Page 75 of A Lot to Unpack
‘Not everything’s a fairytale, Lib,’ he says.
Oh, I like it when he calls me Lib. He’s so close now I can feel the warmth coming off him. He brushes my cheek with the backs of his fingers, his voice much lower now.
‘If we’d kissed on that rink,’ he says, pausing for dramatic effect as his hands find my waist and he pulls me closer, ‘with the music and the fairy lights then, yeah, maybe it would’ve been a fairytale.’
His eyes lock on mine. I feel like he’s looking into my soul.
‘But if I kiss you now, here… with that bed just feet away’ – he leans in, his lips so close to mine I swear I can feel them – ‘then I can promise you, it wouldn’t be a fairytale, it would be a different sort of movie altogether.’
There’s nothing coy or sweet in the way he’s looking at me. Nothing Cinderella about it – unless you’re spelling it with an S.
It feels like we’re at a point of no return. That all of the cat and mouse games, the flirting, the dates – like it’s all led to this moment.
I swallow hard, my heart pumping at a million miles an hour, and say the only thing I can think to say – the only thing that feels right – is…
‘Prove it.’
And then he does.
He kisses me like he’s been waiting all week – all month – for permission. Like everything we’ve been through has been nothing but foreplay and, if it was, wow, it worked.
His hands are on the small of my back, in my hair, on my face, like he can’t decide where to hold me so he tries everywhere. And then he starts kissing my neck and I know I’m done for.
I don’t know whether he pushes me back onto the bed or if I throw myself, but I’m on my back now, him kneeling between my legs as he carefully lowers himself on top of me so that we can keep kissing.
He’s right, it would have been a lovely first kiss, if we had done it at the ice rink like he planned, but this is something else. Something so much hotter. Something that tells me the last piece of the puzzle is in place, that we have that sexual chemistry that is such a vital ingredient.
I fumble with the buttons on his shirt as we kiss – something I don’t think I could have got away with at the ice rink – and then I feel him lifting my dress so that it’s up around my waist. Yep, okay, that one I’m certain you can’t do in public.
Everything we’re doing just feels right though. Just so easy, and sexy, and somehow in the moment, but full of possibilities, like the better it gets, the more excited I am for the next step,here in this bed and in the future. I’m imagining having his hands on me every day, and it sounds like heaven.
And most importantly of all, what there is absolutely zero sign of is my pesky ick alarm. It’s definitely never let me get this far before. I don’t even feel like it approves of Jordan, or like it’s a thing at all, it’s just gone. I feel fixed. Like I’m not pretending any more, or trying too hard to make something feel right – it is right. What more could I want?
29
Waking up, it doesn’t take me a second or two to come to my senses, or remember where I am, because last night is still swirling around in my head; in fact, I think I even dreamt about it. Even after Jordan and I fell asleep, he was still on my mind.
Which is why it’s so strange that I’ve just woken up here, in his bed, all alone.
I blink as my eyes adjust to the morning light streaming through the gap in the hotel curtains. I sit up, pushing my messy hair from my face, my heart immediately pounding with that weird, irrational panic that hits you when someone disappears after you spend the night together – I imagine. This has never happened to me before.
‘Jordan?’ I call out, voice still croaky with sleep.
No answer.
‘Jordan?’ I try again – still nothing.
I shuffle out of bed, wrapping one of the plush hotel robes around myself, and head towards the bathroom.
‘Jordan?’ I say as I poke my head around the door, but it’s empty. He’s not in here. He’s nowhere to be seen. I’m in here alone.
And for a split second – and I really do mean a split second – I wonder if I dreamt it all. That maybe I had a few too many cocktails to drown my sorrows and then made it all up in my head. But then I spot my bra hanging delicately off the corner of the TV and remember how we both laughed when Jordan threw it and it landed there.
I puff air from my cheeks and rub my eyes. With no sign of Jordan, I glance around for a note – something that explains why he’s not here, but there’s no sign of that either. The only thing I can see, laid out on the desk, with a pen next to it, is the contract.
I look and it’s still unsigned. So I’m not too late – plus, I have the correct version in my bag still, I’m sure…
I reach in and grab for it and, yep, sure enough, it’s here.
