Page 87 of Win Some Love Some
“So…Wyatt was hanging with you at your place?”
“I think he’s lonely without his ex-wife-slash fiancé around,” I said.
“Or maybe he likes your company.”
“Don’t read too much into it. It’s not like we’re performing blood brother ceremonies.”
Although I had talked to him about Nora. What was that if not a blood brother experience?
“You can let them in, you know,” she said.
“Sure,” I said with a laugh.
She touched my face and it was enough to make my breath stop. I let her tilt my face towards her so she could look me right in the eye. She smiled as if to saythere you areand cupped my jaw in her hand.
It was always how she touched me when she had something to say she wanted me to hear. Because she knew, even to this day, making direct eye contact with people wasn’t easy for me.
An old lingering habit from growing up with an abusive father. The less I looked at him, the more I hoped he wouldn’t see me. The more I believed he wouldn’t hurt me.
Nora never let me get away with that. She always made sure to put her palm on my cheek so I couldn’t turn my head away.But it had been six years since she’d touched me like this and I felt my heart kick against my ribs. My blood thump through my veins.
There might have been another dick twitch.
Jesus, man, get it together.
“You can let them in,” she said.
“I don’t need more family,” I protested. “I have my own brother and sister.”
“Yes, of course you do. Mads and Julian are amazing and you adore them. But they’re so much younger. Charlie was more like a best friend growing up than a sibling. There’s something about having that friend that has to love you no matter what. No matter how badly you screw up, they’re just always going to be there and understand you at a different level.”
“That’s you,” I said quietly.
Her pretty mouth turned down and she dropped her hand from my face. “I’m sorry.”
“For going to a used car lot without me?”
“For shutting you out. After my birthday. I just didn’t know how to deal with my feelings and be the same person with you.”
“I’m sorry I expected you to,” I said, surprising her. Surprising myself. “What happened that night wasn’t something that should have been swept under the rug. You,” the wordsoffered yourself to meechoed through my brain but I bit them back. “Were so honest and so brave and vulnerable. I shut you down because I didn’t know how to deal with my feelings either.”
This time I reached out, to cup her cheek, because I wanted to look into her eyes and never stop doing it. Because I wanted her to see me.
“I’ve missed you,” I confessed. “I’ve missed you so much.”
Tears welled in her eyes.
“You want to kiss me again,” she whispered.
“I don’t want to,” I said, and disbelief and a flicker of pain sparked in her eyes. “I have to.”
I leaned into her space, tentatively, slowly, giving her every opportunity to reject this. Out of revenge for my rejection, or because she’d simply lost interest in me, or because she knew like I did that this was probably going to end in disaster.
But she wasn’t stopping me. Instead her hand was on my arm, making a fist in my shirt. Like she was holding onto the only thing steady in a world gone upside down and I knew that feeling all too well.
I kissed her lips. And it was like gasoline on embers. My fingers curled into her hair, along her scalp, as if I could hold her prisoner. Her lips parted and I didn’t hesitate to taste her. My tongue in her mouth, breathing her air. Her hands pulled at me, and if it weren’t for the center console, I’d have her in my lap. My dick throbbed. Pressed so hard against the zipper of my jeans it felt like it might tear through the material.
She made a low sound in her throat and I backed off.
