He stares at me for a long moment, his hand still raised where it had been touching my face. Like his brain hasn’t caught up to what just happened.
“You can’t,” he repeats slowly.
“I’m sorry. I just?—”
“Right.” He drops his hand, takes a step back. “Of course.”
But he doesn’t look angry. He looks confused. Genuinely, completely confused, like I just told him gravity works backwards or that hockey pucks are actually spherical.
“Dex—”
“No, it’s fine.” He runs a hand through his hair, and I can see him trying to recalibrate. “I misread the situation.”
“You didn’t misread anything.”
“Clearly I did, or you wouldn’t have—” He stops, shakes his head. “Forget it.”
“It’s not that I don’t want to?—”
“Golda.” His voice is strained. “Just... go. Before I say something stupid.”
I fumble with my keys, my hands shaking. “Thank you for tonight.”
He doesn’t respond. Just stands there watching me get in my car like he’s trying to solve a puzzle that doesn’t make sense.
As I pull out of the parking space, I catch a glimpse of him in my rearview mirror. He’s still standing in the same spot, hands in his pockets, staring at the ground.
I make it exactly two blocks before the regret hits me like a freight train.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I say to my empty car.
Dex Malone. Dex fucking Malone wanted to kiss me, and I gave him my cheek like he’s my great-aunt Gertrude at Christmas dinner.
I grip the steering wheel tighter, replaying the moment. The way he looked at me. The way his thumb felt on my cheek. How close his mouth was to mine before I panicked like a teenager.
“He probably tastes like wine,” I mutter. “Expensive wine and bad decisions and—STOP.”
I force myself to focus on driving, but my brain won’t shut up.
He’s probably had women literally fight each other for the chance to kiss him, and I just turned away like he was asking me to file his taxes. The man who has models sliding into his DMs just had a hockey mom reject him in a parking lot.
God, the look on his face. Like someone had just explained that professional hockey was actually a elaborate hoax and he’d been chasing a rubber disk around ice for no reason.
When have I ever turned down a kiss from someone I actually wanted to kiss? When has anyone ever turned down a kiss from DEX MALONE?
“You could turn around,” I tell myself. “Go back. Tell him you changed your mind.”
But I don’t. I keep driving through Seattle’s empty streets, alternating between wanting to kick myself and knowing I probably made the right choice.
Probably.
Maybe.
Shit.
By the time I pull into my driveway, I’ve relived the almost-kiss approximately fifteen times, and in at least twelve of those versions, I don’t turn my head. In those versions, I find out what he tastes like, what his hands feel like in my hair, whether kissing someone you actually like is as different from kissing someone you’re supposed to like as I remember.
I sit in my car for another five minutes, phone in my hand, staring at his contact information.
