“You think this was a mistake,” he says.
I hesitate, my heart pounding, and I suddenly feel a little sick. “Not a mistake. We were in character.”
“Right.” He slips his glasses out of his pocket and slides them back onto his face. “In character.”
“We can’t really…” I trail off. “Nothing can happen between us for real. It wouldn’t work.”
“Yup, okay.” He slides me off his lap and stands up, then holds a hand out to me.
My chest is almost painfully tight now. “You’re mad at me.”
“I’m allowed to be mad at you, Nora.”
“Is it because you got me off but I didn’t get you off?”
He sighs wearily. “I shudder to think what kind of men you’ve been seeing, if you think that’s why I’m upset.”
Dazed, I let him help me up. But as soon as I’m standing, he starts striding down the path, his steps more confident than they have any right to be, given how dark it has become.
“Cormac,” I say, my voice tight. I sound angry, but I’m not. There’s a strange, swirling feeling inside of me—unsettled and wild, as if a tornado is whipping around in my chest. “You can’t…leave.”
“I’m not going to abandon you on the side of the mountain,” he says in an infuriatingly patient voice. “I’ll drive you home. It’s fine. We can put music on. I’ll even let you choose it.”
But it’snotfine.
I hurry after him. He doesn’t slow down, though, and I’m almost a foot shorter. So I’m left scurrying after him, until we’renearly at the bottom of the trail, and I trip on a root and basically body-slam his back.
He jolts but stays upright. So do I, thanks to his solid back, but I’m shaken. Swearing, he turns around and takes me in his arms. I hug him for all I’m worth. “Are you okay?”
“No,” I admit. My throat is burning with emotion, and my eyes feel hot. I tighten my arms around him, not wanting to let him go. Feeling like an idiot for it. “I have no idea what I’m doing.”
That seems to soften him, and he runs a hand over my hair. “I know. That’s unusual for you, isn’t it?”
I’m not sure why, but I start laughing, softly at first, but then with growing hysteria, and he pulls me closer to his chest, laughing with me.
“I guess I don’t dislike you after all,” I tell him.
He settles his chin on my head. “Good. That’ll make things less awkward over the holidays.”
I shove his chest lightly. “That’s what I was thinking up there. That it was going to be really uncomfortable at the Thanksgiving table if we had sex up on that hill.”
“You were seriously going to have sex with me up there? What did I do to blow my chances?”
I start laughing again. “No, it would have been terrible. Really stupid.”
“I feel a sudden need to prove my virility to you.”
Laughter continues to bubble out of me, and I press my face into his chest.
“You’re not helping,” he comments.
“Maybe you’ll get your chance sometime. You know, when we’re single and sixty.” Something inside of me lurches as I say the words. It seems really unfair that I might have to wait thirty years for him to kiss me again. It felt…
It was nice, is all. But maybe it would be nice with anyone up there on the bench, with that view.
He tips my chin up. I can barely see him in the dark, but Ifeelhim. He’s sturdy and dependable, nothing like any of the men who have burned through my life—heat and then ash. So why is he the one who scares me?
“It worked for our parents.”
