He lowers the brush, meeting my eyes in the mirror.
“Yours too,” he murmurs, turning over his shoulder to me.
“Your hair, amber as the morning sun. It’s rare.”
My face burns immediately. I nervously run a hand through my curls, which only makes his eyes gleam more, shy and genuine, before he turns back to the mirror and starts braiding his hair.
“I need to apologize, Tom.”
“Apologize? For what?”
“I don’t drink and sometimes I’m so deep in my bubble that I forget others do. It was wrong to put you in that situation at the beach earlier. I fucked up.”
I roll onto my back with a groan.
“Please. The last thing on my mind was alcohol. You don’t need to worry about that.”
“It’s not about whether you were tempted. It’s about me needing to keep you out of situations that could tempt you in the first place.”
He stares at the floor now, fingers threading through the strands. I hate seeing him this conflicted. He doesn’t need to. Not with me.
“Thanks. That means a lot to me, seriously. But let me tell you what really happened. Zion did offer me a drink, and I don’t mean to sound spoiled or anything, but life’s too short for American piss water. On the rocks, or even worse, mixed with Coke? That’s a bloody crime.”
That gets a laugh out of him.
He lifts the sheets and slides in beside me, keeping a veryverydeliberate few inches between us.
“Call it cliché,” I say. “But where I come from, whisky’s a serious matter. People get into fist fights over it.”
He rolls onto his side, one arm folded beneath the pillow.
“God, I sometimes forget how very Scottish you are.”
“Oh, do you?”
I know he loves my accent. Everyone does. I even rough it up with a bit of dockyard grit. Joan calls it my bad boy accent. I call it foreplay.
The way he looks at me now? Oh he wants it bad. Wants to get railed by this filthy-mouthed bad boy.
But what’s he waiting for? What am I waiting for? I don’t know.
In my head it’s simple. Say something smooth. Tuck a strand of hair behind his ear, cup his face, kiss. Let my hands wander like they always do.
That was the blueprint once, but now, I want more than that.
And that’s the problem I can’t untangle. How to want more without creating a catastrophe.
I turn to stare up at the ceiling. From the corner of my eye, I catch the silhouette of his face, half-lit in the dark.
I pick up the rhythm of his breathing. They are long slow breaths that totally mess with my own the more I pay attention to them.
I’m nervous as hell, the crickets outside more present than they should be. It feels like we’re trapped in some awful B-movie.
Time to end this psychological torture.
“What are your plans for the house?”
That question instantly relaxes his shoulders.
