Page 85 of Fake it 'Til Christmas
I’m great at fucking up.
“Don’t think,” she whispers, voice hoarse, lips brushing mine.“This weekend is ours.We’ll deal with the consequences later.”
“Later,” I repeat, even though I already feel myself sliding toward the edge of something that doesn’t look casual at all.
Then I kiss her again.
Because I’d rather fall with her than pretend I’m not already halfway gone.
ChapterThirty-Four
Soren
Coming back after a long weekend,pretending the outside world didn’t exist and it was just us?It’s fucking jarring.It’s like waking up from the best dream of your life with no souvenir but your own damn thoughts.
The service car feels like a hearse for our temporary fantasy.We’re both quiet.Too quiet.
It’s not the “comfortable silence between lovers” kind.
More like the “was that a weekend-long hookup or a preview of something deeper that I’m not allowed to want?”kind.
No background music, no breakfast tray, no warm cinnamon haze convincing us we’re spending a holiday weekend as a couple.
There’s just the awkward hum of the car engine and me trying not to look at her mouth because I kissed it like it belonged to me for five straight days.
Her body isn’t sprawled across clean hotel sheets anymore, flushed and wrecked and laughing at me between orgasms.She’s not breathless under me, begging, swearing, straddling me with her hands fisted in my hair, and that look in her eyes like I ruined her, and she liked it.
No quickies in the shower.
No lazy morning sex with her legs over my shoulders.
No two in the morning, “I can’t sleep, let’s see how loud you can make me come” missions.
Just the cold Colorado air pressing in through the cracked window, the slap of tires against worn pavement, and the unspoken truth sitting between us like a third party in the backseat:
We were everything this morning.
Now we’re two strangers playing cool while our driver pretends he can’t feel the tension clogging the air.
I drop her luggage on the curb outside her townhouse like it didn’t just travel back from a sex vacation we both agreed never happened.
She’s a few feet away, coat buttoned, keys in hand, as if she’s bracing for a high wind or something worse.Her hair’s pulled into a loose knot that’s already coming undone, and she looks beautiful in that ruin-me-against-the-wall way.
I stare at her driveway because it’s easier than staring at her, or asking what happens now.How am I supposed to continue when my heart wants to stay with her?
Should I pretend it was nothing, that I don’t love her?
“I guess this is us,” she says, forcing a smile so thin I can see every crack beneath it.
Us.
As if “us” ever meant less than everything.
I nod, stuffing my hands deeper into my pockets like that’ll somehow keep me from saying something stupid like, ‘Don’t go inside yet.’Like, ‘I don’t want this to end.’”
But I don’t say a damn thing.
Because that’s what I’m good at—shutting up when it counts, backing off before someone gets the chance to walk away on their own.Call it a talent.Or a character flaw with excellent timing.
