Page 88 of If All Else Sails
“Thankfully, yes.” And I’m grateful because dog pregnancy is one worry my brain doesn’t have room for right now.
I step out of the bathroom—head, I mentally correct—after brushing my teeth and step right into Wyatt. I barely manage not to shriek.
He could step back toward the saloon to give me some space. He doesn’t. I shove him in the chest. But the hallway outside the bathroom is tiny and there’s nowhere for him to go. We’re practically on top of each other.
“You scared me, Wyatt! Why are you lingering outside the bathroom door?” I ask, heart racing. “What if I was pooping?”
“Were you? Because I can wait a few minutes before going in.”
“No. Not that it’s any of your business when I’m doing...my business.”
“Okay,” Wyatt says easily. Then he takes a step forward. I have to tilt my chin to meet his eyes. “Did you mean what you said earlier—that we’re barely friends?”
Barely friendswould have described us before I arrived in Kilmarnock. But even in the first few days there, things started to shift. Honestly, it might have happened the second day, when I met goofy, fever-fueled Wyatt who stuck his nose in my hair and said I smelled like pie.
Now...we’re something more. I just don’t know what we are. Or what I want us to be.
“No,” I whisper.
The answer takes no thought. No debate. It’s as simple and uncomplicated as breathing.
Yet the moment I say it, I’m terrified by the enormity of my admission. I freeze, the only movement my erratic heartbeat.
Wyatt reaches out one hand slowly, giving me time to say something or to move. I do neither, and he gently cups my jaw, his thumb brushing over my cheek.
“That’s not what I want either,” he says.
I close my eyes, allowing myself to feel the sweep of his thumb over my skin, the warmth of his body so close to mine, his breath on my cheek.
“But whatdoyou want, Josie?” he asks, his voice a quiet murmur that has the hairs standing up along my arms. “Do you want to be barely friends?”
“No.”
“Good friends?Onlyfriends?”
I swallow. “I don’t know.”
I expect his hand to drop. For him to flee or sigh with frustration or press me for a clear answer. To try to force the conversation I avoided earlier about what comes next.
The one I’m still—mostly—wanting to avoid.
Instead, he says, “Okay.”
I open my eyes, blinking sleepily at him. “Okay?”
“Okay,” he repeats. Then adds, “For now.”
“For now?”
He nods once, decisively, and his hand flexes against my jaw, like he’s barely restraining himself from sliding his fingers into my hair.
And maybe, from the look in his eyes, pulling my mouth to his.
I suddenly want nothing more than exactly that.
And yet.
And yet.
