Chapter 11
GOOD AS GOLD (CLEO)
Oh no.
Oh no, no, no.
I don’t know if I’m the one who snaps back from my out-of-body experience first or if it’s him.
Either way, we wrench ourselves away like we’ve just grabbed an electric fence, staring and shocked and bewildered.
…what have I done?
His eyes are dark and feral. Scary.
His dark hair is—oh, did I do that too?
I must’ve run my hands through it and messed it up. It’s usually so neat, short and combed, but right now it looks just as wild as the rest of him. Right on the verge of totally destroying me.
Worst of all, I can’t blame him for this when I know who kissed who first.
Holy hell, shoot me.
I raise a trembling hand to my mouth and touch my lips. They’re still tingling from the explosive force of that kiss.
Every part of me hums with desire like I’m running on Holden Verity’s current. My blood, a live wire, charged with confusion and need.
Holden’s gaze follows my fingers to my red, throbbing mouth before he looks away quickly.
My eyes flick down.
There’s a throw pillow over his lap.
Holy shit.
How close were we, really?
I’m afraid I already know the answer.
This feels like a drunken nightmare. It can’t be real.
Except there was no alcohol involved, just a natural high.
Nothing but the surreal news that the egg is authentic and even that feels ice-cold compared to the glaring truth.
I kissed Holden fucking Verity.
I kissed him for more than a minute. Now I need a flipping shower. An ice bath. Maybe twelve hours in a dark closet praying so I can wipe away my sins like mud.
Honestly, I’d settle for a nice, deep hole in the ground.
He still doesn’t look at me. Why would he?
His hand lingers on his jaw, rubbing like he wants to scrub away the feel of my hands on him.
I have no clue what to say.
How do you even smile and apologize for kissing your older, forbidden bodyguard?
He kissed me back, sure, but right now he looks like he wishes it never happened. Zero doubt he blames me, and I probably deserve it.
“Um. I should probably—” I stop. What? Apologize?
“I’m sorry, Cleo,” he bites off.
The silence eats us again.
Weirdly, his unexpected apology just makes me more uncomfortable. Now I’m the one who can’t stand to look at him.
I stare at my hands instead, turning them over, fidgeting for relief that won’t come.
“I didn’t mean it,” I say harshly. “Kissing you, I mean. I guess I forgot who I was with, and… and I was just so glad to hear the good news. Totally overreacted.” My broken laugh sounds so fake. “Obviously, I got carried away. Sugar high,” I finish.
Understatement of the century.
Sugar high?
Pathetic.
If he weren’t in front of me, I’d bury my head in my hands and maybe gouge my eyes out for good measure. If oblivion could find me right now, that’d be cool.
“Sugar high,” he echoes gruffly. “That does make sense.”
It doesn’t, and that’s the problem.
I knew I found him attractive.
I’m a red-blooded woman, so that was a given. And over the past couple days, the complicated mix of good looks and awful, conflicting attitudes grew into this teensy crush.
Slightly more than a teensy crush.
He’s just so big and mean and capable.
Every girl’s dream: a man who can beat up her problems and still take her to art museums and whip up breakfast.
But it’s more than that. It’s more than the miles of brute muscle that can knock down doors or his great cooking skills or how much he cares for his fam when I grew up convinced he just climbed into a dark hole and slept like a vampire once the day was over.
Holden, he’s—
He’s been kind. He’s been gentle and sweet.
He still might piss me off sometimes, sure, but every day makes it harder to see the inhuman ass.
When he stops treating me like a kid, everything changes. It’s easy to lose the old dynamic, where he was just PopPop’s watchdog.
Things are different now. The landscape shifted when I wasn’t looking, and I let that ruin what could’ve been the reset we needed.
After kissing him, that’s toast.
My chest feels too tight, caging the distressed hummingbird inside.
Holden finally moves first, to get as far away as possible, I’m sure. He can’t possibly bear to be close to me anymore.
“We should pack,” he announces from behind the sofa. “We’ve got the flight back to Portland tonight. No sense in waiting around here a second longer.”
No sense in risking another night in one bed together, he means.
I don’t blame him.
“Oh, right, yeah. The flight,” I say stupidly.
I stay where I am as Holden stomps into the bedroom, shutting the door behind him with unmistakable force.
I don’t move yet. I just listen to him tossing stuff around, zipping and unzipping his bag several times. Of course, he’s angry—and why shouldn’t he be?
I ruined a good thing.
One second, he was just listening, trying to be supportive, and then I was all over him.
I drop my head into my hands, digging my fingers into my cheeks, fighting and failing to suppress the tears of shame.
This is so bad, but the damage is done.
The very worst part is, it was one of the best fucking kisses of my life. And it had to be with Holden Verity.
I don’t know how to do this.
How to shift back to our regularly scheduled lives and erase the bitter memory.
I’ve hated him for most of my life. I miss it.
Hate, that was easy and familiar.
I knew we’d bicker. He was the distant, cold, controlling asshole because he had to be.
At least that relationship made perfect sense.
He was so strict and I liked acting out the way every young girl does when she trusts someone will stop her before things go too far. Safely bending rules. Testing boundaries.
Now, nothing about Holden feels safe and predictable.
Nothing except—no, that’s not right.
Even while we’re stranded here and burning from the kiss to end all kisses, I know he’ll keep putting my safety first.
It’s just… we’re talking about a different sort of safe.
Emotionally, I’m trapped inside a burning car and I don’t know how to get out.
Groaning softly, I throw myself back on the sofa and pretend to scroll on my phone. I should be riding high on the news about my coming fortune.
This is it.
Everything I wanted beyond my wildest dreams.
Confirmation that I’ll be filthy rich very soon and that puts me in charge of my destiny like never before.
Fairfax will probably offer plenty.
That could be it, the end of the line for this adventure, for Holden and me.
Enough to set me up for the rest of my life. I don’t need the final numbers to know it.
I won’t need to work again or chase side jobs just to survive.
Gramps did that for me. He did it knowing how much I’ve always wanted to be an artist and how I wouldn’t make Dad’s mistakes.
I bury my head in a throw pillow, realizing too late that it’s the same one Holden held against him. It still smells like him.
Shamelessly, I inhale it.
What the ever-loving hell is happening?
I rip the pillow away from my face and frown.
I do not have a thing for him. Not like an actual thing.
A crush is one thing.
I’ve crushed on guys like Henry Cavill and Jon Hamm. Older men with muscles and attitudes on screens. How shocking.
But abstract crushes aren’t the same as feelings for a man who’s up close and personal.
I’m getting emotional over the man who used to enforce my curfews and who’d watch my doors and windows.
He hid my car keys.
He made boundaries feel like a curse.
He saved me from myself.
We’re not supposed to be invested. We’re just working together because we have to.
I should be overjoyed. So pumped about any future I can imagine that I can’t think about anything else. All my wildest dreams are just one little big sale and some publicity away.
So, why does it feel like I’m losing?
Why does it feel like there’s a missing piece just drifting away?
The ride to the airport is predictably awkward.
At the penthouse, I just about managed to avoid him, but it’s harder when we’re fighting through the evening traffic in a silent car.
It’s bonkers how much the whole world can tilt on its axis in just a few days.
When we arrived in New York, I never dreamed I’d kiss him.
Never imagined we’d look at each other as more than control freak cavebear and spoiled art brat.
His gaze slides over, then away again.
I hate that I wonder what he sees now. Screw art brat, I must look like an overly emotional little tease who couldn’t keep her hands and lips to herself.
This would be a great time to talk about it, I guess. But God, where do I begin without dying?
Hey, yeah, sorry for kissing you, Holden Hardass. I didn’t mean it.
Okay, Nile. I forgive you for falling onto my tongue. Let’s never talk about it again.
See? Awful.
I dig my fingers into my temples.
“Headache?” Holden inhales like it takes all his concentration to remain calm.
“Just a little,” I say. “Nothing too major.”
We lapse back into silence.
Part of me wants to scream at him, to tell him it’s not all my fault. He certainly didn’t feel tortured when we crashed together.
Deep down, he wanted it as bad as I did, so why should I take a hundred percent of the blame?
Only, it won’t do any good pointing fingers.
It won’t erase what happened.
Plus, it’s clear as day he doesn’t want to dwell on it. I don’t even know if I want to mention it again.
A girl’s ego can only take so much before she has to shut up and live it down.
The only thing that could possibly make this more embarrassing would be if he hadn’t kissed me back. If he’d pushed me away with pure disgust for daring to touch him.
But he didn’t.
Holden kissed me back like he meant to.
Like he wanted me.
Like he’s been craving me for years and all I had to do was open the gate and unleash a charging bull.
And I did unleash him, no lie.
Who knows if the kiss was the real mistake. Maybe we shouldn’t have gone to The Met.
If we hadn’t, that adorably awkward pseudo-date stuck in my head wouldn’t have happened. I wouldn’t have gone to sleep curled up in his arms.