Page 64 of Fixing to Be Mine

His fingers are warm and steady in a way I’m not. I step down, and he doesn’t let go of me.

The crickets are loud tonight, and the stars are clearer than I remember them ever being. My boots thud softly across the porch as we step inside.

He sets his keys on the hook by the door, then leads me to the kitchen. Without asking, he pulls down two glasses, then reaches for an unopened bottle of whiskey beside the coffeepot and the unopened pasta.

“No offense,” he says, glancing back at me, “but I think I need a drink.”

My mouth lifts. “I could use one myself.”

He pours two fingers into each glass and hands me mine, and I follow him to the living room, where we both drop onto the couch, shoulder to shoulder, legs stretched out in front of us. It resembles déjà vu, and I wonder if maybe we’ve done this before, in a different life. Maybe that’s why the pull between us is so strong.

This man belongs to a place that’s so far removed from everything I left behind.

We drink, and the whiskey burns, but it’s a welcome kind of heat that grounds me enough to stay in the moment.

Colt leans his head back against the couch cushion, eyes half closed, smile still tugging at his mouth.

“I don’t know where we go from here,” he says after a moment.

My heart thuds once—hard.

I don’t answer right away. I sip again, watching the way the porch light casts shadows across his jaw.

“I don’t either,” I finally say, knowing I felt something awaken in me that I’d thought would never exist again.

He turns his head to face me, and the space between us shrinks.

“I liked watching you lose it a little,” I add, grinning.

He huffs a laugh. “I was panicking. I thought you were gonna let Tessa win me.”

“Please,” I say. “No one else gets to walk away with you but me.”

His eyes flicker toward me. Neither of us laughs this time.

I take another sip, and he leans in enough for his knee to brush against mine.

The whiskey is warm in my blood now. His presence heats everywhere else.

I don’t know where this night is going, but I don’t want it to end when it feels like something real is happening between us.

Colt breaks the tension, walks down the hallway to grab the bottle of whiskey, then returns. He fills our glasses fuller this time, and I shoot it back instead of savoring it.

The second glass hits me in a way the first didn’t. It settles low in my belly, softening everything that’s still spinning inside me. My head is floaty, but my heart is anchored to him, to this couch, to this house.

Colt shifts beside me, resting one arm along the back of the couch. His fingers are only a few inches from my shoulder, and I wonder if he knows how badly I want him to touch me.

“How does this end for us?” I ask, turning toward him.

His mouth tilts into something slow and dangerous. “I don’t know. You keep me guessing.”

“An honest answer I can appreciate,” I say, but my voice sounds too soft. “I don’t know either.”

He doesn’t say anything else, only watches me, eyes tracing the lines of my face like he’s memorizing the moment.

I set my glass on the coffee table and shift onto my knees, the cushions sinking beneath me as I crawl into his lap without thinking, without planning it, because I need to be closer. Because all night, I’ve wanted his hands on my skin and his mouth on mine, and now I don’t have any more excuses.

His breath hitches when I straddle him.

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