Page 22 of In the Crease

I forgot how to breathe normally.

He turned.

I was already looking at him. We both knew that. There was nowhere to pretend to look.

His eyes were dark in the low light and very close and very steady. The full weight of his attention landed on me, like stepping into a warm room from the cold, or the first breath after being underwater—immediate and necessary and giving a little bit of a relief.

“Hey,” he said. Low. Quiet. His gaze dropped to my lips, then back to my eyes.

“Hey.” It was barely a whisper.

“You okay?”

The question was so careful. So precisely neutral. Like he was giving me an out and hoping I wouldn’t take it.

“Not particularly,” I said. “You?”

“I don’t think so,” he said.

He didn’t look away. Neither did I.

The air between us had changed again. It had been changing all weekend, degree by degree, and now it was something else entirely—thick and warm and charged, the pull between two people who both knew and were both holding still.

His body angled a bit more toward me. Just slightly. Just enough I could feel the shift, the warmth of him even closer, and I watched his eyes drop to my mouth again, just for a half-second.

I wet my lips without meaning to. A reflex. Completely involuntary and absolutely not helpful.

His jaw tightened. His restraint was visible, and my heart was about to beat right out of my chest.

There was a warmth pooling low in my stomach that had nothing to do with the blanket and everything to do with the fact he was right there and I was acutely, painfully aware of his lap and the very short distance between where I was sitting and where I wanted to be sitting, which was on it. Not a thought I was going to do anything about—I couldn’t, could I? No—which didn’t make it go away.

He was close enough if either of us moved—if I leaned forward even slightly, if he closed even an inch of what was left between us—it would be over. The whole weekend of careful distance, the line we’d both been holding, all of it would be over in one second, and I didn’t know if I wanted to stop it from happening or if I just wanted to stop pretending I did.

His hand moved from my knee to the side of my face and the warmth of his touch nearly knocked me sideways. His touch was warm against my face and my brain went completely offline. That was the problem with him—he was so deliberate about everything, even this, and it was doing things to me I had absolutely no business feeling on a tailgate in February with my brother thirty yards away. Ryan brushed a bit of my hair behind my ear and stared down at me before licking his own lips. Three inches of distance between us and I was aware of every millimeter.

Then I watched it move across his face. The want, clear and real, right there, and underneath it the thing that was bigger. The thing that had a name.

“Griffin,” he said on a breath. Just that. Just the one word, quiet and certain, like an answer to a question neither of us had asked out loud. I deflated immediately.

“I know,” I said.

I did know. I’d known all weekend. I’d known since the minute he picked me up in his truck and I’d been choosing it anyway, choosing to sit next to him and lean into it and let it be exactly what it was right up until the moment it couldn’t be anymore.

The pulling back was the worst part. Not because he’d done anything wrong, because he hadn’t, because he was doing the right thing, the only thing—but because my whole body had to be talked out of closing that last inch and it took considerably more convincing than it should have.

His hand stayed on my face for one more breath.

Then he lifted it, slowly, and brought his forehead down to rest against mine.

We stayed like that for a moment. His breath warm against my face. The stars above us and the pond in front of us and both of us holding very still, right at the edge of something we weren’t going to cross.

Then he pulled back.

I looked at the pond.

“I should find Griffin,” I said.

Chapter Nine