Practice Makes Perfect (When in Rome, #2)(53)
He pauses immediately and pulls back.
“I’m not ready yet,” I say in a nervous rush. “I’m sorry…I thought I would be, but then as things started progressing—”
Will immediately cups my face, cutting me off. “Don’t apologize. No explanation needed.”
“I feel bad.”
“Don’t.” He adjusts to his side, resting on his forearm and then using his free hand to pull my hand to his mouth. He kisses my inner wrist with a tenderness that surges to my soul. “You don’t owe me—or anyone else—anything, Annie. Just kissing you is a gift. One that…” His brows pinch together and he pauses, idly playing with my fingers. When he looks at me again, I see something so raw in his eyes I never expected to see: fear.
I never do learn what he was going to say. I expect Will to leave, but he sighs and pulls me over to rest my head on his chest, holding me so tight it feels like he’s afraid I’m going to fly away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Will
Sunlight hits the back of my eyelids, and I drag in a quick inhale. I’ve been sleeping like a rock. Like the dead. Like…I’m not alone.
Shit, shit, shit.
I open my eyes to the sight of bananas and blonde hair. Annie is tucked up close to me, leg draped over mine, head in the crook of my bare shoulder and hand splayed out on my chest. She’s breathing deeply—sound asleep. We must have fallen asleep together after…Damn, I don’t even know what to call last night. It definitely wasn’t just a kiss. It was devastating.
This is not good.
And by not good, I mean the Entire Situation is not good. I’m overwhelmed. There’s a lot happening inside me that I don’t know what to do with. I’m feeling things for Annie that I didn’t know I was capable of feeling. Normally, by now, I’m bored in a relationship. This isn’t even a relationship with Annie, and I’m clawing out of my skin with a need to be more for her. To always be around when she needs me. To be the kind of man I never saw modeled growing up.
And yet—can I trust it? Can I trust myself with her? Would she even want a man like me with so much baggage and heartbreak to share a life inside her white picket fence? I feel like the biggest hypocrite alive to be desiring more with Annie when I just told my brother to pump the breaks with the woman he loves. But I didn’t realize…
Maybe there is hope for us.
Or maybe I should take a step back and think about it without this lushly curved woman pressed up beside me.
It was a bad idea to ever come back to Rome. To let Annie touch me. Kiss me. Turn me inside out. It was so much easier when I thought I wouldn’t like a relationship and that I didn’t want to run the risk of ending up in a position similar to my parents’. Because what other option is there for someone who endured eighteen years of a hate-filled marriage between his parents? When infidelity and emotional abuse were all I saw? There was no tenderness. No patience. There were insults and harsh reprimands and me wondering if that night was going to be the one when all their yelling was going to end with my dad hitting my mom or her leaving us for good to sleep with some other guy.
But neither of those things happened. Ethan and I were always just waiting on the precipice of something terrible—wondering when it would break. It never did—and I guess I’m thankful for that. Instead, their marriage fizzled out in an anticlimactic way that led me to believe that maybe what they had was just normal. They divorced after Ethan and I left home and then acted as if all the hell they put us through never happened. Like I never became a man who avoids real relationships at all costs because all I’ve ever known are painful ones. A man who in no way trusts himself with a woman as good and hopeful and lovely as Annie.
Until I met her and held her in my arms, I never knew I could be capable of so much tenderness. And I’m not talking about sex. I’m talking about tender conversations. Tender words. Tender understanding. Even the way she breathes against my neck while she sleeps is tender—and I want it. All of it. I’m just not sure it’s sustainable or that I want to find out if it’s not. Ever since I realized I could climb that magnolia tree in my backyard, I’ve been very good at protecting myself and avoiding anything that could cause me more pain.
The woman I’m holding has the potential to cause me more pain than anyone else ever has. And I sure as hell can do the same to her. I have no idea where to go from here.
For now, I need to get moving. The sun is still soft and warm, just beginning to rise, which means it’s around my usual early morning wake-up time. If I hurry, I can still get out of here without anyone noticing. Maybe even before Annie notices.
But when I look down, trying to assess the best way to extricate myself, instead of moving away, I watch my fingers curl tighter around her side. I notice everything about Annie that I shouldn’t. Like how her eyelashes curl on the ends and are blonde at the base. How she has lots of small freckles across the bridge of her nose. And I notice the way she curves into me perfectly. I honestly didn’t take Annie for a snuggler. “I always keep my hands to myself…. But with you…” Those words echo loudly in my head.
She’s draped fully over me, weighing me down in the most incredibly affectionate way. I keep my fingers light against her side even though I want to curl them into the adorable banana-printed fabric of her PJs and then proceed to peel them off one by one. I want to roll her over and wake her up with kisses down her neck and over her stomach. I want to kiss her and not stop.