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My heart knocks against my ribs as I scramble from my seated position on the patio and risk a glance at him.
“One a week? I see you out here all the time.”
He’s reclined against the side of his house, a dark slash against the yellow wash of light spilling from his kitchen window. I can’t see his expression, but his voice is amused when he says, “Busted.”
There’s silence from Hot Neighbor’s yard as he waits for me to speak again. For a heartbeat, I consider collapsing into a tiny silent puddle until he goes back inside, but the light over my back door catches the silver ring circling my middle finger, making it glint in the darkness. I splay my hand and run my thumb over the wordBoldengraved on it in blocky letters. My best friend’s Christmas gift inspired my stupid resolution this morning as I sprawled in my bed and contemplated another December 31. Another year of nothing changing.
Hence the resolution. Stop being scared. Go after what you want. Ask your way-too-hot, way-too-cool neighbor if he wants to have sex with you despite him being entirely out of your league.
Be bold, in other words.
“I only light one a week. Trying to quit.” The tip of his cigarette glows between his fingers, but he doesn’t bring it to his lips. Instead, he crushes it against the side of his house and turns so he’s facing me. “But yeah, I’m out here a lot after work. It’s the only time I get to see you these days.”
“Sorry, what?” The snow is falling faster, and it makes it hard to read his expression. He’s messing with me, calling out my creepy lurker tendencies. He has to be.
He pushes himself off the wall and starts to saunter toward me. I thought I was a clammy, panicky mess before? That was nothing. Not when Hot Neighbor—don’t be a weirdo, you know his name, it’s Cameron—is walking in my direction with a crooked smile on his face.
“It’s winter, so nobody’s hanging around outside.” He shrugs. “But you usually end up in your backyard around the same time I do.”
Why bother lying? I nod jerkily, and he tilts his head as he studies me.
“You don’t smoke though, do you, Gracie?”
He’s added anieto my name. It forces the truth out of my mouth.
“No. I don’t smoke,” I say. “Cam.”
I like the feel of his shortened name on my lips.
I’d like to feelhimon my lips.
“So why is it that we usually end up outside at roughly the same time?” he asks.
His grin is charming, and it does its job. I’m charmed. Cameron and Grace are neighbors, but Cam and Gracie could be more than that.
Everyone on the block watched warily six months ago as this shaggy, tattooed man in jeans and a cheap V-neck T-shirt moved into the vacant split-level with what seemed like half a dozen boxes and maybe four pieces of furniture. We were expecting an unkempt lawn and obnoxiously loud parties. Maybe a motorcycle revving in the driveway all day and night. Instead, we got a shaggy, tattooed man in jeans and a cheap V-neck T-shirt who worked weird hours but still managed to paint the peeling exterior of his house and play tag with his nieces in the front yard and shovel the entire block after the first big snow of the winter so the mail carrier’s feet didn’t get wet.
Cam and I bump into each other at the mailboxes at the edge of our driveways a couple of times a month, and we ended up raking our yards on the same day in October, exchanging grins the whole time. I never thought I’d be interested in a shaggy-haired smoker, but whenever we talk, I have to force myself not to imagine what he looks like naked. Yet I’ve never been able to lasso my courage to come right out and say, “How would you feel about having sex with me?”
So yes, I do happen to sometimes quite by accident step onto my back patio to look at the stars at the same time that my hot neighbor’s outside with the cigarette that he holds but rarely smokes. And in all that time, I’ve never been brave enough to be anything more than the friendly neighbor. Even with this brand-new resolution pulsing in my brain, I didn’t think I’d get a chance to trot it out tonight since it’s New Year’s Eve. But he’s here, his gaze fixed on me.
And naturally, I blow the opening he’s given me.
“Just, um.” All flirty, seductive thoughts have fled my brain. “Coincidence?”
He smirks and moves another step closer, nodding his chin to the house on the other side of mine. “Jeff told me all about you.”
And just like that, exasperation conquers my nerves. “Of course he did,” I say with a groan.
Every neighborhood has a gossip, and our little slice of heaven in Beaucoeur, Illinois, is no different. Jeff the retired marine knows the secrets of everybody on the block, and he’ll tell you all of them while he unsticks your stuck hose nozzle or lends you his Weedwacker. And now I’m terrified that Jeff described me exactly as I am: steady. Reliable. Terminally dull.
“You graduated top of your law school class?” Cam grins. “That’s hot.”
I flush immediately. If a stray snowflake were to land on my cheek right now, it would sizzle into steam. “I was a nerd. The opposite of hot.”
I drift across the distance between us and step onto his deck. He tilts his head, the light from his window playing across the sharp line of his cheekbones. “Not from where I’m standing.”
He takes a step closer. So do I. Now I’m near enough to see the spray of freckles across his nose, a gift from the afternoons he spent sprawled in a chair in his backyard listening to baseball on the radio while I watered my flower beds and pretended not to notice him noticing me.
