Page 39 of Always a Roommate
I leaned back against the boards and looked down at my hands as they clenched and unclenched. We were lucky the shop kept its roof, that the flooding wasn’t worse, that nothing hit us when we ran out into the storm.
We were just… lucky. It could have gone a very different way.
My entire body vibrated with the knowledge, my heart pounded with it, my head ached.
“We’re okay,” I told myself, letting the words drift into the sky that had been so terrifying the night before and now held nothing but puffy white clouds.
A breeze, so different from the gales before, cooled my heated face. I couldn’t wait to get home and crawl in bed, to strip off this neoprene suit.
But I couldn’t move.
Footsteps sounded against concrete as someone walked toward me. I didn’t look up, but I knew who it was. “Finley, I just need…” My words cut off because it wasn’t Finley who stopped in front of me.
“What do you need, Rae?” Shane asked, his voice deep, low.
I met his gaze, seeing the same realizations I’d made in his eyes. We’d survived, and now we held each other’s secrets, our truths.
I didn’t say anything, but I didn’t have to. He stepped closer until his bare chest bumped mine. He still wore the swim trunks and nothing else, something I’d be eternally grateful for whenever I brought this memory back to the forefront of my mind.
One of his hands drifted up, his fingertips skimming across the constricting collar of the wetsuit to the underside of my chin. He tilted my face up as his thumb brushed my lips.
And then, he kissed me.
Shane Kelly kissed me.
The part that had been in love with him forever rejoiced, but the rest of me knew this wasn’t a confession of love. It was new, completely unconnected to anything I’d felt for him before.
The version of Shane I’d fallen for was an illusion. The one kissing me now was something else, and I wasn’t sure what.
So, I stopped thinking entirely. I let Shane calm my fraying nerves, still my shaking limbs. I rose on my toes to get closer, and one of his arms snaked around my back, pulling me against him as he pressed me harder against the wood behind me.
I sighed into the kiss, and flashes of the night before ran through my mind. Shane running into the storm after me. Playing the game of truths with Tanner. Talking in the dark, where shadows hid our true meanings.
But there was no hiding now.
When Shane pulled back, he was breathing heavily, his eyes searching mine.
He released me as if he didn’t realize why he’d held on in the first place, shoved a hand through his hair, and turned.
I pushed away from the wall. “Shane…”
“It’s been a long night.” He didn’t look at me as he shook his head. “A very long night.”
And with that, he left to rejoin his family.
A long night indeed.
I touched my lips, still burning with his kiss, and realized—panicked—what happened was just another hurricane side effect. Save each other’s lives. Kiss. Go back to being bickering almost ex-roommates.
Hurricanes complicated everything.
16
SHANE
I didn’t know why I’d done it.
Okay, sure I did. I’d walked out of the storeroom to find Rae leaving with Finley, but when I made it to Finley, she said Rae needed a moment alone.
