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I guess she’s trying to give me a free pass to go fuck someone else. And I probably should, because how else are we going to return to normal? Except I don’t want to. I haven’t wanted to in a long time and I’m pretty sure I couldn’t even manage it right now.
I’ve got to get us back to where we were.
“I’m coming home,” I say, meeting her eye.
She shrugs. “Okay. Whatever.”
Mueller, who entered the room at some point during this conversation, watches the two of us as if we’ve gone insane. It feels like we have.
When I reach the cabin that night, after five solid hours away from her, I’ve convinced myself we’re going to be fine. I’m not an animal...I can sit next to her for an hour and behave.
I open the door. She’s on the couch watching TV, and before she’s even turned her head, my first impulse is to pull her flat and bury myself inside her.
It’s not going to be fine.
She curls up, making room for me. She’s watchingSouth Park,which has far less sexual tension thanGame of Thrones, but the tension remains between us anyway. Her throaty laugh has me bracing my thighs. She runs her thumb over her lip—I stop breathing.
And when she stretches her arms overhead, revealing half her midriff, I rise from the couch, unable to take another second.
“I’m beat,” I tell her, walking away without waiting for a response.
Nothing improves when I reach my room. I can smell her shampoo on my pillow. I fist myself, knowing it won’t do any good.
I think we ruined things. We’re never going back to the way it was.
* * *
I closethe bar a few nights in a row just so there’s no weirdness at home. I ignore her and she ignores me. It’s the only solution I’ve got.
On the third afternoon, she walks out of the office with her purse, something forlorn in her gaze. “I’m heading home,” she says. The emptiness in her voice pinches my chest hard.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she snaps. But her eyes are no longer bright the way they were.
That twinge of anxiety inside me expands. She’s closing herself off, and that’s when shit starts going very badly with her. “Kate, don’t lie to me.”
Her jaw shifts. I wait for her to lash out, but instead she simply releases a slow exhale. “I got used to hanging out with you. I guess I just need to get a life.”
I’m such a selfish prick. It’s fine for me to spend all my time in the bar and pretend I’m needed here, but what is she doing? The part of her life that I filled is empty again, the way it was when she first came back to town. “I’ll come home early tonight.”
She shakes her head. “You don’t have to do that. I’ll come up with something.”
“Kate.” I pause, waiting until she meets my eye. “Iwantto. You’re not the only one who got used to hanging out. We can go see a band.”
She hesitates before she nods in wary agreement. Of course she’s wary: it’s a terrible fucking idea. If I can’t even sit on a couch with her watchingSouth Park, how am I going to handle a whole night with her pressed against me like she was the last time, her tight little ass against my thighs, her rib cage rising and falling under my hands?
When I arrive at home, she’s ready to go—her hair down and wild, wearing a black leather jacket, stiletto heels, and a denim skirt that ends just beneath her ass. If she was trying to choose an outfit more likely to get me off, she couldn’t have.
Fuck. I can’t spend the night with her looking like that.
“What’s up?” she asks.
I open my mouth.Please don’t wear that. “Nothing. Let’s go.”
I steer her toward the truck because it seems safer, but the moment I climb in, I discover my error. Confined to the small space, I smell nothing but her rose-scented shampoo and body lotion. In my peripheral vision, all I see is inch upon inch of bare thigh way too close to my hand.
The times when you cave to a desire you’ve been fighting are almost never when you’re asking yourself if youshouldcave. They’re when you’ve been suppressing that desire for too long, telling yourself the answer isnoand that there won’t be a discussion about it. That’s when your primitive brain finally saysfuck you.
