.
Then, after a beat, I said, “This can’t happen again.”
The lie sat between us instantly.
Still, he did not challenge me.
That was maybe the most romantic thing he could have done in the moment.
He was watching me in that same dark, attentive way, but something about him had changed.
“Are you okay?” He asked.
I nodded once.
Then, because staying any longer felt like asking the ocean for an audience and I had enough problems, I started toward the path back up.
He fell into step beside me.
Not touching.
Every inch of air between us felt aware.
The cove disappeared behind the rise.
The real world returned.
I stopped with my hand on the terrace gate.
Xerses stopped too.
I stared.
He asked, “What.”
I looked up.
Then, because I couldn’t help myself and because if I didn’t say something normal I was going to drag him back down the path and undo all my own hard work, I said, “You have my lipstick on your mouth.”
“Where?”
“Lower lip. Left side.”
“That seems like your problem.”
“It’s literally on your face.”
“Because you put it there.”
“You kissed me back.”
“Enthusiastically. That doesn’t change the location of the evidence.”
I laughed.
Laughed.
The sound escaped me before I could stop it, bright in the night and entirely too intimate.
He smiled then.
A sharp, impossible little flash of joy between us.
God.
I reached up before I could think too hard about it and wiped my thumb lightly over his lower lip.
The contact was tiny, brief, but it sent a fresh wave of heat through both of us anyway.
He stopped. I stepped back.
“There,” I said.
“Tonight,” I reminded him.
The look he gave me should have been illegal in at least three states.
“Not tonight,” he agreed. “I want to see what happens sober.”
I wasn’t drunk.
He opened the terrace door for me like we had not just altered the shape of the entire weekend in a moonlit cove below his parents’ house.
I stepped inside.
Warmth breathed me whole. Light and voices. A family still awake and moving and utterly unaware that somewhere below them, their son and the last single woman in the friend group had just kissed like a promise and a problem at the same time.
I should have gone straight upstairs.
Instead I made it to the foot of the staircase before my body finally let the delayed reaction have me.
My hand tightened on the banister.
My whole body felt kissed.
And behind me, just barely, I heard the terrace door close and knew without turning that Xerses was still there, still in the room, still carrying the same impossible knowledge I was.
Tonight we had changed, completely.
And no amount of pretending otherwise was going to put it back as we were.