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“Why would I get mad? Is it about another summer cocktail you want to drink? Because I don’t know if I can handle a low blow like that,” he joked.
“Not about a cocktail, I promise.”
He pulled in a breath. I could see him struggling in real time, and I hated it. There was a silent tension between every moment we shared together, and the last thing on Earth I wanted was for him to be still plagued with guilt about what we’d done.
“Go for it,” he said, his hazel eyes looking sweeter and more earnest than ever.
I knew I shouldn’t say what I was about to say. But some part of mehadto.
“Do you think we could have been something, if the circumstances were different?” I asked.
Something in his eyes shifted the moment I said it. I felt like I’d just broken something in him. Like I’d shattered a glass in a room, and now everything had gone silent and strange, and it was all my fault.
Maybe it had been a mistake. Maybe he didn’t actually feel the same as I did.
“Casey…”
“Nevermind,” I said, turning away from his gaze. I looked at my drink, nervously running a fingertip through the condensation on the side of the glass. “Don’t answer that. I’m sorry I said it—”
“I think so, yes,” he said confidently, cutting through my bullshit. “If we’d met like we did, and you weren’t my son’s best friend? I think I still would have been scared as hell, and I would have felt like I was fumbling in the dark, and like you were out of my league. But yes, I would have tried.”
“Tried…”
He cleared his throat. “To date you,” he said. “I suppose. I don’t think anything could have stopped me from trying.”
My heart felt like it was being slowly crushed as I looked back up at him. If I’d thought his eyes looked earnest before, the effect was only ten times stronger now. He looked like he would have hung the moon for me.
What was I supposed to say to that? Why the hell had I asked the damn question in the first place?
I’d only dug myself further into a hole ofwantingRome, craving him so damn badly, all the while knowing nothing was going to happen between us.
“I don’t know what the hell you mean by ‘out of your league,’ because you’re the one who’s out of my league,” I finally said, forcing a small smile onto my face. “But… thank you. That does mean something to me, even if it doesn’t change our life circumstances.”
He nodded once, a glimmer in his eyes. “It really does suck, doesn’t it? It would be so much easier if we didn’t get along so well. Or if the sex had been bad. Or if I’d justhatedthe finishes you picked for your kitchen remodel.”
I snorted. “Yeah,” I agreed. “I don’t know why I even like you so much. I’ve had actual relationships with people I couldn’t make myself care about as much as I already care about you. And all we did was hook up under my Christmas tree.”
“Maybe that’s all it was,” Rome said. “We were hypnotized and entranced because of the nearby tree and pretty lights. Maybe if we were in your bed instead, it all would have been awful.”
I was full-on laughing now. “That’s a lie, and we both know it.”
“When you’re right, you’re right.”
Images from our night together swirled through my mind as I watched him take another sip of his drink. Even the way he held his glass gave me a deep ache in my bones. I wanted his hands on me again. I wantedmorethan what I’d gotten.
As if he was reading my mind, he reached out a free hand, resting his palm on the top of my thigh. He rubbed my leg for a moment, and it felt like it may as well have been my cock for how much it turned me the fuck on.
I was getting hard now. My heart simultaneously felt so full and like it could break at any moment. My brain was a storm of emotions, good and regretful but also completelynotregretful, all at once.
All I knew was that I wanted him.
I leaned forward on my barstool toward him. There wasn’t much distance between us to begin with, but there was even less now, as I closed the gap between us. I hovered there for a moment, hesitating, not sure what I was even thinking. I wasn’t thinking, really.
He hummed softly, his gaze flitting from my lips to my eyes. He reached up his hand, moving it from my thigh to the side of my face, gently stroking his thumb along my hair.
“I shouldn’t be doing this,” he murmured, his voice a low rumble that tugged at every cell in my body.
“I know.”
