Page 66 of The Fantasy League
Now was the time. I needed to tell Abel how I felt about him or I was going to internally combust.
I could do this. I could totally do this.
“I want to tell you something but I don’t want things to get awkward between us…” My words dropped off and my hands began to tremble, but I forced myself to maintain eye contact.
Reading someone’s microexpressions, especially the ones they made with their eyes, could tell you a lot about a person and how they were feeling. As much as I wanted to turn my face away from him or focus my gaze behind him, Ineededto see his eyes when I said the words to him.
“You can tell me anything, Red.” He lifted a hand and brushed my hair out of my face and tucked it behind my ear.
I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.
A twinge of doubt seeded in my brain, telling me to play it off like nothing in case he rejected me, but there was no going back now.
“I don’t want to be your fake girlfriend anymore.” My voice shook as I gathered my words and Abel’s face scrunched together. I took a measured breath and exhaled before more words tumbled out of my mouth. “Mostly because I like you… maybe even more than like you. I don’t know. I’ve been trying to remind myself that everything between us is fake, but I’m sorry it just doesn’t feel that way to me. And I totally understand if you don’t feel the same—”
I was interrupted by Abel’s lips smothering mine.
Oh my god.
He was kissing me.Abel was kissing me!
“Then be my real one.”
“What?” I muttered, still shocked at the fact that two and a half seconds earlier, his mouth was on mine.
“You said you didn’t want to be my fake girlfriend anymore, so be my real one.”
“Are you being serious?”
“Dead.”
“Okay,” I said breathlessly.
Abel tilted my chin upward and intently scanned my face like he was trying to memorize every line and feature before I disappeared forever.
I’d never felt so content in a moment before. I had never felt so content with another person before.
He placed a gentle kiss on the tip of my nose which made my bones turn to goo. Then he grazed his lips mere millimeters over mine before pressing the tiniest peck against the corner of my mouth.
Abel’s lips found mine again, but this time his kiss was slower, gentler. He lingered like he was savoring every moment. Then he kissed me again. And again.
I wasn’t sure how long we stayed like that, kissing innocently with no desire to push boundaries. Allowing the innocence of love to tangle us together in more ways than one.
Breathless, I gave in to the affection that I’d been craving since he first wrapped his arms around me at the charity gala. Letting him kiss me and kissing him back with reckless abandon.
“We should go to sleep, Red,” he said in a tired voice, peppering kisses against my cheeks and across my jaw.
“I’m not even tired,” I whispered, trying to cover a yawn. I had no desire to be anywhere else but in his arms.
Abel looked down at me with awe written on his face while he ran his hands through my hair until the weight of my eyelids grew heavier and heavier.
I shut my eyes for just oneteeny-tinysecond and felt myself being scooped up, my side pressed against a firm body. I managed to flutter an eyelid open just enough to see that Abel was carrying me through the threshold of the house. I nuzzled my face into his neck as he made his way up the steps toward our rooms.
His voice was low and his lips grazed against my ear. “Stay with me?”
Still riding the brink between wakefulness and sleep, I nodded my honest answer. Moments later, my head was resting on a cold pillow and my body tucked perfectly into equally cold sheets. His warm torso molded against my back and his heavy arm wrapped around my waist.
As I drifted, I silently hoped that when we woke up together in the morning that nothing between us would change.
