Page 75 of Party Favors

He blinked, confused. “Do you mean the truth? I do have to say it. According to thousands of years of religious and governmental laws, anyways.”

I didn’t want him to joke his way out of this. “You shouldn’t say things you don’t mean.”

He studied me, and the air between us was charged, like the storm outside. As if lightning were going to strike at any moment, only I would have welcomed it. He brought my hand up to his lips for the second time tonight and kissed the back. As if he really were an escapee from an old romance novel, like Vella had said.

The kiss lasted longer than what would have been considered proper back then, though.

Then he flipped my hand over and pressed another hot kiss onto my palm and I hissed as my fingers curled inward. I was unprepared for that onslaught of sensation.

But he released me, letting my hand drop, and started back down the hallway. I collapsed against the door, needing the physical support.

What was that?

He stopped, squared his shoulders, lifted his head, and then turned around slowly to face me.

“Just so you know, I never say things I don’t mean, Everly.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

I woke up with a start the next morning as Vella was perched on my nightstand, staring down at me like a vulture. I made an undignified sound.

“What are you doing?” I asked her.

“Imagine my disappointment when I returned home last night to find you here alone,” she said.

Like there was going to be any other outcome.

“Speaking of last night, how was your date?” Maybe I could distract her. I turned onto my back, rubbing my eyes.

“It went very well. Why didn’t you ever tell me how much cowboys know about ropes and knots?”

I held up my hand to stop her. “I do not want more information.”

“That makes one of us. What happened with Max?”

Knowing she was going to badger me until I told her everything, I did just that. I recounted every moment that had happened between Max and me from the time Vella ditched me at the country bar until he made his enigmatic statement and then went off to the elevators.

When I told her how I’d nearly been run over and didn’t quite get his reaction to it, she said, “Didn’t you say he has like, a savior complex?”

“He did tell me that.”

“It probably freaked him out that he almost let something happen to you.”

That made a certain kind of sense. “Maybe.” But that whole incident had felt like something more than just him not living up to a specific idea he had of himself as a rescuer.

Vella interrupted my train of thought. “What I don’t get is that you had the chance to kiss him in the rain and you didn’t take it. Isn’t that like, the most aspirational thing that can happen in a rom-com?”

“I—” It hadn’t occurred to me until she pointed it out that Max might have kissed me if I hadn’t rushed us out of the rain, and I wanted to kick myself.

It would have been fantastically romantic.

“I just cannot with you and your incredible denseness right now,” she said, throwing her arms up as she stood. “Nobody can actually be this clueless.”

She went into her room and I heard the door lock behind her. I went to use the bathroom, and after I’d finished, I washed my hands and studied myself in the mirror.

I had left something out when I told her about my time with Max, in part because I knew her reaction would have been even worse. Something had shifted last night after the near miss with the car.

Not just my new appreciation for life, but things between me and Max.

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