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“Connor? I’m sorry for coming over like this,” she mumbled as she pulled me back so I was sitting beside her. “I wanted to talk to you...just not like this.”
But whatever she was about to say, I didn’t want her to say it when she was like this. I wanted her to tell me when she wasn’t obsessed with my pillows and forgetting I was even here every other minute.
“We’ll talk in the morning, Maci. I need to talk to you too.”
Her heavy-lidded eyes fluttered back open and her brow scrunched. “You do?”
A smirk shaped my lips as I pushed back some of her wet hair. “Didn’t you get my message from this morning? I don’t know what I did to piss you off, but we need to talk about it.”
Her confusion softened into something so heartbreaking that I nearly forgot everything and pulled her into my arms right then. “Oh...right. The girl in your apartment this morning.” Her head bounced faintly before a stuttered sigh left her. “I’d actually managed to forget about her.” A saddened laugh wheezed from her as she grabbed the comforter and rolled away from me. “Hope she was worth it.”
“Whoa, wait—worth what? Maci, what are you talking about?” When she didn’t immediately respond, I said, “My sister and nephew were the only ones here this morning. They’d been here for a couple hours when I got your text.”
Maci stopped stroking one of the pillows, reminding me she was still completely trashed, and shifted to face me again. “Amy was here? It wasn’t just some girl?”
“No,” I responded, drawing out the word. “Why?”
“I just thought that...that maybe after what you did last night, that you—that there was...”
At the indecision and clear embarrassment sweeping across her features, I draped an arm over her, caging her to the bed. “What I did last night,” I echoed dully, remembering the prank and how I’d left Maci crying in her apartment. “Maci, what exactly are you talking about?”
“You...you stood up for me. You cared about me,” she whispered firmly, even as doubt filled her eyes. Blinking slowly, she turned her head to the side and released the words for once on a heaving breath.
“For once.” The words punched from me incredulously because there was no way in hell that was true.
The Price family meant everything to me. Even when Maci had only been the little sister who occasionally engaged in prank wars with me, I’d cared about her.
I just cared about her in a different way now.
Using my fingers to turn her face back to mine, I asked, “What do you mean for once?” My chest hitched as I waited for her to respond, but her eyes just bounced back and forth between mine. “Maci, I’ve always—”
Felt like every nerve ending lit up when she sat up and crushed her mouth to mine—like touching electricity. For the life of me, I wasn’t sure why I didn’t immediately push her away because I needed to. I knew that.
But the fingers that had been pressed to her cheek slid into her wet hair on their own accord. Holding her to me as I deepened the kiss, eliciting a moan from her that shot straight through me as she reached for me. Her hands sliding over my bare chest, down to my stomach, causing the muscles to contract the lower she went.
Then she whispered my name, and the alcohol barely masked by the Gatorade on her breath was nothing less than the cruelest reality check. Clearing my thoughts, reminding me why Maci was even here in the first place, and smacking me in the face with what I was doing.
I grabbed her hands and pinned them to the bed as I straightened, head harshly shaking. “No, Maci—shit. This can’t happen. Not like this. Not when you’re drunk.”
Not at all. Her brothers would kill me.
“I’m not drunk.”
“Yes, you are,” I said firmly and shifted back when she tried sitting up again. “Maci, you’re so trashed. You were falling in love with my pillows not even half an hour ago. This can’t happen...” I needed to leave it at that because we couldn’t happen—period. But my traitorous lips parted, letting the rest of the words gathered on my tongue fall free. “Like this. Let’s talk in the morning, okay?”
Hurt and rejection flared in her eyes, and it took everything not to confess what I felt for her right then. But I doubted she’d even remember this in the morning. Even if she did, there was a huge possibility she’d hate herself for it.
“Just sleep,” I pled softly. “We’ll talk tomorrow, I swear.”
“Yeah, okay.”
I somehow managed to force myself away from her heartbroken expression, my thoughts on overdrive as I stood and headed for the door. Just as I reached it, I turned back just in time to see her start stroking one of the pillows again.
“Good night, Maci Price,” I whispered as I shut the door behind me.
I went around the apartment, turning off lights and picking up the few things Maci had knocked over before I made it out to the living room. Grabbing her purse and the lamp—that somehow hadn’t broken—I set them on the end table before heading to my front door. Once it was locked and the last of the lights were off, I settled on the couch. But sleep didn’t come easy.
All I could see was the way she’d looked coming out of the bathroom and in my bed. All I could think about was the way it’d felt like I’d touched a live wire when she’d kissed me and how damn right it’d felt to have her in my arms.
