Page 57 of Neat
But if it was a choice between this, or nothing at all?
There wasn’t a decision to make — not where I was concerned. It had already been madeforus, without either of us having a say, without either of us having an ounce of control to throw this story in another direction.
We were inevitable, me and him.
And maybe we knew it from the start.
Logan backed me up to the desk, and when my ass hit it, I hiked both legs up, wrapping them around his waist and squeezing. He hissed, sucking my bottom lip between his teeth and releasing it with a pop, his hips rolling against mine. I broke the kiss to let out a gasp, and his mouth was on my neck in an instant, sucking and biting, my eyes rolling back at the contact.
He paused with his lips by my ear, breathing heavy. “I think this could work for me,” he whispered, running his tongue over my ear lobe. “This…friendsagreement.” His hands squeezed where they held my hips, and the familiar pressure sent flashes of Saturday night barreling through my memory. I gasped, mouth still hanging open when he kissed my neck over to the opposite ear to whisper again. “What do you think?”
Against the voice inside me warning me not to, I ran my fingers through his hair, gripping those dark strands and pulling his lips back to mine.
That kiss was an answer.
That kiss was a lie.
And distantly, I realized that kiss might be the biggest mistake of my life.
Logan
For the first time in my life, I had a new routine, and it went like this:
Wake up early, so I could get in the workout Iusuallydid in the evenings before I walked out the door for work. Then, I’d practically skip through those distillery doors, and wait as patiently as I could for Mallory to slip into my office and into my arms. It was easy to sneak time together under the guise of our “training” — especially when we finished up the storage closet and got back to tours. We ate lunch together, took break together, walked out together after work… and kept all the touching for behind closed doors.
After work, I went straight to the shop with Mallory. She sprung it on me that she wanted to have the grand opening on Friday — less than a week after we’d unpacked that first set of boxes. And though I thought she was crazy and that she needed at least another two months to be fully ready, I didn’t argue — mostly because it gave me an excuse to spend every waking hour after work with her.
We’d paint, and build, and catalog and arrange. We’d test out equipment, and do calculations on the prices each class would have to cost to make a profit, and make plans for how to allocate supplies to each class so that we didn’t overspend what we were making. We got the necessary permits and insurance — expedited, of course, thanks to her last name — and with every evening we spent together, working until after midnight, that dream of hers slowly came together.
And somehow, it felt like mine, too.
Mallory asked my opinion on everything, and I had a hand in every single corner of that space. It almost felt like building a home together, and I blamed that for the insane way I was feeling. It had to be that we were spending every day at work together, every night together, only separating long enough for me to shower and crash at my place just to wake up and do it all again. I brought food and toys for her cat and she cooked us dinner. I rubbed her shoulders after a long day and she straddled me at the end of a very long night.
I hadn’t thought about the hard drive, or the password that protected it, or anything remotely negative since we’d made our agreement.
Because it waseasy, playing house with Mallory — hell, playinglifewith Mallory.
And I found myself in extreme danger of falling faster than an anvil in an oldLooney Tunesepisode.
I was watching her read next to me on her couch Wednesday night when I realized it. It’d been another long night, and she was wearing only the t-shirt she’d ripped off me when the work was done. I was sated from her touch, smiling at the way she tucked her feet under her on the cushion, the way her wide eyes scanned each page, the way she nervously chewed her thumbnail as she read. Her platinum hair was grown out a bit, the darker, brunette shade showing at the roots, and she had all of it pulled back in the tiniest little ponytail, with loose strands falling all around her face and down the back of her neck.
In that moment — that quiet, seemingly average moment — she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.
I’d never fallen for a woman, or for a girl — not in all the years I’d “dated.” Women had mostly been a pastime for me, as ashamed as I was to admit it. I warmed a bed from time to time, let them give me a fun distraction from my routine, provide me company to combat the loneliness.
But, falling in love? I’d never been evencloseto that. If anything, dating those other girls was like walking in the plains of Oklahoma. There wasn’t a cliff in sight, not an edge nearby to accidentally trip over and tumble down into an unknown territory of emotions. It’d been safe, level ground, and I’d walked it easily — and left it just the same.
With Mallory, it was a tight wire.
I knew I was balancing on that thinly stretched, wobbling wire the moment I met her. Even when she frustrated me, even when I wanted to throttle her more than I wanted to kiss her — I still somehow sensed it. I’d been walking that wire since she walked into my office that Monday after Thanksgiving, and now, I was balancing on one foot, with a stack of plates on my head and a glorious fall calling my name from below.
But I couldn’t surrender to it —thatwas the kicker. Where we were now, this little hidden secret that we lived in — that was our world. That was where we could exist, and we’d drawn that line so we knew where wecouldn’texist. Her father would rip this shop out from under her faster than she could saywaitif he ever found out she’d slept with a Becker. And my ownmothernearly had a heart attack when I’d told her I was interested in Mallory. She’d disown me if I told her I was falling for her, and ifshecouldn’t even understand, there wasn’t a prayer that my brothers would.
Everyone in my family had a sick feeling in their gut that Patrick Scooter was hiding something when it came to my father’s death.
And here I was, pretending there was absolutely nothing wrong with the fact that I was falling for his daughter.
Still, there was a part of me — the larger part of me — that wondered what she’d say if I told her what I was feeling. If I told hereverythingI was feeling. Would she run, tell me I’m crazy, cut off what we have now because it’s apparent that I can’t handle it? Would she shake her head and tell me she wished I could be casual and low key like she suggested, that now I’d ruined everything?
