“Don’t do that.”
“What?”
“That sound. Like you already know.”
“I already know.” His voice drops, easy and low and warm as the fire. “You wore the dress. You've been watching the door all evening. Don't argue. Piper texted me. By the way, she’s absolutely terrible at keeping secrets. And right now, your gaze suggests you’ve been thinking about looking at me for awhile, and you’re deciding whether the wine is a good enough excuse to do it.”
I open my mouth.
He holds up the hand with the bracelet. “I said, decide. I didn’t say act.”
My mouth closes. The fire breathes between us. Warm and orange. The yard’s silence is broken only by that, and the distant hum of Chicago after dark. “I’ve been thinking about it,” I say. The wine makes the honest version easier. “For the record.”
His tell engages. He holds still in the careful way that means this is costing him. “For the record,” he says. “So have I. Since you walked into that locker room.”
“Before that,” I say.
“Yeah,” he agrees. “Before that.” Silence again. But the charged kind. The kind where decisions are being made in the space between sentences. I stand up. The blanket falls onto the chair. October air hits my arms, and I do not care because I cross the three feet of fire-lit space between us, and I do not give myself time to strategize or qualify or find the professional sentence to put in front of it. I sit on the arm of his chair, which is not precisely what I had in mind, but the logistics intervened, and then his arm comes up and I am sideways in his lap and his face is right there and I take it.
I kiss him.
He kisses me back entirely on purpose until I’m panting into the kiss. Warm and certain, three seconds of it, until hishands come up to my face and he pulls back. I follow. He pulls back further. “Toni.”
“I’m fine.”
“I know you are.” His voice is rough. His hands stay on my face, thumbs tracing along my jaw, which is extremely counterproductive to whatever principle he is currently executing. “You’re also four glasses into a late night.”
“I know how many glasses I had.”
“Yeah.” He tilts his forehead against mine and exhales. That exhale reverberates in my sternum. “So do I.”
“Max—“
“In approximately eight hours,” he sighs, his voice dropping low, “you’re going to be completely sober. And I need everything that happens between us to survive that.” His thumbs trace once more. “Okay?”
I sit there in his lap in the firelight with his forehead against mine and his hands on my face and I hate him completely and specifically for being exactly this person. “That’s annoying,” I say.
“I know.”
“A lesser man would not be having this conversation.”
“I know that too.”
“I want to be angry about it.”
“Go ahead.” His mouth curves. Recklessly close. “Be angry.”
“I’m considering it.”
“Take your time.” His nose brushes mine. He is letting me feel how close he is and staying there and doingabsolutely nothing further and it is the most disciplined form of torture I have experienced. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“This is revenge,” I say. “For every drill. Every film session. Every time I benched you.”
He laughs. It comes out low and warm and genuine, right there next to my mouth. “A little bit,” he admits. “Yeah.”
“I knew it.”
“No you didn’t.” His hands slide to my hair. He pins it back from my face and holds it there and looks at me from three inches away. “You want to know what I’m going to do?”
