Page 59 of Fighting For You
His brow furrowed. “About last night.”
“About…?” I leaned against a wire bike rack cemented into the ground, casual as could be.
As unlucky in love as I’d been, I wasn’t clueless and I certainly wasn’t going to let him know how I felt about the kiss, let alone things between the two of us, before he gave me a hint of the same. Especially not after I’d thought I’d understood his comment and only realized later I might’ve been terribly, humiliatingly wrong in my interpretation.
He stepped closer. “About our conversation.”
I did not let myself smile or scoff at what felt like a very euphemistic reference to the events of last night. “Our conversation.”
His lips thinned. “And the kiss.”
“Ah.” There it was. My heart rate had continued to climb, and the word kiss coming from him was a perfect contrast—big, broody man with a butterfly of a word on his tongue.
He seemed troubled by my response, or maybe by the lack of one.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes. Of course.” The words sprang from me instantly. Did he think I wasn’t?
Wait, am I?
His expression darkened, like he could tell the response was rote and held no real insight into my state of being.
Well, buddy, welcome to the club. I have no idea how I am, so how can I tell you?
He heaved a breath fit for a giant, eyes following the line of the gondola up, up, up the mountain, before returning to rest on me.
“I don’t know how to do this, but I’m trying. I’m asking you if you regret what we did. I need to know if you’re going to go back to hating me, or if there’s any other option.”
The defeat etched into his words sent a pang of regret through me.
Maybe I should’ve been more forthcoming, but we were both so used to this posture of defensiveness. I relaxed my hands and let the physical action signal my mental way forward.
“I don’t hate you. I think I never really have. And I think that’s what we figured out last night.” My cheeks were hot, but I wouldn’t regret making it clear.
“Is it?” he asked, inching closer.
I nodded.
“Adam said you’ve been subdued—his word, not mine.” He studied me, intensity pouring from him and wrapping around me.
“I’ve been a little in my head, I guess,” I said, resisting the rise of the reflex begging me to push back at him instead of owning the truth.
“But not because you’re upset with me?”
I opened my mouth, but he rushed in.
“I don’t mean that to sound like I think I’m the most important thing going on in your life, but I’m pretty sure last night changed some things or, at least, was very new territory for us. So I thought maybe…”
Unable to resist the connection any longer, I reached out to grab one open side of his suit jacket. “I got a little confused, I guess. You didn’t say anything after except the thing about how it should’ve happened a long time ago. And I agreed. But then… nothing else. And by the time I got home, I started second-guessing. Wondering if that meant it should’ve happened years ago because nothing could happen now. Maybe we have too much history, or?—”
His hands came up to bracket my neck, his thumbs resting at the hinges of my jaw, and he shook his headslowly and definitively. “We have a lot behind us. There’s no getting around that.”
He seemed to be struggling, his throat working like he had more to say but either wouldn’t, or maybe couldn’t.
Could either of us sum up the seismic shift that’d happened last night? It’d been creeping in since the cabin, or maybe even since the Snowberry op, and I certainly didn’t have words to make sense of everything.
“I don’t know what to do now,” I admitted, his warm hands a comfort and thrill at the same time.
