Page 59 of Wild Love
A heavy silence descends between us. All I can feel is the awkward tension emanating from the woman pressed up against me... until she finally comes up with something to say.
“This giving you a serious case of déjà vu, Junior? Or just me?”
I swallow, thinking back to that night.
Seven minutes in heaven. A dumb teenaged game. And of course, as some sort of cruel cosmic joke, I got shoved into a dark closet with Rosalie Belmont.
My laugh is a low rumble. It feels like the surrounding shelves vibrate with it as I drop my head in defeat. “It’s not just you, Rosalie.”
Rosalie. Because I cannot call her Rosie right now. This pantry is too fucking small, and she’s too fucking close.
“I really had to work the next day to convince West nothing happened in that closet.” She laughs, quieter this time, as she recalls the story.
I swallow. “Nothing did happen. I recognized you right away.” It was her scent, that heady perfume she wore back then—borderline overpowering—sweet like black licorice.
Her fingers thrum on my chest. She taps them like keys on a piano. “I know, but we did a good job of convincing everyone it did. Didn’t we?”
I nod, even though I’m pretty sure she can’t see me. “I messed up my own hair,” she says.
It’s clear as day in my head. Rosie hushing me and dragging her fingers through her hair.
I start when the tips of her pointer and middle fingers touch my lips. My hand shoots up and I grab her wrist, but she doesn’t back down. She dusts the pads of them over the top dip of my lip and whispers, “Wiped my cheap, sparkly lip gloss all over your mouth.”
“I remember,” I reply roughly, fingers wrapped tight around her wrist.
“I can’t remember the flavor. I was constantly applying that garbage,” she muses, fingers tracing again as a shiver races down my spine.
I don’t even need to think about it. Iknow. I will never forget.
“Watermelon.”
She sucks in a breath at my instant reply, and the tip of her nose grazes mine as her face tips up to mine.
Then my stomach burns, because I know I can’t be doing this. I quickly drop her wrist and step back, feeling the metal rack behind me pressing into my shoulder blades.
She says nothing, but her breathing sounds heavier than before. More ragged.
“You let everyone think we made out in that closet,” I say in a raspy voice. “You told them it wasgood.”
I can faintly see the outline of her head nodding in agreement.
“Why?”
“Because people treating you like you couldn’t land a girl bothered me. And that’s exactly what I told West. How I got him off my ass about the whole thing.”
“Icouldn’tland a girl.”
The closet falls silent, and then, “You could. You were just too good for all the ones who were interested.”
Interested? I’m not sure I even noticed them. All I saw was Rosie back then.
Still.
“I don’t know about that.”
“I do. I watched.”
“Paying pretty close attention for someone who professed to hate me.”
