“Because I was convinced I did something wrong. That I did something to hurt you. To push you away,” I tell her, and her mouth purses a bit. “I was convinced that I got too drunk, got too sick, and forced you to take care of me, and it sent you running.”
“No,” she says, her voice quiet. “It’s the wine curse. I can’t blame you.”
My brows skyrocket. “The what?”
She takes another sip. “The wine curse. Wine results in the worst intoxication and an even worse hangover. I love the stuff, but I’ve been a victim of the wine curse more times than I can count.”
I can’t help it, my lip twitches up a bit. “Ah—the wine curse.”
“It didn’t bother me to take care of you.”
“Then why’d you leave?” I ask, pushing myself from the doorframe. I close the distance between us a bit, which makes her go rigid. “Why have you been treating me the way you used to?”
“Because you asked me to,” she says almost breathlessly.She raises her chin to look at me. “And I wanted to respect that.”
Someone get me a compass. I’m fucking lost.
“When, exactly, did I ask you to do that?”
She glares up at me, studying my face, like she’s sure I’m making a joke out of this. Then she asks me the question that I’m least expecting.
“Doyouwant to call this?”
It’s hard not to lose myself in her face, start listing all of my favourite parts of it. The flecks of copper in her dark eyes, the constellations of freckles adorning her skin, the full apples of her cheeks, which make her look so damn happy when she smiles. Thattinylittle scar by her temple is another thing I love to fixate on. To wonder what happened, to learn every bit of her history.
Nah, I still have too many parts of this face to study to call shit.
I shake my head to answer her question.
“Okay,” she whispers, nodding to herself. She brings her wine glass between us and takes a sip. “Then, can we forget about this? Move on? Pretend it never happened?”
That’s a bad idea. I’m missing something, and I feel just as uncomfortable as I did in that locker room, not being able to put all of these pieces together.
“No,” I say. I reach up to cup her face in my hands, forcing her to look at me. “I missed Lowesy’s poker night, Red. I’ve been going insane thinking I just lost my new favourite person to spend my time with. I’m fucking things up because I’m worried about this. When did I give you the impression that I was done annoying you for a minimum of three days a week?”
Her lip curls up a bit, but those round eyes show a flinch of hesitancy.
“What did I do?” I askagain softly.
“You told me to forget that about that night,” she admits. She relaxes in my hands a bit, reaching up to touch my forearms, like she’s been holding that in for days.
“You need to give me the cold shoulder to forget about me acting like a seventeen-year-old who stole his daddy’s whiskey out of the liquor cabinet?”
Her eyes burn into mine, a bit guarded, a hell of a lot hurt. Her fingers tighten on my arms, her throat bobbing as she waits for me to understand. I don’t. I am unsure how we got here.
One minute, we’re having a great time, and the next, I’m puking up my guts.
One second, we’re laughing at a wine tasting, and the next, she is hauling me up to bed.
It’s not the end of the world, but I didn’t want that to be the baseline for the time we spend together outside of our arrangement. I’m furious that I went from having her mouth on mine for an instant, only for my face to be buried in the toilet bowl the next.
My brain screeches to a halt.
Shit.
I sweep my thumbs against her cheeks and angle my head a bit. “You know when I asked you to forget about it, I was not including any second of what happenedbeforethe toilet bowl, right?”
Her eyes drift downward, so I give her head a gentle shake and force them back to mine.
