He frowns. “I wrote that?”
“The text is from your phone number.”
“I’m an idiot.”
I don’t argue.
His warm hand presses between my shoulder blades as he looks behind us and guides me into Declan’s walk in closet. He closes the door and turns around, giving me a smile that not only melts my non-existent panties, but I think my clitoris just became a Roman candle.
“No way,” I declare before my body can override my circuits. “I am not regressing.”
“Regressing?”
“This whole relationship started out in closets. We moved up to limos and beds and restaurants. I will not let you take us back to the dreaded closets. Nope, nope, nope.”
He looks down at the soft carpeting.
“Closets can be good.”
“For storing clothes.”
“For making up.”
“Is that what this is?”
“I’m trying, Amanda.” He steps into my space and our heat mingles. His eyelids flutter and he sighs, a sound of hope. “I’m really trying.”
“I am, too,” I confess.
“I’m sorry,” he says, his hands on my hips, reaching out like twin olive branches. “I don’t care about your father being in prison and I like your mother and I followed you that night at the marina because I had just learned about my dad’s cancer the week before and it made me think. Really think. It made me realize that life is short.” He makes a small, earnest sound. “Not that I didn’t learn that a long time ago.”
I start to open my mouth to say something about his mother, but he continues.
“When I saw you there, I didn’t chase you down to keep you quiet. I followed you because it seemed like more than coincidence to meet you there. Like fate was trying to tell me something.”
Oh.
“For the past two years I’ve been stupid. I thought you weren’t my type. I have watched Declan fall in love with Shannon and listened to our father tell my brother what a fool he is to take such a huge risk with her. I live a life where all my risk is poured into my work. Not my personal life.”
“No girlfriend,” I say.
He shakes his head. “Never. Easier that way.”
My heart tightens like someone’s pulling a drawstring.
“But not better.”
I stretch up to meet his mouth, the movement like smoke seeking the sky as I burn for him. He tastes like fine whisky and apologies, his mouth tender and loose, the kiss lush with that gentle moment when everything you thought had dark, thick borders around it turns out to be an optical illusion you invented by accident.
I’m blurring in his arms, my lips becoming his, his hard shoulder muscles now mine, the soft curve of my waist a part of Andrew, his hardness against my thigh a part of me.
Or it would be, soon.
In me, at any rate.
For weeks I have ached for him. Dreamed of him. Given over my mind to the endless recriminations of what ifs and rifled through my self-doubt like a woman who has lost her wedding ring in the trash. Did I throw away my one best hope for love because I can’t handle the hint of abandonment? Was Andrew right? Has his absence been a misunderstanding fueled by the ghosts of my past?
Shannon is the overthinker. Always has been. I’m the one who pretends to listen and then acts to fix whatever’s wrong. My mind loosened by too many fermented grapes and adrenaline, my blood thickened by want and proximity, I pull back.
It’s time to act.
“If I sleep with you right now, it’ll be hate sex,” I say, then frown. Where in the hell did that come from? I thought I was about to reach for his belt buckle, but clearly my hands and my head have two different agendas.
“Nothing wrong with hate sex.”
“Boozy hate sex we’ll both regret in the morning.”
“I might regret the booze in the morning, Amanda,” he says with a voice filled with longing and urgency, “but I would never, ever regret having sex with you.”
“How long have you been practicing that line?”
“Since you stabbed me in the neck with the fork.”
“You’re a planner.”
“I am very good at risk assessment.”
“And you’ve determined...”
“That there is no downside to sex with you. Ever.”
“No wonder you’re so good at negotiations in the boardroom.”
“I’m even better in the bedroom.”
“How about closets?”
His hands reach up to cup my breasts and I lean into the touch, his thumbs tracing circles around nipples that strain against the cloth of my bra to be closer to him. We could, you know? Make love right here, right now, against the row of ties that hang like ribbons on a vine. On the carpeted floor amidst the sterile, organized cabinetry.
I could tell him I’m sorry. That I got all the wrong ideas from all the right actions. He’s scared and vulnerable, so he creates a life that reduces risk. I understand that. I can honor it, even if it means never going outside in the sun with him eight months a year, extreme as that may be. Yielding to his obsessiveness to eliminate risk is nothing new to me.
I’ve done that most of my life with my mom.
Now, at least, I know why.
Exponentially.
All these thoughts mix in my mind like word salad, each making sense alone until they’re all blended together. He just needs to be open with me, to tell me how he feels.
And how he feels about me.
It would be so easy to say yes to sex right now. I could use a few minutes of bursting passion where I lose myself in him. The word is on the tip of my tongue, which is currently sliding against his teeth, rising up to the top of his mouth as his welcome touch makes me wonder why I’d ever say no. That yes bounces from my mouth to his, then back, and I am about to release it and claim him for myself when we hear: