“Told you,” I say. “Week one. I had him flagged.”
“You flagged him in week one?”
“It’s his jaw. He smiles with the bottom half of his face only. It’s a tell.”
He looks at me like I just pulled a coin out of his ear. “You’re the scariest person I’ve ever met, Dixon.”
“Thank you.”
“Wasn’t a–”
“Yeah, but I’m taking it as a compliment.”
“Who wins?” he asks. “You already know, don’t you?”
“She picks the wrong one in the finale and the right one at the reunion special. They always do.”
“That’s bleak.”
“It’s data.”
“You ever root for anybody?”
“Sometimes.”
At some point during the show, his arm goes up along the back of the couch behind me. Slow. He leaves me all the room in the world to lean out of it.
But I lean into it instead.
That’s the most reckless thing I do all night, and I do it on purpose, and he goes still for one second like I shocked the shit out of him. Eventually, his hand settles softly on my shoulder, like it’s the most normal thing in the world, and he goes back to yelling at Brayden.
When he kisses me, it’s effortless, his hand coming up to my jaw, turning me slow enough that I could stop it the whole way in if I chose to. But I don’t stop it. I don’t want to.
The kiss gets hotter, his hand in my hair, my fingers in his shirt, the show forgotten and still going, and the heat of it climbs faster than anything I’ve ever felt before.
He’s the one who slows it down. Pulls back, forehead to mine, both of us breathing hard.
“Not tonight,” he says, roughly.
“Why?” It comes out before I can stop it.
“Because I don’t want you to wake up tomorrow and tell yourself the TV was on, one thing led to another, yada yada. Nope.” His thumb moves along my jaw. “When it happens, I want you to have decided it in the daylight and on purpose.”
I close my eyes and consider his words. Not one man on the reality show I watch gives the woman that kind of careful respect. I want to tell him that I have decided, but it makes more sense to wait, because why am I rushing something that I’m not even sure I’m good at.
Kissing is one thing.
But sex?
That’s a whole other ball of terrifying wax.
I drive home at midnight with the window cracked, freezing on purpose, but it doesn’t help clear my head. I take notes on other people’s mistakes for fun, so I should know one when I’m making one. But there’s no note for this, no tell I missed or strategy I’d flag.
I’m not falling for Caleb Adams, I tell myself.
But the little human lie detector part of me already knows that ship has sailed.
Now I just have to decide how deep I’m going to allow myself to fall.
