Noah is standing by the door, pale and miserable, and the whiskey gets there before common sense does.
“Why are you doing this to me?” I ask, angrier than I mean to.
Noah blinks at me. “Doing what?”
“This.” I gesture between us. “You haven’t spoken to me all night.”
Okay. That comes out more pathetic than I intended. More dramatic too, which is unfortunate, since I was aiming for calm but apparently came out sounding wounded.
He stares at me, eyes wide, like he wasn’t expecting this from me at all. Then he says carefully, “Connor, you’re drunk.”
Shit. I am. But that doesn’t mean I’m wrong.
“Yes,” I say, because there’s no point denying it. “I’m drunk. But you still avoided me all night. After the lake, after the hot tub, after everything that happened today, you just shut me out.” I drag a hand through my hair, the honesty making my chest burn. “Like none of it mattered.”
The second I say it, I wish I could shove the words back into my mouth. Because there it is. I didn’t just want Noah to stop ignoring me. I wanted him to admit that something had changed today. That the kisses hadn’t been only for show.
That’s why his silence bothered me so much. He had every right to be angry, but the second he was, it felt like I got demoted right back to a stranger. Not even a friend. Just the guy he’d brought along for the weekend, now doing a shit job of pretending to be his boyfriend.
Which is unfortunate, because that is literally what I am right now. Just some guy who let one day of kissing and fake-dating make him want something real.
God. This is ridiculous even in my own head.
Noah stares at me, surprise flickering across his face.
Yeah. He definitely didn’t expect me to get this embarrassingly needy in front of him tonight.
“I wasn’t—” he starts, then stops. His face changes before he finds the words. The fight drains out of it, replaced by regret so clear it cuts through the last of my anger. “I…I wasn’t trying to hurt you. I was just frustrated about…everything.” He holds my gaze for a beat. “I’m sorry, Connor.”
For a second, I just stare at him. Then I nod, because he apologizes without pushing back, and suddenly my little emotional breakdown feels ridiculous.
Jesus, I feel like a total idiot.
Noah steps closer, stopping a few feet in front of me. He has to tip his face up to look at me, and God, he looks wrecked. His eyes are glassy, catching the light. His cheeks are flushed, his mouth stained a dark burgundy from the wine.
“Sorry,” he says again.
Then he lifts his hand and pokes one finger into my abs.
I look down at him.
His face stays completely serious.
Before I can ask what the hell he’s doing, he pokes me again. Then again. A ridiculous little touch, like he’s trying to pull some kind of reaction out of me because the silence is too much.
And for some reason, that undoes me.
I catch his wrist before he can do it again.
Noah freezes.
I pull his hand up and press it flat against my chest, right over my heart, where it’s beating so hard there’s no way he can’t feel it.
For a second, neither of us moves.
He looks at his hand against me. Then he looks up at my face, and whatever I was still trying to hold back slips out of my reach.
I lean in and kiss him.
