Page 49 of The Heartbreaker Next Door

“I want to know what you’re thinking. I want to know if you made it home safe. I want to fix your fucking porch even though you’re perfectly capable of doing it yourself.”

“Actually, I wasn’t doing that well with that.”

“And I want to be the person you call when something goes wrong.”

I forced myself to hold her gaze.

“But worse than that?”

My voice dropped.

“I want to be the person you call when nothing’s wrong.”

Her breath caught.

“And I have no fucking idea what to do with that.”

I shook my head.

“Because wanting you means trusting you.”

I swallowed hard.

“I’ve spent my whole life making sure nobody had that kind of power.”

A beat passed.

“Then you showed up.”

My eyes stayed locked on hers.

“And now I’m standing here handing it to you anyway.”

She looked at me like she was expected the world to crack open, like I’d just dropped a meteor of truth into her lap. There was no clever comeback, no smile or deflection. Just the absolute, unguarded honesty of a woman who had been burned, but who still showed up for the possibility that something new could grow out of the wreckage.

I knew that this wasn’t the right thing to do. I could analyze a situation six ways from Sunday before committing to a single course of action, but in that moment, every part of me ached to close the distance. Maybe it was the suffocating hush of the building, a sliver of moonlight from the skylight, or the raw way she was looking at me, like she could see every unlabeled box in my heart. Whatever the reason, I leaned in.

Our lips collided too fast, too eager, then we pulled back a fraction, almost laughing at ourselves, then met again, slower this time. Her hands slipped up to the sides of my face, like she was afraid I might pull away, and I finally let myself touch her—really touch her—threading my fingers through her hair and drawing her so close our foreheads bumped.

The kiss was gentle at first, an exploration, a question neither of us dared to ask out loud. Then her lips parted, and suddenly years—decades—of practiced restraint, of “I’m fine” and “I don’t need anyone,” snapped, and everything spilled out at once.

It was a delicious mixture of sweetness and sorrow, a forbidden blend of indulgence and pain. My heart hammered in my chest as though it could punch right through and into her hands if she asked for it.

16

PANTS OPTIONAL INVENTORY

Felicity

Here’s the thing nobody tells you about blackouts, they are spectacular at dismantling every carefully constructed wall you’ve spent weeks/months/years building around yourself. One second I’m cataloging inventory in a storage warehouse and the next, Dean’s lips are crashing into mine with a force that bordered on desperation, as if all the weeks of us avoiding one another had finally collapsed into a mutual magnetic attraction. His hands slid under my shirt like they’ve always known exactly where they belonged, for the record, they absolutely did not.

I anchored myself on his shoulders, digging my fingers into the sculpted planes of muscle that flexed like he was carrying the weight of the entire world on his back, which… he probably was, but at this moment, I was happy to let him carry me instead.

The rest of the world vanished: the blackout, the storage warehouse, the scent of cardboard and sawdust. My spine hit the wall of stacked moving boxes with a soft thump. Somewhere in the rational part of my brain, a tiny alarm was screaming this is a catastrophically bad idea, but the rest of me—the traitorous, warmth-chasing, muscle-appreciating rest of me—had already voted unanimously in favor of catastrophe.

His palms bracketed my face, leaving exactly enough space between us to qualify as technically restrained, and I could feel him trembling with the effort of it. Then he dropped his voice to a deep rasp—which was completely unfair—and asked, “Are you sure this is what you want, Felicity?”

Spoiler: I was about to make the best worst decision of my entire life.