“I’m fine.”
“Who said this was about you?” His voice was teasing, the hand he nudged against hers even more so, and she wanted to scream. Here they went again, tiptoeing along this line between acquaintances and lovers, and if they didn’t pick a side sometime soon, she was going to lose her goddamn mind.
So because she was an idiot, she inched a little farther, right along the divide. Internally swearing at herself, she slipped her fingers under his, interlacing them against the wood.
“Oh,” she said, her throat tight. “Well, if it’s not about me, then I guess it’s okay.”
They stood like that together in silence for a minute, not exactly comfortable but not quite awkward either. His thumb stroked slowly across the back of her palm.
“So what did she have to say?” she asked, still looking away.
“Not much, actually. Just telling me when she’d meet up with me this weekend.”
“Oh.”
Was it just her, or did he sound sort of disappointed about that?
Not that she cared.
Then he leaned in, pressing into the bubble of air that surrounded them. And when he spoke again, it was quiet. Intimate in a way that hardly seemed fair. “We missed the sunset.”
They had, but not by much. Brilliant orange and pink and blue still spread out across the horizon, darkness creeping along beside it to fill in the spaces they left behind.
“It’s my favorite time of day,” he said, softly, like a confession. “The winds always come in. It feels like I can breathe again.”
She nodded. “The air gets less heavy.”
“And the stars…”
It was the thing that had made her reconsider her first impression of him. The way he’d sat out here at night, gazing upward.
“Scorpius.” The constellation’s name slipped from her tongue, and in her mind, she traced the shimmering arch of stars, the shining spiral that took up half the nighttime sky.
He grinned, soft and gorgeous, and so damn kissable. “Exactly.”
His hand rested warm against hers. It didn’t even matter that it was sweltering out, because the heat of his body was more searing, more present, and every place it didn’t burn itself into her felt suddenly, impossibly cold.
And fuck this. Just… fuck it. You don’t ask, you don’t get, right?
She barely even had to lean in, they were standing so close. She just pressed up onto her toes, swaying slightly to the side, and he was right there. His mouth warm. His lips soft.
He turned his head away, and everything inside of her flashed to ice.
“I’m sorry—” he started, but she didn’t want to hear the rest.
“Forget it.” No way was she apologizing. If anything, she wanted to deck him again.
How dare he? All these little signs he’d been throwing out. All these big ones. Holding hands and touching knees and talking about the stars weren’t things that people did. Not to her.
Except he didn’t do them all the time, did he? She laughed darkly to herself as she stepped away. She felt so stupid.
The last time he’d come this close, he’d caught her in her underwear, and now here she was, her arms and tits half exposed.
“Jo…”
“I get it.” She gestured at herself. “Carol’s clothes and everything. Easy mistake to make. Thinking I’m a girl or something.”
“Jo—”
“I’m just going to go—”
“Jo.” He grabbed her wrist with force this time, and it was only a conscious effort that kept her from lashing out—from using fists to try to defend what she couldn’t hope to protect. Her heart.
He didn’t let go as she tried to squirm free, and she gave up, facing him. Bracing herself. Jesus. She didn’t need to hear this shit.
“It’s fine,” she grumbled.
“It’s not.”
And there was an edge to his tone. A pleading note that made her stop.
He lifted a hand to touch her face, tilting her chin up. Asking her to look into those warm, blue eyes.
“I can’t,” he said.
It felt like a blow.
“Fine—”
“I can’t, but I want to. Christ, Jo. Isn’t it obvious?”
She’d thought it was, but then she’d tried to kiss him, and look how well that had gone. “You got a funny way of showing it.”
“I’ve wanted to kiss you since the moment I saw you.” His throat bobbed. “Wanted to do a hell of a lot more than that, too.” He paused. “But…”
Right. Here it came. “But.”
But it’d only be sex.
But I love somebody else.
“But you deserve better than that.”
Her breath caught. She let her hand go slack inside his grip.
“Listen,” he said, gaze intense, voice fervent. “I like you. So much. I like your fire and how smart you are and all the things I see beneath that—that shell you put up. And I promise you”—his fingers tightened against her skin—“I have never, ever had a problem remembering you were a woman.”
It set a blaze off in the pit of her abdomen. Between her legs and in the heart of her sex.
“I like you, too.” The words came out quiet and weak, and she hated feeling that way. But it was what he had left her with.
“And if we ever kiss—when,” he revised, “when we kiss, it’s going to be when I can give you everything. Because that’s what you deserve.”
Her stomach twisted. “And you can’t give me that right now.”
She hadn’t forgotten. He had never pretended to be unattached, and she’d kept the reality of it firmly in mind. Right up until now.
She cursed herself inside her head. Just this afternoon, she’d sworn she wouldn’t be the other woman, and then he’d touched her and made everything confused. She’d kissed him, knowing exactly what was going on but choosing to ignore it.
Weak. Stupid.
He must have seen her shutting down. “One week, Jo. Not even.”
How many times did she have to wait for someone to feel for her what she felt for them?
“You can’t exactly promise me anything.”
With a weak, lopsided smile, he drew her hand up to his chest. He placed it at the very center of his ribs. “I can promise to get my life straightened out.”
That was all she’d wanted a couple of minutes ago. Whichever side of the line they came down on, it’d be better than this. This uncertainty—this balancing act.
“Give me a week,” he insisted, pressing her palm to the warm muscle beneath his shirt. “And when I come back to you, I’ll give you the answer you deserve. Can you wait one week?”
“A week you’re going to spend with her.” The silent third in this strange, phantom triangle of theirs.
“Yup. Because she deserves better than this, too. Let me deal with everything, and then I’m going to come back to you.”
“With either a no or a yes.”
It would be the worst kind of waiting, not even certain what she was waiting for.
“Hey,” he said. “What we started here. It isn’t over. Please. Don’t shut down on me. Just give me the time to do it right.”
A part of her, the one that usually won, was screaming at her to walk away. To tell him no. But that was the part of her that always made it so she ended up alone.
“I can’t promise you anything, either.” But she took a step closer.
“That’s not a no.”
“It’s not,” she agreed.
“I’ll take it.”
He moved so slowly, transcribing his actions so there wasn’t any chance she could misinterpret or overreact. Beneath her skin, she was still a roiling mess of conflicting impulses, a wounded thing looking to hurt whatever threatened to leave her bleeding.
An untouched heart, finally getting the chance to beat.
She let him fold her into his arms. Resting her head against his chest, she soaked in the solidity of him and closed her eyes.