Page 39 of Bright Lights and Summer Nights

“We talked about this last night. I’m fine.”

I don’t move. I know I don’t have to walk her to the front door, but I want to. And she isn’t going to stop me from wanting to.

She lets out an annoyed sound and stomps her foot in the most adorable of ways. “Do you ever listen, or do you just not listen to me?”

This makes me smile. “So now I’m not just grumpy, I don’t listen either?”

She nods, folding her arms across her chest, and holds her chin high. “Yes. Exactly. If you were a gentleman, you would’ve kissed me in that maze when I was basically begging you to,” she mumbles under her breath. The words are quiet and hurried, but there’s no mistaking exactly what she said.

I grab her by the elbow, keeping my grip around her firm but gentle as I pull her the rest of the way to the doorstep. “One could argue that the gentlemanly thing to do was to not kiss you.”

“I think I preferred it when you were brooding and not talking.”

We reach the front doorstep, but I’m still not ready to say good night to her just yet. “Were you giving me the silent treatment because you were mad I didn’t kiss you?”

Her eyes go wide as if she wasn’t expecting me to be so direct. I’ve had plenty of time to gather my thoughts and regret not giving in and kissing her when she asked me to. Now, if she asked me again, I’d tell her yes.

Emma is quiet for a moment, and I’m learning that her silence drives me wild. She’s not normally quiet. She’s vocal about the thoughts running through her head, and right now, I want to know every last one of them.

“You might have been right. Maybe we shouldn’t kiss unless it’s to make the fake dating thing more believable.”

I take a step forward. In return, she takes a step back. It repeats until her back is against the front door, putting us in the same position we were in earlier. “Is that what you want?”

“Is what what I want?”

My fingers twitch at my sides, wanting to reach out and touch her. “Do you not want to kiss me anymore?”

Her eyes flutter shut for a moment before opening again. “I’ve already told you I want to kiss you. But now that I’ve thought about it, I can’t help but wonder that if we kiss, it might mess things up.”

“Mess what up?”

“I don’t know. We just met, so I wouldn’t call us friends, considering I thought about kissing you since the moment I saw you, but also, we’re pretending to be dating. I don’t want things to feel…real when they’re not.”

“Is you wanting to kiss me not real?”

She lets out a sigh of annoyance. “No, that’s very real. But I’m only equipped to play a girlfriend right now, not be one, and I don’t want us kissing outside of playing the part to make things complicated.”

I laugh. “I do hate complicated.”

“So if we kiss—” Her eyes flick to my lips for a moment before she looks back at me to finish her thought. “If we kiss, we have to know that nothing will happen outside of this week. We’ll play the part…we’ll have fun. But after the wedding, you’ll go back to being a celebrity who clearly doesn’t want to settle down, and I’ll get back to finding myself and not having incredibly hot football players distract me from that.”

I swallow, resisting the urge to tell her that it has nothing to do with me wanting to settle down or not. I want my life to slow down, to focus on things outside of football. But I owe it to myself and my teammates to give my all to what will most likely be my last year of football.

Emma anxiously licks her lips, her chest rising and falling in quick breaths. I stare at her lips. They’re perfectly full—and the only thing I’ve thought about for hours.

“Preston, what are you thinking about?”

“Your lips.” I know she’s wary of kissing in private, but tasting her again is all I can think about. She keeps glancing at mine, something I don’t even think she knows she’s doing, but something that’s driving me wild. I don’t agree with holding back, not if we both want it as much as I believe we do.

“What about my lips?”

“They look like they need mine.”

CHAPTER 20

EMMA

For the second time tonight, Preston’s lips are against mine.

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