Chapter 15 #2
If any of my friends could see me right now, they would never let me live it down.
The best part? I didn’t care.
That was how good I felt.
A knock on the door.
Avril’s voice, soft. “Kelly? Are you up?”
“Barely.”
“Can I come in?”
I opened the door. Avril stood there with two cups of tea and the kind of quiet smile that meant she already knew.
“You look different,” she said.
“Different how.”
“Happy.”
“Is that so unusual?”
“On you? This version of it? Yes.”
I took the tea. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“You don’t have to know yet.”
“That’s terrifying.”
“That’s love,” Avril said simply.
I studied her. “Since when are you the wise one?”
“Since always. I just usually let you figure it out yourself.”
We went downstairs together.
Hope saw me first.
Her face shifted instantly.
Because, apparently, I looked like a woman who’d spent the night making out with the right man and had no regrets about it.
Oh no.
“Kelly.” Hope’s voice had so much meaning in my name I nearly laughed before I even reached the table.
“Don’t.”
“You thought at me.”
Hope bit her lip so hard I wanted to applaud her restraint.
Avril looked up from her tea and smiled softly. “You look happy.”
“I am,” I said.
“Really happy?” Hope asked.
“Stupidly happy.”
“The kind of happy that makes you want to do something ill-advised?”
“The kind of happy that makes me want to stop apologizing for wanting things.”
Hope’s face changed.
“That,” she said softly, “is the best thing you’ve said all weekend.”
Again.
That word.
And this time I didn’t dodge it.
“I am.”
The women’s faces all changed at once.
Hope melted.
Avril softened.
Miley, who had entered with coffee, stopped dead and narrowed her eyes like a brilliant lawyer presented with entirely unexpected evidence.
And Britney.
Britney looked straight at me.
Looked.
And whatever she saw there made the edge in her face shift.
Not disappear.
Maybe uncertainty. Maybe fear. Maybe emotional chaos.
What she got instead was me, glowing like an idiot and too gone to hide it well.
I sat down and accepted the tea Hope pushed toward me with the sort of reverence usually reserved for the injured.
“I am not dying,” I said.
“No,” Hope said softly. “You , aren’t.”
I gave her a look. She lifted both hands.
“No commentary. I know.”
That was the other miracle of the morning. No one pushed.
I looked like a woman who had made one and liked it very much.
And maybe that was enough to stop people from turning concern into control.
Britney came around the table slowly and set a hand on my shoulder.
Once.
Firm. Brief.
I looked up at her.
She held my gaze for a second and then said the nicest thing she’d probably ever said to me with that little softness in her eyes.
“Good.”
That almost got me.
And this wasn’t even approval exactly.
I put my hand over hers for one second and squeezed.
No one said anything.
And because the universe had decided one emotional near-death experience wasn’t enough for a weekend, that was the exact moment Xerses walked in.
He was in a white shirt with the sleeves rolled and dark pants and looked like the kind of man romance novels should be embarrassed to invent because reality had no business giving women that much to work with.
He saw me. I saw him see it.
The glow. The answer.
Miley leaned toward me. “He just walked in looking like a man who got very good news last night.”
“Shut up.”
“I’m a lawyer. I notice evidence.”
“This is not a courtroom.”
“Everything is a courtroom.”
Avril hid her smile behind her tea. “She’s not wrong.”
“She’s always wrong,” I said. “She’s just also always right.”
He crossed to the tea service with all the calm in the world, and every woman at the table was very interested in her own glass.
Traitors.
He poured his tea. Took a sip. Then looked at me and said, in that low voice that made simple words reckless, “Good morning.”
I smiled before I could stop it.
“Good morning.”
“You slept.”
“Is that an observation or an accusation?”
“Neither. You look rested.”
“You keep saying that like it’s a surprise.”
“It is. You normally look like a woman plotting something.”
“Who says I’m not plotting something right now?”
“Your face. It’s too soft.”
“Don’t call my face soft in front of people.”
“Why?”
“Because then they’ll know.”
“They already know.”
“Shut up.”
Open.
It was also not all.
He came to stand near my chair while Charlie bellowed something from the hall and Hope rose to go rescue the day from him.
The room loosened. Moved. People standing. Sitting. Drifting.
And in the middle of that ordinary family motion, Xerses leaned close enough that only I could hear him.
“You’re glowing,” he murmured.
“Shut up.”
“Everyone can see it.”
“Then stop making it worse.”
“I’m not doing anything.”
“You’re standing too close.”
“You could move.”
“I don’t want to move. That’s the problem.”
“That doesn’t sound like a problem.”
“It is when your mother is watching.”
“My mother is always watching.”
“Exactly.”
His fingers brushed lightly over the back of my neck.
Tiny touch.
My whole body lit up.
“You did that on purpose,” I whispered.
“Yes.”
“In front of people.”
“They weren’t looking.”
“Hope was looking. Hope is always looking.”
“Then she already knows.”
I tipped my head back enough to look at him.
His face was composed.
Only his eyes gave him away.
I looked down at my tea and smiled into it like an absolute fool.
I didn’t like his body.
I liked his touch.
The little touches. The easy ones. The ones that made me feel held in the world without being trapped in it.
That was so much more reckless than sex, honestly.
The rest of brunch blurred in the best way.
Conversation. Laughter. Plans for departures and travel and leftovers and who was staying until tomorrow.
All of it buoyed by the simple, impossible fact that under the table, or in passing, or when no one was quite looking, Xerses kept finding small ways to touch me.
A hand at my back once when I stood too quickly.
His knuckles brushing mine when he passed me the honey.
The lightest pressure at my waist when we moved around the same chair.
And every single time, I liked it.
More than liked it.
My body turned toward it before my brain could issue a single warning.
I should have been worried about that.
Instead I was somewhere beyond worry and into the far more treacherous territory of romantic certainty.
Not forever. I wasn’t insane.
But certain in this:
I had made the right choice.
I wanted him again.
And if he watched me one more time like he was remembering the beach and trying to behave, I was probably going to drag him somewhere private and make that impossible.