Page 273 of Falling Backwards
We look at each other.Beneath the renewed chatter of our friends, I start to tell her I’m down to try one festive beverage—I already know I’ll be done after that—when she says the same thing in her own words.
Then her eyes soften…and…settle.They settle with something that stirs me.
It’s like a touch, this look.Over my face.Against my lips.Beneath my shirt, even.
This time when her gaze comes back to mine and she looks like she feels caught, I don’t have to wonder why.
I’m not the only one of us who has started wanting something very different from a night with friends, drinks, and crowds.I’ve been realizing I just want her, and she has been realizing she just wants me too.
As if the way she’s been looking at me isn’t telling enough, I can also read the flex of her hand around mine, her slightly shallower and shakier breaths, the sweet color blooming in her cheeks.
Neither of us speaks on it, though.
There’s no way we would—not now.The tension that’s whispering up between us in earnest is not for anyone else to listen to.
Our server reappears.We rein ourselves in and ask for our second, and last, drinks of the night.Paxton and the girls order drinks as well as shots, which almost makes me shudder, but I’m glad they’re all having fun…though I don’t know how much more noise I can stand.
I don’t know how much more of not being alone with Maggie I can stand.
Right as I reach for my water, my ears barely pick up on her voice once again coming beneath all the other sounds around us.Her words bring relief—and then comes a swell ofheat,because the things I feel for her get fuel thrown right on them.
‘My knee hasn’t been hurting.’
It’s the way she said it that’s firing through me: quiet, weighted, breathy.Her tone wasn’t cheerful and audible to everyone at our table.
She spoke only to me; I’m the only one she wants to know that news because of the meaning only I can get from it.
Putting my drink of water on hold, I curl my fingers into a light fist on the table and turn a look to her.It takes me a good few seconds to find my voice.
“It hasn’t?”I ask just as lowly.
“Well, it still does if I try to kneel or…you know, put weight on it like that…but otherwise….”She shakes her head.
Excellent.
Significant.
Her not being in pain is excellent for her, and it’s significant for us.It…means we can be as physically intimate as we want to be.We don’t have to hold back from each other anymore.
I tell her, “I’m so glad to hear that.”
“I’m glad to be able to say it,” she replies in that same gently intense tone from before.
Just as I’m thinking I need to get a hold of myself before I embarrass both of us, she takes a breath and visibly works to compose her own self.
“Do you remember this booth?”she asks more lightly.
That brings a smile right out of me, as if my skin isn’t warming in a way that has nothing to do with how busy this place is and everything to do with how much I crave her.
She smiles, too, and I’m a fool for the way it looks with that pink in her cheeks.
I untangle our hands so I can wrap my arm around her shoulders for a half-hug she instantly returns.
“Oh, I remember,” I assure her.“I remember all of that night.”
“Really?And that this is exactly where we sat?”
“Yep.Except I wasn’t brave enough to put my arm around you that time.”
