Page 200 of Break the Ice
We sit like that for a long moment, the three of us tangled in blankets and everything unsaid, while the city hums quiet outside.
Then she tilts her head toward me.
“Kiss me,” she whispers.
And I do.
Slow. Careful. Exactly like when we teenagers, hiding out in the barn.
Except today, her mouth is soft and certain beneath mine.
Jayden’s hand slides over her hip, trailing higher when she leans against him. When I cup her jaw, his thumb grazes my knuckles. Just that small assurance of his presence settles the niggle of anxiety rumbling in the back of my mind. That constant noise I’ve lived with for years.
The kiss stays gentle, but the heat of our need threads through every touch. Finley’s fingers curling in my shirt, the faint tremor in my chest where Jayden’s shoulder presses into mine, grounding me even as the floor tilts.
By the time she pulls back, cheeks flushed and eyes shining, I’m not sure if my heart’s beating too fast or not at all.
Finly doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t have to. Because lying here with both of them, warm and close and unafraid, feels exactly like what we used to build in that shed.
A place that belongs to us.
Finley shifts, pulling the blanket higher as she reclines back into the nest we made, her legs curling to the side. There’s the faintest pink to her cheeks, her hair a honeyed spill across the cushions like this moment is exactly where she belongs. To us.
Jayden’s sprawled beside her, his hand propped under his head as he watches her with that soft, easy smile that always punches through the tightness in my chest. He leans in to kiss her cheek, her jaw, thecorner of her mouth until she turns toward him and catches his lips properly.
I can’t look away.
My hand brushes hers where it rests on the blanket between us. It’s nothing at first. Accidental. But then she laces her fingers through mine, and I stop breathing altogether.
I don’t move when Jayden’s knuckles graze mine on her hip. Don’t move when his hand stays there. He glances at me once, quick, like he’s making sure this is okay.
It is.
More than okay.
Finley lets out this soft sound—half sigh, half laugh—and the warmth in my chest spreads wider, deeper, until it settles somewhere I can’t shake loose.
The blanket hides the way Jayden’s hand trails up her thigh. The way she leans into me at the same time, her head rests against my shoulder while he kisses her like she’s breakable and precious all at once.
It’s undoing me, watching them like this. Being a part of it.
My head goes back to the conversation Jayden and I had at the park. About me doing more than watching them. It didn’t seem like a possibility then. As amazing as the notion was, it terrified me… until now.
Watching doesn’t seem enough.
I want more. I need it.
Finley tilts her face toward me suddenly, her eyes searching mine. Her hand tightens around my fingers like she can hear the ache screaming inside my bones as she pulls me closer.
When I kiss her this time, it’s not tentative. It’s careful, yeah, but sure enough that Jayden’s eyes catch on us for a second before he bends his head back to her neck and nips at her skin.
My pulse hammers when she shifts, pulling me and Jayden closer like she doesn’t care that there’s no space left between any of us now.
I feel his arm brush mine when he props himself over her. The heat from his skin bleeds into me, foreign and not unwelcome, until Finley’s hand trails up my chest and keeps me from overthinking the hell out of it.
Her head tilts toward me when I shift back, her eyes heavy-lidded, cheeks flushed as she whispers, “Stay?”
I don’t think she means just for tonight.
