Page 41 of Seven Rules for Breaking Hearts

“It’s okay to be lonely, you know,” he said as we started up the road toward our hotel, the bachelor and bachelorette parties forgotten. “It doesn’t make you weak or anything. It makes you human.”

I huffed, the rush of air stirring a stray lock of hair from my face. “You’re just full of insight tonight, aren’t you?”

He smiled and shrugged. “I’m just saying. Everybody gets lonely.”

I didn’t say anything. A part of me could concede that yes, maybe, I was lonely. I was lonely because I felt like everything was going to change after the wedding, and I was lonely because I didn’t believe in any of it. I didn’t believe in love, or soul mates, or marriage. But deep down, a part of me mourned the optimism I’d lost along the way. Maybe the future would’ve looked a little brighter if I believed in those things.

CHAPTER15

We entered the quiet hotel lobby and Declan pressed the button to call the elevator. “Sorry,” he said as we waited, interpreting my silence as something other than discontented self-reflection. “I didn’t mean to force my opinion on you.”

“You’re fine,” I sighed. But I felt he deserved more of an explanation than that, as ridiculous as it felt to admit it to myself. Tonight was a night for honesty, it seemed, whether I meant for it to be or not. I’d been honest about wanting to visit the arcade, and I’d been honest about the podcast. Maybe I could be honest about this. “You’re probably right. I am lonely, sometimes. It’s just I can’t let the loneliness take over. That’s not me.”

When the elevator arrived, we stepped inside and he pressed the button for the fourth floor. He leaned up against the railing, right next to me, far closer than he needed to be in the confined space. The doors closed, sealing us off from the world, and then everything was quiet. Wasn’t elevator music supposed to be a thing? There were no speakers overhead, so I could practically hear the strain of the cables as they began to hoist us up.

“You really are jaded, aren’t you?” he asked without looking at me. I could see his face reflected in the mirrored panels across from us; he was staring at the floor, unseeing, his arms folded over his chest.

“How could you not be? Just look around.”

“I believe there are good relationships out there.”

I blew out a breath. Hoped my skepticism didn’t translate into bitterness. “I haven’t seen much proof of that.”

He shifted so that he could look down at the real me, and not my reflection. His gaze roved over my face, searching for something. “So, just hookups, then?”

“Just hookups,” I confirmed, wobbling in my heels. They’d be the first thing to go, when I got back to my room. We were standing very close, and the way he was looking down at me had my heart pounding against my ribs, a drumbeat in the quiet elevator. I’d never quite understood the whole elevator cliché, but I sort of understood it now: there was nowhere to hide from what you were feeling. “One night, and one night only.”

It was meant as just another one of my rules, an unspoken one that for some reason bubbled to the surface, but it came out sounding a hell of a lot more like a proposition. He shifted again, this time to angle his entire body toward me. “Sounds like you’re scared of something,” he said, voice dangerously low.

What was happening right now? I’d just resolved to let go of whatever this was. To back out before someone got hurt—before I took things too far. But I lifted my chin. Met his gaze with my own defiant one. “I’m not scared.”

It came a fraction of a second before I was expecting it. His hand found my neck and pulled me toward him, mouth catching mine. His lips were warm, the hand on my neck strong and purposeful as it slid upward and tangled in my hair, angling my mouth toward his. A surprised moan escaped me. Remembering that I was in possession of a pair of hands and knew how to use them, I raked my fingers over his shirt, the muscular contours of his body evident through the thin material.

And then one of my stupid heels gave out from under me.

I stumbled, breaking the kiss with a gasp like I was surfacing from underwater. My fingers found the firm muscle of his biceps and his hand slid down the small of my back, catching me just shy of falling flat on my ass. My eyes flicked up to his. He looked as surprised as I felt.

Shit. Declan just kissed me.

Despite my earlier determination, I couldn’t bring myself to pull away. I had no interest in leading him on—not when I knew how disastrous that sort of thing could end. My heart beat a staccato in my chest, so rhythmic and strong that I wondered whether he could feel it in my fingers still clinging to his arms. But he didn’t pull back, either. His breath came in soft puffs of air, inches from my lips. He smelled like bourbon and seaside air and just a hint of sweat from a night of partying, masculine and almost intoxicating. We were close enough that I could count his freckles. His mouth parted slightly, a question. Maybe it was because I was lonely. Or maybe it was because this was what I knew—a surefire way of wrecking whatever he saw in me, showing him firsthand that I was good for a good time and nothing more than that. Whatever it was, I answered by kissing him back.

It started simple, experimental, but that didn’t last. His lips were warm and soft, and I parted them with my tongue, craving more. He let out a muffled sound like a groan and responded by pushing me up against the mirrored paneling. If we were going to do this, we were going to do this right. Tonight was the perfect storm and I was magnetized, an electric current running through my body. My hand skated downward, fingers grazing against flat, muscular stomach through the cottony fabric of his shirt, until I found the waistband of his shorts.

“Slow down,” he muttered against my mouth. I pulled back, mystified by anyone telling me to slow anything down—I knew what I was doing and I did it well. But before I could ask what he meant, he was kissing down my neck, stealing my breath as his hand reached beneath the shorts of my romper to grip my bare ass. Pressed against the beveled paneling, he ground his hips against mine, and I hooked a leg around him almost instinctively. He pressed kisses into the column of my throat, teeth grazing the sensitive skin where my ear met my jaw.

“Declan—” I whispered, not entirely sure what I was going to say, but then his mouth found mine again. He kissed me hungrily, like every second spent away from my lips had deprived him somehow. My head was spinning. I couldn’t think straight. I latched onto a single thought, the only one that was coherent, running like a steady undercurrent beneath the alarm bells and evacuation plans.

I didn’t want to share this.

I didn’t want to talk about it on the podcast, and I didn’t want to talk about it with Jo. Maybe it was greedy of me. Hypocritical, even. For months, I had silently judged my best friend as she sneaked around on dates and only told me about the guy she was seeing in bits and pieces. And yet here I was, wanting to keep even the bits and pieces to myself.

Declan fumbled with the top button on my romper before his hand slid beneath the fabric, cupping my breast over my bra. His thumb traced the line where the lace met my skin, raising goose bumps. I could feel his arousal through his shorts, pressed against me. “Fuck, Margo,” he said against my lips, his voice rough and barely more than a whisper. “I want—”

We were interrupted by a grinding, mechanical sound, and the elevator jolted to a stop.

The lights flickered and then we were plunged into darkness. Declan’s hands left my body, leaving cold in their wake as he dug his phone out of his pocket and shined the flashlight at the door. Polished steel bounced the light back at us. The light from his phone shifted to the panel of buttons. The little screen denoting the floor had gone blank. “Shit,” he mumbled. “People have got to stay on top of inspections with these things.”

I breathed a surprised laugh, though there was nothing funny about whatever was happening. He pressed the button to open the doors, but the elevator didn’t respond. I shivered in the distance between us, my body screaming at him to touch me again! But instead, he ran a hand through his hair, mussing it as he stepped back from the panel and stared at the blank screen, as though he could will the floor number to appear. “We might be here awhile.”