Chapter 36 #2
With her breathing under control, the regret settled in. She’d done the same thing to Connor that Connor had done to her all those years ago. He’d offered her the life she’d been dreaming of since she was twelve on a silver platter, and she’d run away like a coward before he could get a word in.
She’d been searching every one of his sentences and actions for some hint that he saw her as more than a friend for weeks.
She’d been baiting him by pretending to date his bestie.
Pushing boundaries in how she touched him, the amount of skin she showed, and the amount of flirting she did. She’d gotten nowhere.
As she sat in her silent room and went over every interaction they’d had in the last month, her panic and pain and confusion and guilt morphed into anger. How dare he throw this on her? He skipped every rational step and went straight to marriage.
Her stewing could have lasted five minutes, or five hours, before the soft knock came at her door. She balled her hands into fists and debated ignoring the intrusion. But if she didn’t acknowledge him, he would barge in anyway. Olivia sighed and sat up as the door opened without invitation.
Connor slipped inside and shut the door behind him. He sat next to her on the edge of the bed.
“I screwed up, huh?” he asked.
She let the silence linger, hoping he would provide some insight into his thought process.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Connor said.
She unzipped her coat; the air in the room stifling with him so close. Tossing the coat onto the floor, she crab-walked her way backward toward the head of the bed and slid under the covers. She pulled her knees to her chest and rested against the headboard.
Connor flopped backward, taking the position she’d been in for an unclear amount of time. He reached one hand above his head and grasped Olivia’s ankle. The touch soothed her more than she cared to admit, even through the thick fabric of the bed’s quilt.
His voice was a gentle whisper. “I didn’t mean to scare you off.”
“Could have fooled me,” Olivia muttered.
“Yeah, I got that.”
Connor’s dry delivery forced a soft smile onto Olivia’s lips.
“Walk me through how we got here, please,” she said. “Because I’m so fucking confused.”
He let out a harsh chuckle. “I don’t know, man. I’ve been tangled up in knots about this for weeks.”
“About what exactly? Because whatever it is, marriage isn’t the solution.”
“God, Livy. You’re making me sound like an asshole. There’s no problem to solve. Marriage isn’t supposed to be any type of solution.”
“Could have fooled me,” Olivia said again.
Connor flipped onto his stomach and crawled up the bed until his toes dangled off the edge. He grabbed one of Olivia’s hands and pressed his forehead to it.
“I had a whole speech prepared, but then you got weird about the present, and I panicked, and then you were running away, and I expected you to come back. But you didn’t. And I can’t blame you. I did the same thing.”
A nervous laugh escaped Olivia’s throat. “Maybe the treehouse isn’t as magical as we think it is. We have a habit of hurting each other there.”
Connor gasped. “Don’t you dare talk bad about the treehouse. We have way more magical memories there than sad ones.”
The silence stretched between them, and Olivia studied her best friend. She pulled her hand free from his grasp and ran it through his hair, trying to get him to look at her. He wiggled closer, and she stretched out her legs so he could rest his head on her thighs.
“I’m in love with you,” Connor said after endless minutes.
Olivia’s hand stilled for a fraction of a second before she continued twisting her fingers through his hair.
“No, you aren’t,” she said.
Connor wrapped a hand around her thigh and squeezed. “I am. I think I have been for a long time.”
“You can’t be in love with me. That doesn’t make sense.”
His hand tightened on her thigh, a warning. “It makes perfect sense. You’re in love with me. Why wouldn’t I be in love with you?”
“Who said I’m in love with you?” Olivia asked, her voice shaky with a question so close to a lie.
“Um, you did. Remember? In the original performance of whatever the fuck that was in the treehouse tonight.”
“That was eight years ago.”
“So?”
“A lot can change in eight years.”
A lot hadn’t changed in those eight years, but now didn’t seem like an appropriate time to mention that. Olivia wasn’t certain she was capable of rational thinking.
“You still love me,” Connor said. He grimaced. “I also overheard you talking to my mom at Christmas. I was planning to talk to you, but didn’t get a chance to before you started seeing Lover.”
Anxiety set her heart racing. She couldn’t explain away the conversation with Christina so easily.
“That was private.”
“I shouldn’t have intruded. But I know you still love me because of it, so I don’t feel too bad.”
“I do…” Olivia said.
“But?”
Olivia tapped Connor’s shoulder, and he sat up. She needed to see him for this conversation.
“But three months ago you were telling everyone I’m basically your sister.
At Christmas you were talking to your grandparents about how there’s nobody special in your life.
Less than one month ago you were hyping me up for my date with another guy.
We skipped a few crucial steps. We can’t go from platonic best friends to husband and wife on a whim. ”
“It’s not a whim.” Connor stuck his hand in his pocket and pulled out the little blue box Olivia hadn’t dared to open. He held it out to her.
With the shock worn off, and Connor willing to have a conversation about his feelings, she allowed herself to accept the box. She wouldn’t keep it. But she could look.
The perfect, dainty engagement ring could have been plucked straight off her Pinterest board. Knowing Connor, he’d ordered directly from one of her pins.
“It’s beautiful,” Olivia whispered, tears spilling again.
“You like it?” he asked.
She closed the box. When she offered it to him, he shoved her hand away.
“I can’t keep this, Connor,” she said.
“I’m not taking it.” He wiped a tear from her cheek and lifted her chin so she had to look him in the eyes. “Here’s what we’re going to do, okay?”
Olivia sniffled and wrapped her hand around his wrist. She nodded again.
“You’re right. We did skip some steps. We’re going to do them. All of them. You’re going to pretend like this night never happened. Got it?”
“Okay,” she said.
“When we get home, we’re going to go on a date. A real date. We can pretend we’re strangers and do the awkward first-date small talk. I’ll take you home and kiss you goodnight and then wait three days before I text you again. That’s the rule, right? Wait three days so I don’t seem desperate.”
Olivia snorted. “That ship has sailed.”
Connor laughed with her. “No, no, no. We’re forgetting this ever happened, remember?”
“Oh, right!” Olivia put on a serious face.
“Three days. And then I’ll ask you for another date. And another. We’ll do every milestone your ideal relationship needs to have, okay?”
She pulled his hand from her chin and placed a soft kiss on his palm.
“Okay.”
Connor tapped the little blue box in Olivia’s other hand.
“And when we’ve done all of those and you’re madly in love with me and you’re ready to say yes to any question I might ask you, you’re going to slip that cute little ring onto your finger, and we’ll get married at the next opportunity.
You can have anything. Courthouse, Vegas elopement, or fancy five-hundred-person wedding where we serve steak and caviar. ”
“What if we’re not...”
“Not what?”
“What if we go on one date, and it’s horrible, and we kiss and it’s like kissing your sister?”
“It won’t be.”
“But what if it is?”
“Trust me. It won’t be.”
“But it could be.”
Connor threw his head back and groaned. “For Christ’s sake, Livy. It won’t be.”
“I don’t want to ruin us.”
“You could never ruin us. If anyone is going to be doing the ruining, it’s me.”
“I don’t want you to ruin it either.”
“You need to stop worrying. This is going to be fun.”
Olivia grimaced. “I don’t know about this. Can I at least think about it?”
Connor covered his face with his hands and let out an exaggerated cry. “I thought this would go very differently.”
“Trust me, it’s not how I expected this evening to go either.”
They laughed, and Connor climbed off the bed. He grabbed Olivia’s hand and dragged her to her feet.
“Fine. Let me know what you decide. But you don’t get to think about it without all the information.”
On their feet he kept pulling on her hand, tugging her body flush against his. She held her hands out to steady herself, saying, “What informa—”
Connor freed her hand and slipped one of his onto her waist. The other tangled in the hair at her nape, his thumb hooked under her jaw to force her eyes to his.
“Oh,” she said, breathless.
Miles of her bare skin pressed against him. She ignored her instinct screaming to put some distance between them. He stared into her eyes, and she let herself admire the little flecks of gold in the warm, beautiful brown of his.
“Can I try something?” he asked.
Olivia swallowed the lump in her throat and bit her lip, sucking it into her mouth and wetting it with her tongue. She should say no. She should say no and kick him out, and run far, far away before they ruined twenty years of friendship over their inability to let things be. She nodded.
Connor lowered his mouth to hers, painfully slow, giving her every opportunity to back out. She didn’t. The moment his lips grazed hers, any ounce of hesitation he’d been harboring vanished.
Olivia had expected a sweet, tentative kiss.
This was not that. Connor swept his tongue along her lips, and when she didn’t open for him, he demanded entrance by following it with a nip.
She gasped at the brazenness, and he took full advantage, his hands tightening on her waist and in her hair, dragging her tighter against him.
Butterflies stirred in her belly when his tongue brushed against hers.
Olivia’s hands found his biceps, and she held on for dear life while her best friend kissed the hell out of her.
Alarm bells rang in her mind, but they were so faint they barely registered, and with his tongue in her mouth, she didn’t stand a chance of acknowledging them.
All she could focus on was the pressure building in her core, his warm, wet mouth against hers, and his fingers slipping under the hem of her tank top. God, she wanted more of his skin.
Following the directive of her horny little brain, she looped her arms around his neck and hitched a knee around his hips, trying to get closer.
Instead of getting her closer to him, the move resulted in him pulling away from her. He pulled his hands free from her shirt, and she missed their heat. She let out an involuntary whine.
When he released her, she wanted to stomp her foot and argue, but that wasn’t a dignified response for a twenty-six-year-old woman.
“See?” he said with a cocky smirk.
“See what?”
He rubbed his lower lip. “Not like kissing my sister. Not even close. I knew it would be good.”
Olivia took the opportunity to tease him. “Who said it was good?”
Connor’s eyes twinkled. “You were literally climbing me.”
She refused to be embarrassed. He’d started it. She did an about-face and climbed into bed, taking her sweet time to get comfortable before she returned her attention to Connor.
Her abrupt silence had the exact effect she had hoped for. Connor waited for her to get comfortable before stalking over to her. Without warning, he pounced.
She scrambled out of his way, giggling like a fool. It was far too easy for him to straddle her, snatch both of her wrists in one hand and pin them above her head. It was a familiar position for them. Growing up, they’d play wrestled over the remote or the last piece of pizza all the time.
This time, though, his touch, his intent, lit Olivia up. She squirmed under his attention and kicked his bad leg.
“Sorry!”
He poked her armpit.
She flailed and tried to free herself with no luck.
“Connor, your leg!”
“My leg is fine, sweetheart.”
He dug his finger into her armpit again, and she yelped.
At this rate they would wake up the whole damn house. She voiced the concern, and he said, “Sounds like a you problem. I’ll stop right now if you admit it was a good kiss.”
She let the torture go on for as long as she could before saying, “Okay, okay. It was a good kiss,” through her giggles.
“See, how hard was that?” Connor asked, lowering his face to hers.
Olivia parted her lips and closed her eyes, expecting another—fucking fantastic—kiss. Instead, Connor pecked the tip of her nose, groaned, and rolled off her.
“Think about it, Livy.”
He slipped out of her room without a backward glance.
Olivia didn’t have anything to think about. Giddiness bubbled in her veins, and she stifled a squeal.