Page 58 of A Novel Love Story

He chuckled quietly to himself, pocketing his keys. “You’re drunk.”

“Am not,” I argued. “If I was drunk, I’d be ranting about Mary Shelley keeping the petrified heart of her dead lover in her desk drawer.” I paused on the first step up to the second floor and turned on my heel to face him. With the step as leverage, we were almost at eye level. I studied his face in the moonlight, and oh, it struck me just how handsome he was. I felt so much like I had that New Year’s Eve, running to kiss a man who would break my heart three years later. I wobbled a little on the stair, and Anders put a hand gently on my hip to steady me. “Though I might be a little tipsy,” I admitted.

A laugh rumbled in his chest, and it made me want to hear what his actual laugh sounded like. Probably full and deep and lovely, the kind that made you want to laugh along with him.

Fuck, Iwasdrunk.

What would he wax poetic about if he was drunk? Lord Byron swimming the English Channel? Keats writing love letters? Would he sit me down and tell me the long and complicated history of literature’s most adamant archenemies?Or would he talk about his favorite book? It was probably some tome of dry literature. If I wanted to be salty, I’d guessWar and Peace.

“What?” he asked, waiting for me to climb the rest of the stairs. There was a lovely soft blond curl that sat so delicately on his forehead. His hair looked soft. I was sure it was, if I ran my fingers through it. “What are you staring at, Eileen?”

I narrowed my eyes, deciding not to think about his hair. “I’m trying to imagine your favorite book.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s foreshadowing.” Then I leaned in closer, and whispered, “You can tell me. A secret between archenemies.”

“Rivals.”

“Opponents.”

He tsked, and then said in a low rumble, “I think I can guess yours.”

He was so close now, I could study the lines of his face, the slope of his jaw. There was a soft rush of freckles across his cheeks, and they seemed to grow darker when he blushed, and an old scar on the left side of his lips from a fistfight or a fall. This close, so close I could count the individual blond lashes around his eyes. He struck me as the kind of quiet and stoic character who crept into your heart the longer you spent with him, steadfast like a dictionary.

His large hand never left my hip. It didn’t move lower, but it didn’t leave, either. It was constant and steady and warm. He could’ve inched closer, he could’ve come onto the step with me, but he didn’t. He stayed eye level, equal, as if he preferred the view.

My heart hammered in my chest like a jackrabbit on the run.

Imagine me and you, I thought—and quickly reeled at the veryidea.It was the house red getting to me. He was made for someone in the town, someone Rachel Flowers had planted at the beginning of this story, someone who fit perfectly into all of his crevices—

“I’m not into the whole tweed and argyle thing,” I said aloud, not realizing I did until he leaned closer, his voice rumbly in his chest.

“Good, because I don’t own any tweedorargyle.”

“Lies.” I swallowed. How was he so close? How was I? I tried not to stare at his mouth, but it was hard, and he had a wickedly charming quirk to his lips. “You’re very much a tweed and argyle sort. From your polished shoes to your knife-pleated trousers to yourhair, why is your hair so perfect—”

“Eileen?”

My voice came out in a squeak. “Yes?”

“I’m going to kiss you.”

“You—yes,” I managed, a moment before his hands caught me by the sides of my face, and drew me in for a kiss. And all notion that this was wrong, that he was off-limits, that tomorrow I would leave—left my mind in an instant. I didn’tcare. Every reader I’d ever known had wanted nothing more than to fall into the arms of a book boyfriend, some fictional Darcy, a shade of a Byronic hero, all their own.

So I did.

His mouth found mine, starved in the way a man drowning at sea starved for air. At first his kiss was timid, like he was holding himself back. I wanted to learn not only the contours of his face, but the taste of his tongue, the impression of his teeth as he nibbled my lip; I wanted to learn what would make him groan my name, what would make him come undone from that tense knot he kept himself in.

He tasted like onion rings and strong drink and sugared spaghetti (and I’m sure I did,too), and smelled like oak and old books and the slightest hint of black tea.

His kiss turned wild and desperate, as he stopped holding back, and I found myself melting into him, grabbing hold of his starched shirt, his hands pulling around my waist, pressing me closer. He kissed like he wanted to devour me, eat me whole and commit me to memory, and I found myself matching his desire, as if some deep part of me had been shaken awake and risen to the surface. I couldn’t remember the last time someone had kissed me that passionately—savored me, like I was the last sentence in his favorite book.

His hands lowered to my hips, and then retreated toward my lower back as he leaned into the kiss, cradling the back of my head with his other hand, as if he wanted to press me into himself, bring our hard-hammering hearts together.

His mouth was addicting. I’d never been kissed like this before, practiced and hungry, like he had been thinking about how to kiss me better.

As he leaned me against him, his chest sturdy, his arms strong, I pushed my hands into his hair—andyes, it was just as soft as I imagined. His curls wrapped around my fingers, loosening from their tame style. He nibbled on my lip, as if teasing, and I bit back, like a debate without words. Though what we were debating was very much one-sided.

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