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Grace
Sydney really couldn’t be more obvious and really, I was done avoiding it.
If Sawyer weren’t here, I would be spending every moment with her this weekend. It’s what I did when she was home but Cael was away on road trips. There was no sense stopping what I normally did, even if her brother would be there and I was incredibly attracted to him and could only be his friend.
I could only be his friend.
Without looking back at Sawyer and seeing in his eyes what I wanted to see, because there was no way he was looking at me with a heat and hunger I hadn’t ever witnessed in even Jeremy’s eyes, I grabbed my keys from on top of the washer and headed out of the mudroom into the garage, hitting the button so I could walk to my car.
I heard the door shut with a thud behind me but still, I didn’t look over my shoulder to see if Sawyer was coming. One, I knew he was, but two, I could feel him.
I could feel him all around me, much like his hug earlier today down by the seal deck.
“I’m glad you came today,” he said from behind me as I played with my keys, flipping them around my finger slowly until I came up with the fob to unlock the doors. While I did unlock them, I didn’t move to open the door. Instead, I turned and leaned back against it.
“I’m actually glad I did too.”
“We good?” He stopped in front of me and I fought from looking down to see how close his toes were to mine. I wasn’t sure why, but something about being toe to toe just felt close to me.
I nodded, looking up at him. “We’re good,” I said quietly. And I wasn’t really surprised to realize I meant it. My heart wasn’t racing. My mind wasn’t churning with thoughts.
Everything was a simple calm.
A simple calm that, while I hadn’t forgotten once existed, I had forgotten how it felt.
Looking up at him, I took in everything. The sky had taken on a gray overcast in the late afternoon, making me miss the rich coppery tones in his hair, and even though his eyes still held slight bags under them, the yellow orbs were much more alive now than they had been earlier.
I opened my mouth to say something but thought better of it, closing my lips and folding them in.
“What’s up?”
Of course Sawyer caught it.
I shook my head and offered a small smile. “Nothing.”
Sawyer shifted, getting closer and making my heart start its anxious tumble again, but it wasn’t in panic.
No, it was in an attraction that would do me no good.
His toe tapped my heel and I could tell that his feet bracketed mine; that was how close we were. If he leaned in just the slightest bit… “No, what?” he asked again.
“I was just thinking I hoped you got rest this weekend. You look tired and—” Again, I cut myself off by folding my lips in.
Sawyer reached out now, his hand to my chin and his thumb gently pulling down to release my lips. His eyes watched as I parted my lips but he eventually moved his gaze back to mine. “I look tired and…?”
There was no sense lying to this man. If I was going to be foolish enough to start a thought, I was going to have to finish it. “And it hurts my heart,” I whispered softly, my eyes locked on his.
I watched as he leaned closer, closer, until his lips were near my ear. With his hand on my chin, his feet on either side of mine, and his body so incredibly close, the non-embrace felt intimate.
“When the anxiety churns behind your eyes, it hurts mine.”
He pressed his lips to my temple but before I could process any of it—the words, the touch, the kiss—he was gone, heading back for the garage.
“I’ll see you at breakfast, sweetness.”
