Chapter Twenty-Six
As Lexi reaches for the door handle, she feels a hand land on her free arm.
‘No you don’t,’ Sam says.
‘What?’
‘You don’t get to do that.’
‘Do what?’ Lexi’s brain is panic and confusion, fight-or-flight adrenaline pulsing through her limbs.
‘Kiss me and then run away like nothing happened. Or like something did happen and now you’re scared.’
‘I’m not scared,’ Lexi says, which is among the Top Ten lies she’s ever told, ranking slightly below talking her niece Chloe off the ledge when she was ready to stop believing in Father Christmas. She looks down at where his hand is gripping her arm, sending waves of heat through her entire body. He lets go.
‘It’s okay to be scared,’ Sam says, in his piano teacher voice, soft and patient. ‘I’m pretty scared too.’
In any other circumstances, Lexi would laugh, because this is preposterous: she’s the least scary person she knows. It doesn’t feel like a laughing kind of moment, though.
‘I’m not scary,’ she says.
Now it’s his turn to find the humour. So maybe it is a laughing kind of moment after all. ‘You’re terrifying,’ he replies. ‘You protect that bookshop like a mama bear.’
‘It’s important to me.’
‘Of course it is. And it should be. I’m just saying– I never quite know when a roar is going to erupt. Or when I’m going to get injured.’
‘You’re not going to get injured.’Your bookstore might, though,she wants to add, but it feels like the wrong kind of moment for that, too.
‘Oh,’ he says, ‘but I really might.’ And he puts his hand over his heart.
‘Oh,’ she repeats, a different kind ofoh, one of realisation and maybe a little fear of her own. ‘But I thought—’
‘You surprised me just then,’ he says. ‘I didn’t expect a kiss. You caught me off guard. That’s why it wasn’t exactly my best work. Now, with your permission, I’d like to try again.’
He sounds like a character from one of Lexi’s favourite novels. It doesn’t exactly hurt his cause.
‘Permission granted,’ she tells him. This time, it doesn’t take her by surprise. This time she gets to hold her breath and hear her own heart thumping in anticipation.
Sam pushes a strand of hair behind her ear, almost as if he needs a few seconds to compose himself. Then he cups her chin and looks into her eyes. Connection feels like too weak a word for what’s happening. It’s like their souls are syncing up. A shiver runs down Lexi’s back. This moment feels solemn, a before-and-after kind of moment, a nothing-was-ever-the-same-again moment. And in this moment, she has almost forgotten about their bookshop and their rivalry, about Sam’s inferior love of books, his lack of respect for fiction. Lexi knows what they say about getting together with someone who turns out not to have any books at home: that you should run. But he has an e-reader, so it’s fine. And this moment feels somehow bigger than all of that. Like a shifting of the stars. Like whatever their souls are made of, Lexi’s and Sam’s are the same.
He closes his eyes, and she follows suit. She focuses on steadying her breathing. His lips land gently on hers, and there’s the static of them. They nudge hers open. Lexi wants the teasing, thebeforemoment, to last. To notice the transition of her life into its second act. His lips linger on hers, and she tastes him. And then, suddenly, she doesn’t want to hang back on the edge of act two anymore. She breathes in his saltiness, his oakwood-scented shampoo. She lets him lead, tease her lips with his, her tongue with his, and then she takes over, ravenous, desperate. All of her fury is channelled into this kiss, along with every bit of passion she’s ever felt for a book, for a character, for her bookshop, every bit of energy.
Lexi becomes aware that they’re both moaning, animal sounds at the back of their throats; they’ve moved from tenderness to arousal to desperation terrifyingly fast, and she should stop it. She thinks she has a meeting with her account— Does she have a meeting with her accountant? Sod the meeting with her accountant.
She nudges Sam’s knee with hers, hoping he’ll get it, hoping he’ll move them over to the sofa, to the bed. She doesn’t even mind if he doesn’t fling her, if they both kind of collapse.
Instead, though, it seems like she’s broken the spell. Sam pulls back, a little, just enough for Lexi to be able to see the desire in his eyes.
‘Should we slow down?’ He asks it regretfully, sadly, like he wishes he didn’t have to be a good boy about it.
‘No,’ Lexi tells him, because she has no desire to be a good girl. Even though part of her acknowledges that, in fact, yes, maybe they should slow down. That she should take five minutes to sort and sift through her feelings before they do something that it might be difficult for her, for them both, to recover from. She looks over at the bed. It’s calling to them; she can almost hear it.
‘I might need to slow down,’ he says, still breathing hard.
‘Okay.’
‘It’s not that I don’t want to,’ he says, sounding as disappointed as she feels. ‘It’s that maybe I want to a little bit too much.’
