Page 52 of Holiday Interference
Something slow, heated. Tangled in grief and honesty and all the things we’re not supposed to feel.
He’s not touching me, except where our fingers are entangled. But I feel every inch of him—his breath, his pulse, the ache between us growing louder.
I swallow hard, voice cracking. “I haven’t told anyone that about me. About the fixing.”
“I’ve never told anyone about my mom either. Not how she died and when.”
“But you told me.”
“And you told me.”
He lifts our joined hands and kisses the back of mine, his gaze holding mine.
I can barely breathe for all of the tension between us. The space around us hums like a live wire.
And for the first time in my life, I just go with it.
Come what may.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Cal
She’s trying so damnhard to keep her walls up.
But I see through every single one. And I see the moment she relents and lets a piece of herself go.
I step closer, slow and steady. Close enough to catch the scent of coffee and her skin.
Close enough to feel the heat coming off her skin in waves.
And close enough that the throb in my chest turns sharp—tight and raw and hungry in a way that has nothing to do with sex and everything to do withher.
“Noelle.”
She glances up, lashes still clumped from sleep. Her eyes are shadowed but clear. Wary, but not closed off.
Her lips part like she’s waiting for something. For me to say the thing she won’t let herself say first.
“I want to take care of you,” I say. My voice comes out low and gritty. Like it’s been scraped against every truth I’ve been trying not to say since the second she walked into my life.
Before the Christmas party. Back when I first saw her in the locker room when Sloane introduced her to the team.
She goes still. Not like she’s bracing, but like she’s listening. Like shewantsto believe me.
“You already are taking care of me,” she says after a beat, soft and tentative.
I shake my head, jaw working. “Not what I mean.”
Something cracks in her expression.
Her breath shudders on the way out, like sheneedsto be taken care of even if it scares the shit out of her.
My hands are wrapped around hers—mine rough, hers soft and warm. The contact lights a fuse under my skin. Heat pulses through my fingers, up my forearm, settling like a weight behind my ribs.
“You don’t have to be strong right now,” I murmur. “You don’t have to keep holding it all together.”
Her throat bobs as she swallows. That fight-or-flight energy simmers just beneath the surface, but she doesn’t bolt. Doesn’t pull away.
