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“Great.” I nod. A stretch of silence sits between us, and my brain uses it as an excuse to turn the anxiety in my belly into panic. I have not missed this feeling. At all. “Well, thank you for letting me know.”
“Are you in a rush?” Her voice is all thorns.
“No.” I flop down onto the leather couch. “Of course not.”
“Have you made good use of my agenda?”
My heart thuds in my chest.
The trust.Thud. Going back to being Miss Molly “Doll” Greene.Thud.
“Yes. Lolita even encouraged us to spend time doing activities we both enjoy,” I say. “Three years of knowing each other have given us a lot of shared hobbies. The way you have polo with Dad.”
“Hmm.” My mother raises her brow at me, watching me closely over the video call. “We’ll see about that.”
Her statement is a gavel dropped between us. She hangs up. Panic continues to flood my chest.
This is how things have always worked: my mother makes decisions, and I abide by her requests.
But something’s been shifting the past couple of weeks, something that even my thunder of nerves can’t wash away. A change is coming from deep within me. Once I get my trust, I won’t be able to run away from it any longer.
* * *
“So, I wanted to make a suggestion.”Matthew leans against the doorway, rubbing his damp hair with a towel.
He’s in a Henley shirt with two buttons undone, tufts of hair peeking out. I’ve been staring at his chest for the last two weeks and still have an urge to run my fingers through the tangled manliness awaiting me.
Something about his undone, casual sex appeal has me spinning out of control.
Why does he have the audacity to look quite so adorable, cozy, and sexy all at once?
How is it fair?
Wait, can a person even look cozy?I have no idea. But Matthew does. Cozy to the touch.
“Molly?” He snaps me out of my very obvious gawking. “You still there?”
I glance up at him. “Um, yeah. What’s up?”
An expression that clearly saysI know you’re ogling melights up his face. “I wanted to propose something.”
My heart beats louder in my chest. “Isn’t that how we ended up here in the first place?” I tease.
“Touché.” He continues to swipe at his strands, his muscular biceps tensing in all the right ways. “But something a little different this time. I was thinking—”
“I love it when you do that,” I blurt out, lifting up onto my toes as if I’m about to float away.Wait. “Did I just say that out loud? Ha!” I laugh and pretend to stretch. “Um, w-what did you have in mind?”
I have officially lost all control of my salivary glands in his presence. I hereby declare myself a depraved and shameless drool monster. How could I not be? Especially after licking chocolate off his fingers two nights ago.
Matthew looks at me with a lovely but painfully stoic expression, waiting for my flustered outbreak to calm. “I made plans for us,” he says, hanging his towel on one of the closet door hooks.
“For us?”
“Yes, but only if you’re up for a little surprise date today.”
Has the sun catapulted through the ceiling of the closet and gone straight into my chest? Surely it must have. I’m glowing.
“Adate?”
