Page 97 of Snowed In
“It wasn’t,” I say. “I needed that.” We both did if the frustration in his body is anything to go by. I sit up, and his eyes drop to my lips, but he quickly climbs over to his own seat, sitting back with a sharp exhale.
He looks like a mess. A delicious sexy mess. And I’m the cause of it. I’m almost flattered.
“I ruined your hair,” I tell him as he rebuttons his shirt.
“I ruined yours.”
I shrug, tucking it behind my ears. “Are we friends with benefits now?”
He tries and fails to hide his smile.
“What?” I demand.
“You say the weirdest things sometimes, you know that?”
“Is that a no?”
“I didn’t say that. You want to be?”
“Could be complicated.”
“Could be,” he agrees. “We’d need to update our terms.”
“I can’t even remember our— No way.” I gasp as he opens the dashboard compartment and takes out a familiar though now very crumpled cocktail napkin. “You donotstill have it.”
“Our extremely official contract?”
I pluck it from his hands, examining his neat handwriting.
“Number one,” I read out. “No tongue.”
“I don’t remember that bit.”
I hold out my palm. “Pen. Iknowyou have one,” I add when he just looks at me. He hands me one from his side pocket, and I smooth the napkin out, making a careful line through the words.
“Sometongue,” I announce, adding in the correction.
“Much clearer.”
“We’ll figure it out.” I put my seatbelt on as he pulls onto the road, reading through the rest of our terms. “We’re pretty good at this.”
“You think?”
“Yeah.” The word is muffled by a yawn. “I think we should do it every year.”
Christian goes quiet, his smile fading, and I rest my head back against the seat, letting my eyes drift shut in the darkness as he drives me home.
TWENTY-ONE
CHRISTIAN
I wake with a mini hangover the next morning, which, considering I didn’t have a drop to drink, feels extremely unfair. It’s much later than I’d usually get up as well, but I couldn’t sleep when I got back, insomnia making me toss and turn until eventually I took out my laptop and got some work done. Now my phone tells me it’s after ten, but you wouldn’t know it by the light outside. Or rather, the lack of it. It’s dark today, the sky an angry, ominous gray. The first thing I do is check my weather app, which tells me there’s a thirty percent chance of light snow. The second thing I do is get a text from Megan.
My horrifically hungover mother requests your presence at lunch tomorrow. I believe a charcuterie board was mentioned.
Hmm. Do friends with benefits do family lunches?
They do if they want their brother’s Christmas present. I’m almost finished.
