5. Blizzard #2
But then his hand lingers, settling against my cheek in a way that most definitely has never happened with my brother.
Something electric shoots right through me, but it’s a feeling I don’t think I’ve ever really felt before.
It’s like desire or something else. Just feeling his palm touch my cheek does enough to make me melt.
“I’m sorry,” Parker tells me a moment later. “That I stole your brother from you.” At first I think he’s being sarcastic, but then he closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose. “I should’ve pushed him to try harder.”
To my own drunken mind, this is all basically a marriage proposal.
“Don’t apologize,” I murmur, frowning.
“No,” he shakes his head and gives me a hardened expression. “He should’ve been home with you.”
My breath stutters. All the blood drains from my face, leaving sharp, prickly heat.
“I just want you to know that I’ve always cared about you.”
“Park…” I whisper, holding his gaze. I don’t realize what I’m doing until I’ve already done it.
One second I’m sitting beside him trying to survive the way he’s looking at me, and the next I’m swinging a leg over his lap.
My hands find his face like they already know where they belong as I kiss him clumsily.
There’s nothing practiced about it. It’s all impulse and emotion and a million beers worth of courage colliding at once.
And for one horrible half-second, Parker doesn’t move at all. My stomach drops instantly. But then his hand lands low and firmly against my waist. The shift in him is immediate enough that it steals the breath from my lungs.
His fingers slide further around my waist, yanking me closer before either of us fully realize he’s doing it. I feel his other hand brace against the couch cushion beside me, his head tilting slightly as the kiss deepens hungrily.
My body is attuned to every single sensation. The warmth of his mouth. The scrape of his stubble against my skin. The slow drag of his thumb over my side like he forgot where his hands were supposed to stop. I can feel him breathing differently. I can feel myself shaking.
Parker kisses me like he forgets who I am. He pushes me down to the couch and hovers over me, looking at me ravenously for a moment before I feel his hot mouth latch onto the side of my neck.
I’ll admit that this isn’t the first time I’ve thought about kissing Parker.
But all those other times were so fucking different than what it’s actually like.
He isn’t soft. He doesn’t take his time.
He just…takes. He owns. And, my God, he doesn’t hold back.
His grip tightens suddenly, heavy hand spreading up my chest to pin me down to the couch.
When his lips find their way back to my mouth, the small sound he makes against my mouth is so soft I almost think I imagined it.
I don’t know what to do with my hands. My entire focus is on the low, primal grunts he makes while he’s biting down on my bottom lip and sucking on my tongue. The moment I finally work up the courage to snake my hand up beneath his shirt to feel his hardened chest, everything stops.
Parker shoots up from the couch, his chest rising quickly from being out of breath.
He covers his mouth with his hand and just shakes his head.
The realization hits him all at once, and I can actually see it happen behind his eyes.
Whatever existed in the last two minutes collapses immediately under the weight of it.
His hand slips from my back. “You can’t do that,” he says quietly.
No we shouldn’t. No I can’t.
You.
Like the entire moment belonged to me alone.
I stare at him. My brain feels slow suddenly, like it’s trying to process too many versions of reality at once. He kissed me back. He deepened the kiss. There’s probably a fucking hickey on the side of my neck from him.
I didn’t fucking imagine that. I know I didn’t.
“I’m sorry,” I say immediately, the words tripping over themselves so fast they barely sound coherent. “I thought—I don’t know, I thought—”
The embarrassment hits so violently it makes me sick to my stomach. I sit up and turn away before he can see my face properly. The humiliation is unbearable. Heat crawls all the way up my neck while every second of the last two minutes replays in horrifying detail behind my eyes.
He takes a small step and I hear the floor creak beneath his weight. “Anders.”
I shake my head immediately. “I’m sorry.”
For a moment Parker doesn’t say anything, but then I feel his hand gently close around my wrist. “Hey,” he says softly.
That softness almost makes it worse. He sounds so careful now, almost like I’m suddenly a child again.
I finally force myself to look at him. And immediately regret it because Parker looks ashamed. He looks guilty.
“You’re drunk,” he says quietly. “You made a mistake.”
My chest tightens painfully. “I’m so sorry.” But I can’t tell if he’s telling that to me or to himself.
His grip on my wrist tightens slightly. “You’re okay.”
The way he says it makes me feel strangely small, and suddenly our age difference feels enormous. Humiliatingly enormous. But the way he just took control of the narrative so easily…now he’s the one who gets to recover from this. Meanwhile I still feel his hand on my waist like it means something.
“That’s not fair,” I whisper before I can stop myself.
Fuck.
Parker’s expression shifts slightly. “What?”
I almost laugh. I don’t even know how to explain it. The fact that he let himself kiss me back long enough for hope to exist before deciding to become responsible again. But I can’t exactly say that because hearing it out loud would make me sound insane. So instead I just shake my head.
“Nothing.”
Parker studies me for a second too long before exhaling quietly. “Come on,” he murmurs. “It’s getting late. You should head upstairs.”
somehow that hurts too, because the night is ending exactly the way he wants it to.
With Parker deciding what happens. He sends me up to the guest room like it’s my bed time, watching me walk up the stairs like a parent just counting down the minutes until they can plop down on the couch and watch a show that isn’t animated or has loud, obnoxious singing.
The worst part is that I still want him near me even now.
I lie awake for hours staring at the ceiling, half-convinced he’ll come back to me once he’s had enough time to stop pretending that whatever happened between us only happened to me.
But he never does.