Page 36 of The Last Kind of Kiss
I shrug, the chilly night breeze useless in cooling the anxious flattery bringing pigment to my cheeks. “It’s fine. A little back pain never hurt anybody.”
I’d sacrifice anything in this world to make Lila comfortable. And to know that she’s getting a good night’s sleep is worth all the muscle cramps and neck cricks. Would I rather sleep in the bed with her? Of course, but we’re not there yet, and that’s okay.
We will be...eventually.
I’ll hold her in my arms again, and I’ll never have to mourn the absence of her. We’re not a flawless fit by any means—we don’t fit perfectly into each other’s arms like missing puzzle pieces. There’s a lot of shifting that has to take place for our bodies to align, but that’s reality. We contort ourselves to fit with one another, and that takes effort, intention.We make things work when the odds are stacked against us.
Lila fluffs up her pillow. “It’s fine. I don’t mind?—”
“Lila,” I growl in a warning tone, seconds away from picking her up and throwing her on the goddamn bed. No girl (of mine) is going to sleep on a hardwood floor when there’s a perfectly good king-size a few inches away.
“Jeez, alright. At least sleep in one of the chairs or something.”
I feel a smug little smirk tease the corners of my lips, but I know better than to flaunt it in front of Lila. She clambers up from her cloud pile, readjusts her swimsuit, and minces over to the mountain of chocolates.
“So…we’re not going to talk about the elephant in the room?” I ask, watching as she unwraps her post-photoshoot snack, the scent of rich cocoa pervading the room.
She bites off a chunk and chews loudly. “If you’re talking about your heat-seeking moisture missile getting ready for takeoff back there, then sure.”
That’s—I don’t even have the bandwidth to unpack that.
“That’snotwhat I’m talking about.”
“Hmm? Then I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she mumbles through a mouthful of chocolate, even going as far as licking the excess off her fingers—which is way too sexy to be legal.
My mind’s reverted to full caveman, and I know she’s saying something to me, but all I hear is warbled nonsense similar to the sound of the adults talking in the Charlie Brown cartoons. I watch as her tongue flicks out over the pad of her middle finger, and she slowly drags the digit down to her bottom lip, smearing her leftover lip gloss. She stares at me through her lashes while she does it—perfecting those dark-lined, dangerously seductiveeyes—and probably doesn’t realize how ready my dick is for round two.
It’s hot in here. Oh, God. It’s really hot in here. I’d roll my sleeves up if I had any sleeves. I’m sweating in places that I shouldn’t sweat. Focus, dude! There are more important things at hand right now.
“I’ve never seen you panic like that before a shoot,” I elaborate, recalling the countless other times I visited her during local photoshoots—how she put on a confident face and never once indicated there was an internal freakout going on. Lila was always transparent with me about how she felt, and nervous was never an emotion I associated with her and modeling.
Suddenly needing something to calm my own nerves, I snatch one of the chocolates from off the table, ripping it open with a lot less grace than Lila did. I stuff it into my mouth, relaxing when the bittersweet richness hits my taste buds.
She swallows the last of her chocolate. “I wasn’t panicking. I just…got a little anxious. Preshoot jitters. You’d have them too if the world didn’t lick the goddamn ground you walk on.”
I can’t believe I’m even comparing the two, but Summit never withheld anything from me. If she was upset, I’d know it within a second. With Lila, it’s like I’m pulling teeth.
“You think you know everything about me, but you don’t.”
You don’t know about Summit. You don’t know about the crippling self-hatred I have for myself. You don’t know about the cowardice that threatens to destroy my life every day. You don’t know about the suffocating guilt that makes it impossible to breathe—unless you’re around.
“Like what, Bristol? You’re a straitlaced hockey player who’s as deep as a kiddy pool. Everything was always surface level with you. I poured my heart out to you about my father, about what it felt like to be left behind, and not only did you neveronce confide in me, but you did the same thing. You knew what he did, how it crushed my world, and then youstillleft.”
This is your time, man. Tell her about Summit. Tell her why you bailed. Reassure her that it wasn’t her. It was never her.
She flings her arm out exasperatedly. “See! You’re still shutting me out!” she yells, no doubt alerting the rest of the passengers to the loud argument currently taking place.
“I’m not!”
She laughs icily. “Yeah, sure.”
She stomps toward me, thrusts her finger into my chest, and nearly knocks me onto my ass. “I thought you’d respect me enough by now to tell me the truth.”
I grab her wrist, look down at her from my six-inch high ground, and hope that the hurricane of hurt forming inside of me isn’t strong enough to break through my neutral exterior. “I do respect you, Lila. I always have. And you want to know what I was thinking?”
She gulps at the conviction in my voice.
“That only a coward would walk away from you. Your dad was a coward, and I was an even bigger one. You deserve a man who sticks by your side no matter what, and I want to be that guy.”
