Page 16 of Playing Pretend

I can’t slow my rapid pulse.

I can’t get my cheeks to quit flaming.

I blindly flip through the menu as Rome makes conversation with Cassidy across the table.

It’s not like he’s never kissed me before.

At Christmas. Easter. Birthdays. His lips even found my cheek the day after I lost my virginity, when regret and fear of pregnancy had me in a mindless mess.

Yet it’s never been on the lips. Never with hungry eyes and hungrier hands.

He inches closer, his palm finding my thigh to increase my anxiety tenfold as he murmurs against my cheek, “You really need to relax.”

Does he not think I’m trying to invest every single ounce of mental capacity to do exactly that?

I clear the massive clog in my throat and jolt my leg, hoping to dislodge his touch.

He ignores the hint. “Relax,” he repeats.

“I am,” I mutter.

It’s just that my alcohol buzz is now diluted with adrenaline, which seems to have made me hypersensitive. So much so that his goddamn hand feels like it’s delivering the almighty touch of Christ.

No. What the hell am I thinking?

He’s the devil. Satan reincarnate.

The absolute worst friend ever.

“You two are so cute together.” Cassidy stalks us from across the table. “It’s not every day that you see a guy like Rome eager to show how he feels in public.”

I don’t know what’s worse—the boost she’s just given his already excessive ego or the reminder of how uncharacteristic his PDAs are. This asshole has been working hard on his allergy to affection.

“I can’t help it.” He teases his fingers back and forth over my inner thigh, continuing an act nobody can see. “I can’t keep my hands to myself.”

He won’t have a problem once I cut them off.

Cassidy giggles. Fuckinggiggles.

Lord, save me.

I paste on a brittle smile and inch closer toward him to whisper in his ear, “I suggest you learn real quick.”

He snickers. “Admit you’re enjoying this a little and I promise to dial it down a notch.”

“You expect me to tell you I like being manhandled by someone who has always been like a brother to me?” I hiss.

“You know that jab would probably hurt if I didn’t have a pseudo-sibling kink.”

Why am I not surprised?

He pivots to face me, his eyes glistening with mirth. “You’re telling me you’ve never seen me as anything other than a best friend? Not even once?”

I’m sure he already knows that answer.

That at one time, my giddy teen heart would’ve beat its way into cardiac arrest if he’d touched me like this. I’m certain my past is the reason I’ve fallen so easily into his trap. I’m living some sort of warped teenage fantasy. But I need to shut it down. I’m not going back there. I don’t want to be the person who feels things for her best friend. “It doesn’t count if I was an ignorant child.”

“And what if I was once an ignorant child, too?”

---