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“Somebody’s getting drunk,” Robbie commented.
“Two somebodys,” Simone responded and held up three f
ingers causing all of us to break out into hysterical laughter again.
Knox laid a hand on my knee under the table and I nearly jumped out of my seat before glancing at him. He was still smiling and enjoying the conversation, it was almost as though he didn’t realize what he’d done. A small gesture that held a monumental meaning.
The saying that old habits die hard was too true to us.
“You spending the night?” Robbie jerked his chin towards Knox.
He looked down at me and I was positive I’d never seen Knox Fitzgerald look so uncertain in his life. “He’s spending the night. Can’t have him driving drunk, right?”
Under the table, his fingers tugged my dress up and he drew circles on my bare knee, goosebumps breaking out along my skin. I swallowed hard before taking another sip of my wine, my buzz heavy and making everything feel electric. The way his hands were rough and soft all at once. The timbre of his voice. The heat radiating off him. It was almost too much. Almost.
I shifted a bit closer and pressed my knee against his. He pushed back just hard enough to let me know he felt it, too. Whatever this was. His palm slid up my thigh slightly and I clamped my legs shut, trapping his hand their while he alternated between flexing his fingers and squeezing my flesh.
“I’m so drunk,” Simone put her head against the table and pushed her glass away, a telltale sign that she was definitely drunk.
“You feeling okay?” Robbie asked, his voice holding so much concern it was nearly foreign to me.
“I’m sleeping here tonight,” she said and lifted an arm, seemingly trying to point towards the general vicinity of the couch but pointing at the wall instead. “I need to get over there.”
Knox and I watched silently as my big brother handled Simone with such a gentleness that I was blown away. He wrapped an arm around her slim waist and she leaned against him, burying her face against his neck when he picked her up and hugged her to his chest. She looked so small compared to him. “You can sleep in my room, I’ll take the couch,” he said it so quietly that I was sure it wasn’t meant for my ears, but that was when I realized it. Robbie didn’t just like Simone.
“He’s in love with her,” I whispered softly.
Knox turned and looked down at me, all mussed hair and hazel eyes. “What?”
“He’s in love with her,” I repeated, watching his nostrils flare at the mention of the word “love”.
We sat like that for a moment, breathing and staring at each other. The air was thick but not with tension. Something else. Arousal. Intimacy. Desire. Longing.
“You wanna go somewhere with me?” he asked quietly.
“Yeah.”
Chapter 13
Twenty minutes and a pit stop to Knox’s truck later we were sprawled out on a tremendously soft gray blanket in a sand dune that overlooked almost the entire beach. The air was heavy with only a warmth that summer can bring with bonfires dotting along the sand sporadically. The sound of the waves crashing was a distant soundtrack as Knox tugged me against his side, my leg drifting up over his hip.
“You know what I think?” he asked softly.
“Tell me.”
“I think you were supposed to come home.”
“Because you were so hard up for a lay?”
He laughed and I felt it rumble through his chest. “Seriously, I think you were meant to come back.”
“Like fate?” I whispered, squeezing my eyes shut as a wave of emotion rolled through me. Was I supposed to come home? Was the nightmare that happened in New York supposed to bring me back to Port James? Was I supposed to find my way back to the life I knew, my life with Knox?
He trailed his warm fingers down my bare arm and nodded. “Sort of. I just think maybe our story didn’t end with you leaving. It was like a thing in the middle of a play. What’s that called?”
“An intermission?”
“Yeah, an intermission.”
