Chapter 3 #2
His eyes dropped to my lips, sending a flash of heat shooting into my groin. I wasn’t stupid, and this wasn’t the first time I’d caught him looking at me with desire. If I’d truly thought my attraction to him was one-sided, I wouldn’t have been nearly as angry about his supposed indifference.
Trace’s shoulders slumped. “Wolfe. Why are you here?”
“I’m here to call you a goddamned liar,” I hissed, surprising him.
If there was one thing Wolfe Marian wasn’t, it was confrontational.
But this particular confrontation had been a long time in the making.
“You stood there on your fucking porch kissing a… a child after telling me you’d never consider dating someone seventeen years younger than you. ”
I stood close enough to feel his chest brushing my own through my shirt.
Somehow, I’d left the house without my parka and hadn’t felt a single thing.
But here? Now? Now, I was feeling everything.
Every short inhale of his breath. Every warm exhale tinged slightly with the scent of alcohol.
The inevitability of this moment but also the ugliness of it.
His hand came up to hold me back, his entire palm landing in the center of my chest, warm and strong. Gentle. There was no pressure on it. No actual push to keep me away.
I instinctively brought my own hand up to cover it and hold it there. A touch I’d never been able to steal before now.
It was precious and so incredibly perfect.
“I thought maybe,” he said, hesitantly. “I thought maybe you meant… me when you asked back then.”
“I did!” I cried. “Of course I did. And we both knew it. And you fucking ran away. You fucking left me and started your big, exciting dream life. While I…” My voice broke, and for some reason, reality came crashing down. “While I was stuck in mine.”
And that was the problem, wasn’t it? It wasn’t Trace’s fault. How could it be? He wasn’t required to love me. To want me. To be with me like that.
He wasn’t—couldn’t be—the reason I was adrift in this purgatory space between my foundation job and the dream job I could never claim in the light without ruining what made it a dream.
Reality began to crowd in. Even if he were attracted to me, even if he’d looked at me some kind of way once or twice, he had the right to reject those feelings. To not act on them.
I couldn’t force him to want me the way I wanted him.
“Never mind,” I said, pulling on my fake smile and self-deprecating shrug like an old coat.
Reassurance that everything was fine. I was fine. And so very sorry for disrupting.
“Wolfe,” Trace said carefully. “Hold on. Wait.”
I shook my head. “I’m sorry,” I mumbled, patting my pants pockets and recognizing the shape of the key fob in one and my phone in the other. “I’ll get out of your hair.”
“Wolfe.” This time, it dropped lower—slower, steadier.
A commanding note struck clean and sure, like a bass line coming in after too much treble.
The kind of voice I sometimes imagined in my dirtiest fantasies.
I closed my eyes and inhaled sharply, letting it resonate through my chest, through bone and breath.
I didn’t want to disrupt the melody mid-measure, so I let it play out.
“Come here,” his voice was softer now. A diminuendo pulling me toward the coda.
Except it wasn’t the coda. There was too much song left to play out. And suddenly, I didn’t want to hear it.
“Can’t,” I explained, stepping toward the door. “Please don’t say the words. Again.”
I wanted to keep pretending. To keep believing one day he could be mine. Even though I knew the truth already. I’d seen the expression on his face.
As soon as my hand hit the doorknob, Trace’s body moved up behind mine. “You don’t want this,” he warned softly. “You think you do, but you don’t.”
I sucked in a breath and tried my hardest to be brave. To be an adult. To prove to him he was wrong about me. About age. About all of it.
And then I turned around and faced him, desperation impossible to hide as my voice croaked. “I have wanted to kiss you since I was thirteen years old. There has never been a day since then that I haven’t fallen asleep to thoughts of you. This… this feeling I have—”
“It’s a crush!” His eyes widened with panic now that my words were making it real between us. Giving it breath and life and permanence. “That’s all. You’ll get over it, Wolfe. It’ll go away.”
My laugh was bitter and sharp-edged. “Will it? After all these years? Mm. Great. I’ll just keep waiting, then.”
I moved to turn around, but Trace stopped me with a hand on my shoulder. The heat from his fingers seared through my shirt. His eyes were the slightest bit glassy, and his nose and cheeks were pink. I vaguely remembered his sunrise photo from yesterday. He’d been in the snowy backcountry.
Alone? With Patrick? Because the kiss they’d shared a few hours ago surely hadn’t looked like a breakup kiss. But then again, what the fuck did I know? I’d never had a breakup because I’d never had a real relationship. Only hookups that didn’t last as long as a Band-Aid.