Lucas leaned down, taking a bite from the other side and licking the cream off his lips. He savored it, exactly like I knew he would, keeping his eyes on mine as he did. He swallowed. “And after thanking you, I would have respectfully disagreed.” I tilted my head, watching all lightness leave his expression. “Because I would have known then”—Lucas stepped forward, his chin dipping to look straight into my eyes—“that I’d been single only because no one had ever stolen my attention, scattered my thoughts so effortlessly. So completely. Not the way you did.”
His words danced around us, waltzing straight into my heart.
The energy shifted as we stared into each other’s eyes, a hundred thousand unsaid things hanging between us.
The air around turned thicker, heavier, and I thought I heard thunder in the distance, but I’d been sucked into a vacuum. I couldn’t care about anything but him. Us.
Lucas snatched the half-eaten cake from me. Then he removed the blanket from my shoulders, took my hand in his, and placed his other one on the small of my back.
“And then,” he told me in a voice I had never heard from him. One that I’d never ever forget. “I would have begged you to save me a dance. Or two. Or every dance until the night was over and our feet hurt. And after that, I would have begged you to please let me take you home with me. To my bed. Into my heart.”
I felt myself expand, float away and up into the stormy sky. Adrift if not for Lucas’s arms holding me back.
As if he had known, he pulled me closer, starting to move along to the music, and in silence, we danced. We spun and swayed, his arms around me and my cheek coming to rest on his chest. And I swore, in that moment nothing, not a single thing in the world, could have taken me away from him. Not a thunderclap, not the place bursting into flames, not even the apocalypse or King Kong climbing the side of the building we were in.
Not one single thing.
Because I was in Lucas’s arms, and I knew how ephemeral this moment was. How soon I would lose this, him, his body around mine. I’d have nothing but a memory. An imprint that would fade.
That was probably why, when the sky was lit with a lightning bolt, I didn’t find it in me to care. To let go of him.
And when the clouds above us shook with a peal of thunder, I remained in Lucas’s arms.
Not even when the sky opened and water started pouring on us, did I move to leave his arms.
It was Lucas’s chest that shook under my face with laughter and a curse. “For Christ’s sake.”
I shook my head, my arms tightening around his waist. “I don’t care about the rain.”
“You’re getting drenched, Rosie. We should go.”
“No,” I told him, looking up so he could see my face. “I’m okay, right here. I don’t want to go.”
Another thunderclap roared, as if the sky was trying to prove a point.
Without giving it any thought, Lucas took off his jacket as best as he could with my arms around his waist and held it above my head. He met my gaze. “Rosie, please. You’re going to get sick. You can’t get sick, what about your book? Your deadline is in less than three weeks. You’re on the clock. Let me take you home.”
There he went, with my heart again. Putting me first. Making it even more impossible for me not to love him the way I did.
“What about you, though?” I shook my head, feeling my hair stick to my cheeks because the jacket above my head was now dripping water, too. “What if I want to take care of you, too?”
Lucas swallowed.
“What if you’re important to me, Lucas?” I told him, because he was. He needed to hear it. I placed my palms on his chest and said very slowly, “What if I wanted to be the person you let take care of you, too?”
Lucas’s expression changed, morphed. As if he couldn’t compute my words.
Which was probably why I continued, “You’re always watching over me, taking care of me. Helping me.” I watched his eyes close, his head shake. “Giving me everything without asking for a single thing in return. And I… I want to give you things, too. I want to give you everything. I want you to want that from me, too.” I felt my chest heaving, heart racing, daring me to ask the question I knew I shouldn’t. “Do you want that from me, Lucas?”
Lucas stared at me as if my words had been nothing but a blow to his chest. As if I’d just hit him, punched him, and knocked him stunned. He remained silent as water fell in rivulets down his face and gathered at his jaw.