Page 69 of Faking All the Way
His gaze darts from my face to Robbie’s jacket on my shoulders to where Robbie’s hand is still resting on my arm from helping me clean up. Something in Asher’s posture shifts, his whole body tightening. His jaw clenches, his eyes going hard.
Without a word, he steps forward and slides Robbie’s jacket from my shoulders. The movement is deliberate and so overtly possessive that it makes me swallow hard. Then he settles his own coat around me instead, his hands lingering on my shoulders for a moment longer than necessary.
“You’ll be warmer in mine,” he says, his voice edged with something I’ve never quite heard from him before.
Robbie reads the gesture instantly. His eyebrows go up slightly, but he’s good-natured about it. He gives a knowing grin and holds up his hands in surrender. “Well, looks like you’re in good hands now. Nice seeing you, Kat. You two enjoy the market.”
He takes his jacket back from Asher and melts into the crowd, leaving the two of us facing each other.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, looking up at Asher. “I thought you’d be at your dad’s all afternoon.”
“I finished earlier than I thought. Got his prescriptions and helped him with everything he needed, then headed out.” His gaze drops to my sweater, where there’s still a visible damp spot and probably some cider residue. “I figured I’d see if you made it to the market. What happened?”
“Oh, uh, an accidental collision with a cider delivery. Wrong place, wrong time.” I try to keep my tone light, joking about it. “I was looking at ornaments and stepped right into the path of a guy carrying a huge container of cider. Thank god it wasn’t hot, but I still got drenched.”
I expect him to laugh at the absurdity of my misfortune or maybe tease me lightly about my clumsiness. But he doesn’t. There’s still something radiating from him in waves, some tension I can’t quite decipher. His gaze is fixed on my face with an intensity that sends my pulse skyrocketing.
“Do you, um… want to check out the market with me?” I ask, stumbling over the words a bit.
It takes him a second to respond, like he’s dragging himself out of some inner thought. His brows are still furrowed, his gaze searching my face like he’s trying to figure something out. Then he seems to shake himself slightly, and some of the tension eases from his shoulders.
“Yeah,” he says. “Sure.”
He reaches down and takes my hand, threading his fingers through mine as he leads me deeper into the market.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Kat
We keep exploring the holiday market, but the tension from that jacket thing with Robbie is still there, like a spark that’s about to burst into flames. Asher’s hand rests at the small of my back as we weave through the crowd, a casual touch that feels anything but casual. Every time his thumb brushes against my spine through the fabric of his jacket, which I’m still wearing, shivers run through me that have nothing to do with the December cold.
Each little pressure of his palm as he steers me around a cluster of people, each time I accidentally brush against him as we navigate through the market, makes me too aware of the contact between us.
He still hasn’t brought up last night. Hasn’t acknowledged what we did at all, hasn’t mentioned it even once. But I can feel it between us with every look, every touch. It’s there in the way his fingers linger a second too long, in the way his gaze keeps dropping to my mouth when he thinks I’m not looking.
I stop in front of the market’s centerpiece, needing a second to catch my breath and calm down before I lose my mindentirely. A sprawling canopy of lights is strung high between the bare oak branches of the old trees, thousands of tiny bulbs sparkling above us like we’re standing under the night sky. It’s magical, the whole scene glowing golden and warm. Families and couples are gathered beneath it, everyone looking up at the display as theyoohandahhsoftly.
I tip my head back, a bit awed by the sight. “This is incredible. I forgot how beautiful they make this every year. They must spend days getting all these lights up.”
When I glance at Asher to see if he’s looking too, his gaze isn’t on the lights at all. His eyes are fixed on me, dark with something that makes heat pool low in my belly.
“You’re supposed to be looking at the lights,” I whisper.
His voice comes out rough, almost a growl. “Maybe I don’t want to.”
He doesn’t look away from me, just keeps staring like he can’t help himself, as if I’m more interesting than the thousands of twinkling lights above us.
My heart picks up speed, pounding against my ribs so hard I’m sure he can hear it. Our eyes lock for a long moment, the air between us electric and taut. Then we both slowly break eye contact, and I tilt my head up to look at the lights again—although I’m not really seeing them anymore, my brain too busy obsessing over a man I’m supposed to be fake dating.
We keep moving through the market after that, but I can’t get my heart rate to slow back down. Still, I try to inject some normalcy into it all, to act like everything is fine and I’m not slowly unraveling. I point out one of the ornaments I was looking at earlier, the hand-painted glass snowflake.
“That one’s really pretty,” I say, just to have something to talk about that isn’t last night or the way I can still feel the phantom touch of his hand on my back.
“Yeah, it is.” Asher turns to the booth owner. “How much is it?”
I blink. “What are you doing?”
He pulls out his wallet as the guy at the booth tells him the price, handing over cash like it’s nothing. “Buying it for you.”
