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“Never better.”
The feeling of his long, solid fingers running through my hair is euphoric. I sigh, settling against him further. His jumper is soft and smells like him. Pine trees, rainwater, and his natural sweat. I could fall asleep enveloped by him and rest for a thousand years.
“Your hair is soft,” he says quietly.
He wraps one blonde lock around his finger and tugs lightly. It feels good.
“Thanks, but it’s just like that naturally. My mom has the same hair, but hers is a lot longer than mine.”
Wesley hums, trailing into silence once again as he works his way through my hair. His hand moves too far, slipping down the side of my face as he rubs behind my ears. One of his fingers grazes the corner of my mouth.
We both freeze. Wesley’s gaze burns like a flame. I don’t think about what I do next, I just part my lips and let his finger slip into my mouth.
Fuck. Wesley’s finger is in my mouth. Touching my sharp canines, grazing the tip of my tongue, and it tastes like cocoa powder. It should be illegal, how right this feels.
“Ollie,” he says, breathless.
I feel him tense up beneath me. Every muscle in his body goes rigid and he stops scratching my scalp. When I lift my head to look at him, he jumps up like he’s been burned.
I shiver, cold again without his heat. I miss his touch like a lost limb. It sounds crazy, but I also miss the taste of his fingers.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, a bit dazed.
Wesley mumbles something about checking the rest of the cabin and hurries off before I can tell him to wait. Oh, God. I leap off the couch, hot chocolate forgotten, and chase after him.
But I’m too late. Wesley stands at the threshold of a room, his arms crossed. I glance inside. There’s only one bed.
I tug on my hair, trying to calm my racing heart. “I’m so sorry.”
“Whatever for?"
I can’t tell if he’s angry at me as I stare at his back, muscles shifting under smooth skin. His large frame fills up the doorway, and I wonder what it would be like to climb him, to wrap my lean muscles around his bulk.
Focus, Oliver. Your friendship is on the line.
“I should have checked the booking before I made it. You hate touching people, and I knew that, and I was being dumb and incompetent. I didn’t think about where we would both sleep and I know I was an idiot-”
Rough, calloused fingers grab my chin and tilt my head up. Wesley looks at me calmly, his face passive though his eyes hold some indecipherable emotion.
“Ollie, it’s okay,” he says.
I frown. “Really? Because you can have the bed. I was being serious about that.”
“You'll freeze to death if you sleep on the couch.” He shakes his head. “You were right, body heat is important in temperatures like this. We can share the damn bed, it’s sufficient in size for both of us.”
Relief floods through me like a wave, and all the tension of the entire day seeps out of my body, leaving me wrung out and exhausted. My best friend doesn’t hate me. We’re really spending three days together on this mountain.
Three days of sharing a bed, wrapped in each other’s body heat. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.
3
“We should make snow angels.”
Wesley reacts like I suggested we become serial killers, shaking his head and folding his arms. He’s standing by the kitchen window, staring at the frosty landscape outside with a frown on his face. An empty plate sits in the sink beside him, remnants of pasta sauce on the surface.
It’s an hour after the whole bed debacle. The sun is setting but there’s enough light outside to make out the steady fall of snowflakes.
“The weather is getting worse, and nighttime is setting in,” Wesley says. “We should be getting ready for bed.”
