Page 46 of Wish Lists and Road Trips

I watched her chest rise and fall as she looked up at me with hooded eyes. “You’re supposed to kiss it and make a wish.”

I smiled. That was so ardently her. “Says who?”

“Um, like everyone? Were you ever a kid?”

I just shrugged. If I was, I couldn’t remember.

I held my breath as she leaned in and pressed her lips to where the clasp lay on my collarbone. “There,” she said. “Make your wish.”

I didn’t make a wish. Instead, I cupped the back of her head, holding her cheek against my chest. She melted into me, her body loose and pliant, and I wanted to touch more of her, forget myself in the feel of her skin. I nuzzled my face into her hair, brushed my lips over the curve of her shoulder. She made a tiny noise of surprise in her throat and I groaned. Christ, she tasted good, and that bit of vulnerability was too much to take.

Every boundary I’d set started to crumble again. If I thought I wanted to kiss her at that bar, I had no idea what it was going to be like in this bed, listening to the shudder of nerves in her breathing. I’d spent a lot of time alone since Alex died. I didn’t want to talk about it and I didn’t want to lie, so I kept to myself. But Brit wouldn’t let me do that no matter how hard I tried. She was in my face, bright, loud, making me do stuff like search for waterfalls and eat Rummy Bears.

My hand slipped over her hip, to the curve of her ass, and I wanted to push it further. I wanted to wrap her thigh around my waist and press myself into the space between her legs, watch the reaction on her face when she felt me hard for her. I’d been thinking about it every minute of this trip, how good it would feel to give in to this attraction to her, this fascination.

Her hands were in my hair, our chests pressed together and it felt good to touch another person, to holdher. So fucking good.

And I couldn’t do it.

I let her go and flopped onto my back, my heart pounding.Fuck. What was I thinking? This was one of those moments Brit had called me out on, I realized as I felt the headiness leave my body, making room for a piercing sense of guilt. Guilt for touching her like this when she was vulnerable. Guilt for wanting yet another thing for myself when I hadn’t done what I’d come here to do. Alex’s ashes were in my backpack across the room while I lay in this bed feeling Brit up.

I’d forgotten for a moment, the reason why I was here with her. What I owed him. It was happening more and more since I met her. The weight would lift just enough for me to take a deep breath and then it would double once I remembered. If it was any other moment in time, I’d have her in a second. I’d take anything she was willing to give me and be thankful to get it, but this whole trip was a funeral march for Alex, for fuck’s sake. Here I’d been doing shots, laughing, thinking about taking her clothes off—I wouldn’t even know her if Alex was still here.

That thought felt like a punch to the gut and my skin instantly went cold.

“Nick?” Brit reached across the space I’d put between us, and I caught her wrist. I pressed my lips to her palm, shaking my head.

“I should go to the couch.”

“Please don’t.” Her face crumpled into disappointment, and I had to close my eyes because the sight of it was unbearable.

“You can stay,” she whispered.

“I’m sorry. I can’t.” My voice was rust and thorns and dirt, and not for the first time since she’d come into my life, I hated the sound of it. “You just broke off an engagement and—”

“You don’t know anything about that, Nick. Stop making decisions for me.”

“It’s not just that.” I rolled over, swinging my legs off the side of the bed. The cold air rushed my skin like another slap of reality. “I told you this isn’t a pleasure trip for me. This isn’t what I’m here for.”

“You can’t just sleep here?”

“No. I can’t.” I reached behind me and squeezed her arm before standing. “I’m sorry.”

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a mermaid. I dressed up as one for Halloween four years in a row, until finally my nanny said the tattered costume had finished its run and I’d have to choose something else.

I dreamed about being different, but not like the way I was different in my real life where people weren’t sure how to handle me. I wanted to be the kind of different that people treasured. Rare different. Special different. People would long to touch my colorful hair. They’d watch me swim, my tail shimmering in the sun. And if I felt those painful human emotions sneaking up on me? Well, I’d dive into the ocean and swim away.

Today I wasn’t a mermaid and there was nowhere to swim to. I was stuck in this car with Nick and I couldn’t decide if I was furious with him or heartbroken.

We were finally on our way to Savannah and the sky was a dreary gray. Nick had his hat on, his eyes shielded by the brim. Not that he was looking at me anyway.

I had no idea what had happened last night when he’d had his hands on me, then suddenly bolted. I didn’t understand a thing he did. After almost three days with him, I had more questions than answers about Nick. All I knew was there was this connection between us when we touched, like the click of a lock latching into place. But just like all of his smiles, he kept cutting it off.

From the moment his eyes had opened on that stupid hard couch, he’d barely looked at me, giving me one-word replies. He insisted we skip the gourmet breakfast that came with our ridiculously expensive suite in favor of drive-thru because it was quicker, but I think he just didn’t want to sit across from me at a table. We had plenty of time. It was barely seven a.m. by the time we got the car out of impound.

That had gone swimmingly. Burke, the guy who ran the lot, had decided that despite the quote he’d given Nick over the phone, he’d forgotten to mention that leaving it overnight would double the price. I thought Nick was going to have an aneurysm when he’d realized his own miscalculation. I’d offered to pay since I was still feeling awful about missing the sign, but that had started another argument about how this was absolutely not my fault, and could I please drop it and also stop doing that thing with my face.

I could only assume he meant smiling. I was happy to oblige.

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