Page 11 of Depths of Desire
His throat moved once, like he was swallowing some thought. His hair had dried in those messy, imperfect waves, a little flatter on the side he’d slept on earlier. I watched him breathe and tried not to read into the way his fingers twitched every few minutes, like his body was still swimming even when he wasn’t moving.
I refocused on the road. I had to. The snow was thickening, fogging the horizon, swirling in slow eddies across the lanes. My wipers squeaked. The road signs glared green and white in the early light.
I knew the exit was coming. Ten miles. Then seven. Then three.
And that’s when the stupid part of my brain started whispering.You don’t have to take it. You could keep going. Power through. Drop him off and let this end the way it’s supposed to.
I tightened my grip on the wheel, my knuckles whitening against the heat of the cabin.
I could have missed the exit. It wouldn’t have been hard. The snow covered half the arrows, and it was barely marked. I could’ve driven straight past and blamed it on the weather.
But I didn’t.
I signaled and pulled into the turn lane, heart thudding a little harder than it needed to.
The tires hummed on the turnpike. Oliver stirred beside me, shifting upright and blinking himself back to the world. He didn’t say anything when he realized we were exiting, just pressed a hand to the window and squinted out at the scenery like he was recalculating something in his head.
The lodge road was narrower, lined with brittle trees whose bare branches sagged under fresh snow. We climbed a shallow hill, and the resort came into view, half-buried in white, still and quiet.
One night.
That was all.
Just a cabin. Just a detour.
Nothing would come of it.
Still, my chest was too tight, and my hands too warm, and every second that passed made me feel like something important had already started. And I just couldn’t shut up my stupid brain and my restless heart. Silly fantasies, dreamed up by a clueless boy many years ago, didn’t look too different from what was happening to us now.
And the silliest thing of all, Oliver had no clue just how fast my heart was beating.
FOUR
OLIVER
The road curled upward,winding through a forest that looked like something off a postcard. It was too quiet, too perfect, too still. Snow clung to the bare trees in soft heaps, and the tires made a crunching sound as they moved off the last stretch of cleared asphalt. The heater hummed low. Lennox’s hands rested on the wheel like he had all the time in the world.
I did not have all the time in the world.
I didn’t say anything, though. There was no point.
This wasn’t his fault, technically. The storm had hit early. Roads were closing. The lodge was a decent solution.
Still, I hated the delay. I hated the change in schedule. I hated not being where I was supposed to be.
But more than that, I hated that I noticed how pretty the light looked on Lennox’s cheek as it filtered through the pines.
I turned back to the window.
The forest passed slowly outside, pale and clean and quiet. It made my skin itch. I didn’t like quiet. I liked water. The rhythm of breath and stroke and turn. I liked lane markers and clocks and the ache of muscles that told me I’d earned every second of rest.
This stillness felt like a trap.
I shifted in my seat and pressed my shoulder against the door, trying to angle away from him. Lennox didn’t seem to notice. Or maybe he did and was just too polite to react. Or he didn’t care to notice me at all. I hoped for the last one to be true.
He looked calm. Focused. His profile was stupidly nice. Sharp jaw, warm mouth, hair in that casually tousled mess that probably just happened. The kind of guy who got numbers without asking and never had to try too hard to be liked.
He was exactly the kind of guy I never let myself get close to.
