Page 39 of Silent Cravings

I was dangerously close to being back to where I started. Only I wasn’t a kid anymore, in love with the prettiest, smartest, most exciting girl he ever met.

Though she was still all those things, that hadn’t changed.

“Are you going to dinner with everybody?” she asked, opening her eyes again. Ari had invited everyone out to a steakhouse on Greenwich Street as a kick-off to the weekend’s festivities.

I shook my head. “No, I thought I might hang around and make sure you didn’t need anything.” She quirked an eyebrow, suspicious, and I had to chuckle at how easily she saw through me. “All right, I asked around and found out you already backed out of dinner to get things done up here. I thought I could come up and help you.”

She looked more skeptical than ever, though a tiny smirk stirred the corners of her mouth. “Why do I get the feeling there’s a trade-off somewhere?”

“You have so little faith in me,” I grumbled, shaking my head. “I’m disappointed.”

“So you didn’t come up here hoping you’d get laid in exchange for helping me fold place cards?”

“Is that what I’ll have to do?” I countered, eyeing the stack of cards again. Funny how much bigger it seemed now.

“How about I order dinner for us?” she suggested, her arms looping around my waist as if I could resist when she pulled me closer. “We can eat and work as long as you promise to keep your fingers clean so you don’t smudge the cards.”

“There are plenty of things I’d love to do with my fingers that don’t involve food.”

She placed firm hands against my chest, shaking her head. “Not this close to the wedding, Evan. Work first. Play later.”

Who was I to argue?

“Isit wrong that I’m hungry again?”

Valentina snorted, her head leaving my shoulder so she could smile sleepily at me. “You worked up an appetite.”

I sure as hell had. “It must have been all that folding.”

She nudged me, groaning at my terrible joke. “Or maybe the way you folded me like a pretzel.”

“Sure. I guess that counts too.” I couldn’t remember the last time I was this relaxed. The bed was insanely comfortable, the mattress molding itself to my body, the pillow cradling my head. Between that and the woman whose naked body was draped over mine, life was looking pretty good.

“I should book a stay here for myself,” she mumbled, stretching like a cat before rolling onto her back. The sheet was down around her waist, letting me admire her perfect, round tits. It was borderline pathetic, the way I turned into a hormonal teenage boy around her.

“What do you do to relax?” I rolled onto my side, trying to ignore her gorgeous tits in favor of holding an actual conversation.

I genuinely wanted to know. She had pretty much ignored me for close to a decade.

“Relax? What’s that?” Her laughter was hollow.

“I know you take classes, right? Like, dance or whatever?”

“You remember that?” She laughed softly and chagrined like she was the butt of the joke. “Gosh, I haven’t done that in years. There just never seems to be enough time.”

“You’re always taking care of everybody else.” She scoffed gently, which made me double down. “Like when you organized that trip to Vermont so we could all go skiing. You didn’t have to do that. But you went out of your way to make sure everybody had a good time, and all the bases were covered.”

“Everybody’s forgotten about that by now.” She sighed, toying with the hem of the sheet like it was suddenly so fascinating. It always made her uncomfortable being praised, which struck me as ironic since so many things about her were praiseworthy.

“I didn’t forget.” Her eyes dragged up to meet mine, and I was lost in them for a moment too long. Time to take this in a different direction. “Hell, tell me you still go to the carousel in Central Park when you feel overstressed. Do you ever go there anymore?”

She took a deep breath, which she released slowly,staring up at the ceiling. The way a person sighed after hearing a question they didn’t want to answer. “I’m pretty tired,” she announced. “I think I need to get to sleep. We have a long weekend ahead of us.”

Dammit. When would she stop doing this? “Why are you shutting me down?” I asked. I might have been taking my life in my hands, but I could only go through so much of this hot-and-cold, back-and-forth bullshit.

Here we were, naked in bed, about as vulnerable as two people could be together. All it took was a simple question about something I knew she used to like to do when life got to be too much, and she shut down.

“I’m exhausted, Evan. I barely have it in me to speak, and I have a chock-full schedule from now through Sunday night. What is so wrong with me wanting to get some sleep? Considering you keep telling me to rest.”

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