Chapter 9 #2
But his brother is standing here looking at me like I’m a treasured piece he’s been searching his whole life for—not to hide away with all the rest, but to hold close to his chest. For the first time in my life, I feel valuable.
“I wish I’d known that,” I admit.
“Probably wouldn’t have mattered. You know Logan—he lives for the chase. He would’ve tried his damndest to win you over just to spite me.”
“It would’ve mattered.” It still does.
Rolling my lips together, I turn to squint at the truck. If Logan’s awake, he hasn’t bothered rolling a window down to shout at us yet.
“Holden?”
He hums a question mark.
“Will you come to the other side of the coffee pot with me? I really want to kiss you again.” My heart is beating unreasonably fast, like the plane door just opened and I’m about to jump. And if that’s what I’m doing, whatever he chooses to say next determines whether my parachute opens or not.
I watch something rouse in his eyes, turning them from stormy to dreamy, the blue almost iridescent amongst the jade green.
“I think it would be wrong to leave here without seeing it from the other side.” The look he gives me scintillates over my skin.
Finding our hidden spot amid the shrubbery, we smile at each other.
A lock of wavy hair falls across his forehead, and I catch his hand as he reaches to sweep it away.
Stepping into him, I guide our linked fingers to the small of my back, where his palm fits snugly in the slope of my spine, and his fingers dip into the fleshy bit of my waist.
Our bodies press together first, and I can’t help but remember the weight of him pressing into me against the truck.
Holden’s mouth hovers over mine, our eyes locked, and that first brush of his lips is a teasing graze.
I nip at him, catching the edge of my teeth on his full bottom lip, and smile at the shiver that chases through him.
When the temptation becomes too much, he devours me, parting my lips and licking into my mouth. It’s anything but sweet. It’s deep and languorous. He’s breathing me in like I’m his sole source of oxygen, as if he’ll die without me.
Every nerve ending inside me awakens out of a desperation to memorize this moment, and I slide my hands up inside his shirt. I need to ravage as much as I can during these few seconds—they may be the last I get.
His skin is hot to the touch, and the trail of hair south of his navel tickles my fingertips. With a groan of pleasure, Holden wraps his free hand around the back of my neck to pull me closer yet.
After one last fervent kiss, his lips slip away.
My heart starts and stops like an unbroken horse, and my ragged breath is just as untamed. “What do we do now?”
There’s a glossiness to his eyes when he opens them, and he gently rubs his thumb across my parted lips. “Well, we have a long drive ahead of us… so for now, we should probably focus on getting back home in one piece.”
Right. Holden doesn’t talk things out. Though I suppose there’s not much to say. It’s not as though we can get back in the truck and announce to Logan that we want to be together.
Instead, I lean into our typical banter with a playful scoff. “God forbid you get off schedule.”
“Angel, the schedule is the least of my concerns.”
“I’m going to break up with him,” I whisper. “I am. I’d do it right now.”
“He doesn’t deserve you, but… shit.” He rakes a hand through his own hair, yanking and squeezing a handful of wavy locks. When he lets go with a tormented exhale, his hair’s left standing in every direction.
He’s not telling me to do it because he doesn’t want to lead me on.
“It’s fine.” I press a gentle peck to his lips and dig deep to find that numb, apathetic part of my heart to cling to. “I’m not going to actually do it right now. I don’t want to fuck things up for you two. And after this weekend, I’m staying behind, anyways. Who knows when you’ll see me again.”
His throat bobs with a swallow. “Yeah…”
It takes a minute for either one of us to be ready to let go. And the slow saunter back to the truck is solemn, especially as the sky begins to spit tiny droplets of rain at us. I sink into the back seat with an unsettled sigh.
At the rumble of the diesel engine starting, Logan wakes up. He blinks around at our surroundings and lets out a yawn. “Where are we?”
Holden shifts the truck into drive and hitches a thumb toward the bizarre roadside attraction. “Had to take Sunday to her motherland. Next stop, Drumheller.”
Logan clears his throat. “For what? We were just there for the rodeo.”
“Did you see the book she was reading the other day? The one with the sexy dinosaur on the cover?” Holden smirks back at me as we wait for a tractor to pass so we can turn back onto the highway. “Figured we could stop by the dinosaur museum and let her get her rocks off.”
A howl of Logan’s laughter booms through the truck, and I lean forward to rap my knuckles against Holden’s upper arm.
“Fuck you,” I clip. “First of all, if you’re only going to stop at places where you can make fun of me, I take back what I said about wanting to slow down and enjoy the drive home. Secondly, it was a dragon, not a dinosaur—with two functional cocks, which is two more than either of you have.”
After a quick twist in his seat, Logan’s blue eyes bounce between Holden and I.
For a second, my stomach drops with worry that he found us out.
We’re done for. Ten seconds or less from him losing his ever-loving mind.
I rub my fingers over my lips, checking if they’re swollen, feeling for abrasions from the roughness of Holden’s facial hair.
Then, to both my dismay and relief, he says to Holden, “Dude, I learned a long time ago not to make fun of her stupid books.”
Logan’s favorite hobby has always been criticizing mine.
Holden counters, “I don’t know, man. Have you read any of them? They’re hot as hell.”
“Jesus Christ.” Logan drags his hand down his face. “You need to go out and get laid or—”
“Wait,” I interrupt. There’s a bit of bile creeping up my throat at the thought of Holden partying with Logan after they drop me off at home, but I swallow it down and focus on what Holden just admitted to. “You read romance books?”
“Yeah.” His eyes catch mine in the rearview, the staidness lifting from his expression at my surprise. “I was bored, so I downloaded a reading app on my phone last week.”
A zap of electricity hits me square in the chest. An addictive feeling I can’t quite put my finger on hums through my veins.
When Holden’s staring at his phone over coffee each morning or the glow of his screen is keeping me awake at night, he’s not scrolling mindlessly.
He’s not liking bikini photos on Instagram or swiping on Tinder. He’s reading what I’m reading.
I don’t know what to make of this new information.