Page 127 of If All Else Sails
“I don’t understand.”
“Yes, you do,” he insists. “It just doesn’t fit with the narrative you’ve apparently had in your head where I hate rather than love you.”
My world isn’t tilting anymore. It’s a globe that’s been knocked off a table and is being kicked like a soccer ball around the room.
“Did you say—”
Wyatt suddenly surrounds me, his chest pressed to mine, his arms around my lower back. When he slides his arms upand over my shoulders, sparks cascade over me like I’m a malfunctioning socket.
“Love. Yes, I said it.” He sighs, thumbs stroking my cheeks. “I didn’t mean to tell you like this. So soon. Or when we’re soaking wet in the middle of a storm. But this is still my curse with you—I can’t ever say the right thing.”
“Oh, it’s a curse now? I thought it was foot-in-mouthdisease.”
His eyes snap to mine, like he can’t believe I’m teasing him right now. It was a risk, and for a moment I think a bad bet. I hold my breath, hoping I haven’t offended Wyatt by making light of things right after he confessed that helovesme.
“Maybe it’s both,” he says, the smallest of smiles lifting one side of his mouth. “Should I try to say it again—say it better?”
“Not yet,” I tell him. “I need a minute.”
The truth is, I may...need a lot of them.
My brain needs to play catch-up. I need to spend some good long hours reframing all my memories. Examining all the little clues that told me Wyatt felt one way about me—clues I read wrong this entire time.
I lean closer, trailing my hands up Wyatt’s chest to his shoulders. When I touch his neck, my fingers slip over his wet skin.
“You know what they say is the best way to break curses?”
Wyatt’s brows pulse together. A look of confusion. “No.”
Of course he doesn’t. His dad made him watch documentaries on the stock market rather than watching classic cartoons or reading children’s stories.
“The way to break a curse is with a kiss,” I tell him, lifting up on my toes as he sways forward to meet me.
And then we’re kissing. Or curse breaking.
The kiss is messy—we’re soaked and slippery and moving like we’re in some kind of desperate panic. Maybe we are.
Wyatt’s fingers tangle in my hair and mine tug him closerby his shirt. When he chuckles, I feel the rumble of it through his mouth.
A mouth I want to spend a lot more time with.
Any fears or hesitations or worries I had evaporate. Because there is none of that coming from him. Only a pure male confidence and surety that reminds me of all those videos of him on the ice.
Wyatt kisses like he skates.
Not with brutal force, but with power and the delicate precision that allows a man who must weigh more than two hundred pounds to balance on tiny blades, changing directions on a dime.
He kisses me like a hero returning from war. One who has been dreaming about this exact moment for days or weeks or months. Maybe years. Like the meeting of our lips is the culmination of so many long-held hopes and dreams.
With gentle fingers, Wyatt tilts my head, deepening the kiss until my legs aren’t just boneless. I’m not sure they exist at all.
Wyatt drops his hands, wrapping them around my waist as though he sensed my impending fall to the floor.
It’s hard to stand up when a kiss has stolen your legs.
I want to commit to memory the gentle command of his mouth, the way his neatly shaved jaw still manages a pleasant burn where it drags against my skin. Wyatt isn’t always a man of words, but his kiss speaks promises. Softly, sweetly—and, okay, yes—with a little dash of roguishness.
I didn’t know that was a thing I’d recognize or even like so much, but it’s the only word flashing through my brain as Wyatt pulls me closer, a small sound at the back of his throat making me suddenly desperate to catch it.
