Page 85 of The Best Worst Mistake
She steps back but pulls me with her, until her back is up against the stone-wall path we’ve been following toward the hotel.
“Oomph.” She giggles and I love the feeling of her lips turning upward, smiling against my mouth.
I press against the wall, testing the strength of it before I lift her onto it, sliding her knees open just enough for my hips to fit between them. She squeezes them around me, pressing herself forward so we fit together just like we should.
“I’ve never wanted you to have a driver waiting so bad in my entire life,” she says, breathlessly.
“I swear to God I’ll have him here in the next three minutes. I’ll get a chopper. I’ll fucking teleport us to that hotel right now if you want me to.”
She looks around, as if trying to decide if the street is dark enough to take this a step further.
“How far is it?”
“Too far,” I say, grabbing her face between my hands. Knowing damn well that she might change her mind if we have to break this spell apart in order to get ourselves all the way back to a room. We came straight from the airport to Nonna Lisi’s so we haven’t actually checked in yet.
“There,” I tell her, pointing to what looks like a tiny Bed and Breakfast just a half a block away on the other side of the street. It’s not the Ritz, not even close. One of the lights is flickering under a dank, striped awning but I couldn’t care less.
“That’s our hotel?” she asks.
“It is now,” I say, grabbing her hand to pull her across the street toward it.
She plants her feet, holding me back, laughing.
“We can make it back to our bags, to the original hotel where our reservation is,” she says, looking amused.
“But—”
She turns me around slowly, rubbing her thumbs across my jaw. Her eyes dart between mine, and for one gut-wrenching moment, I think she’s going to tell me that everything about thisis a mistake. That the spell has been broken. That the walk here was just long enough to bring her back to her senses.
I’m about to apologize for following her lead, forever thinking that this could be something and thatwecould be more.
But I don’t say a word. If all I have to remember her by is this kiss on a dark cobblestone street in Amalfi — then it will always be enough.
It will have to be, even though it never will.
“Jules, listen—” I start to say, hating myself before I can even get the words out.
“I’m not going to change my mind,” she says firmly, reading my mind.
“Are you sure?” I ask, still unsure whether I heard her correctly.
“I’m not changing my mind, and you better not either. I need you, Si. I think I need you as much as you need me. Another few blocks isn’t going to change that.”
I wrap my arms around her back and hold her, closing my eyes, feeling her heart beat wildly against my chest. Knowing with everything in me that I’ve never loved her more.
We somehow make it the rest of the way to our hotel another few blocks down the road. Stopping every half block or so to kiss each other some more on the pavement, or up against a tattered stone wall, each time using more and more self-control to break ourselves apart before breathlessly speeding through another half a block down the road toward the solace of our hotel.
By the time we arrive at the front desk, her lips are pink and swollen. She places the two lemons we somehow managed not to forget on top of the counter.
“I believe my crew may have already checked us into the suite earlier and had our bags taken up. There should be a keywaiting for us,” I tell the man behind the desk, keeping my eyes glued to Jules.
“Name?” the hotel attendant asks.
I hope this momentary blip in the momentum we had cruising down the sidewalk isn’t enough to break whatever is happening between us right now.
“Juliet Hart and Silas Davenport,” I say, trying to keep the impatient edge out of my voice. I grin over at her and place our passports down. She looks like the most gorgeously disheveled mess I’ve ever seen.
“Oh, yes. Here are your keys,” the man says, placing two key cards onto the counter. “And here’s the letter that was to be delivered to Ms. Hart upon arrival.”
