I saw his throat move around a swallow before he said in a gravelly voice, “Trust me, I am.”
“Charlie,” I said, smiling as I looked at his face. Those dark eyes, slashing brows, that prominent nose—I loved his face. I mean, I liked his face. My heart was in my throat as my gaze moved all over him, traveling everywhere. I didn’t dare bring my eyes back to his, yet I couldn’t keep them away.
He was looking at me, his gaze intense as if he’d been waiting for me to see him. I felt like I couldn’t breathe as those dark-as-night eyes dipped to my lips, and then his face was moving closer to mine.
I felt light-headed as I watched him because I knew—I just knew—that this was no longer a game of pretend.
And it didn’t make sense, but I didn’t want it to.
This was Charlie’s mouth coming down on mine. This was my lips, opening for him in the yawning darkness of the living room. My shaking hands moved up to his shoulders as I felt his big, warm hands on my hips, and my breathing went choppy as his went deep.
My mind went wild as he kissed me, playing a montage of Colorado Charlie memories that made me feel things for him. The way he’d grinned when we sprinted through multiple gas stations. The vulnerability he’d shown about whatever anxiety issues he was dealing with.
His calm Is that a goose question while Scott wielded footwear.
And the way he’d pulled me into his arms when I was sad—oh God.
He lifted his mouth for a second—only a breath away—and said, “Bay.”
But he didn’t just say it. His voice was deep and hot, and he spoke my name as if it were a curse or an exaltation, something that moved him, for better or worse.
He angled his head, his fingers clenching against me in a way that made me feel the heat of his hands through my flannel pants, and then he sent full-sex kisses into my mouth. I felt like my heart was going to explode as he fed me long, hot, deep tastes that made my toes curl under my blanket.
I gripped his shoulders harder, needing, which made him lift his head again. He didn’t say anything this time as he looked down at me, and it didn’t feel like he needed to. The eye contact was somehow sweet, questioning, and hot, all at once.
His mouth lowered, but before our lips touched, Charlie’s head jerked up. “Did you hear that?”
“What?” I hadn’t heard anything, but I was also wildly disoriented, as if just regaining consciousness after a year in a coma, so I probably wouldn’t have heard a freight train.
His eyes met mine, and I wished I could see what he was feeling, what he was thinking.
“Shit!” Charlie leaped off the pullout and fell to the floor, then scrambled over to the floor bed and covered himself with the blanket.
Then I heard it.
Footsteps on the stairs.
I lay there, my eyes squeezed shut as I pretended to be asleep, and Scott came down the stairs. I listened as he lumbered into the kitchen, and I heard him open a cupboard and turn on the sink. It felt like an eternity as he shuffled around in there.
Hurry the hell up!
Meanwhile, my brain was starting to chant on an endless loop, What the hell just happened what the hell just happened WHAT IN THE LITERAL HELL JUST HAPPENED ON THE PULLOUT?
Scott came out of the kitchen, and my heart actually started pounding harder when I heard him go up the stairs and close the door.
I held my breath and waited.
Was Charlie going to come back?
“Holy shit, that was close,” Charlie said from the floor on the other side of the room. “He would’ve flipped if he’d come down a minute earlier.”
“Yeah,” I said, unsure of what I should say. He sounded… normal, which was good, because I could easily picture him freaking out about this, and that was the last thing I wanted.
However, did I want him to be unaffected after what’d just happened?
I didn’t think so, because I was unbelievably affected.
“I’m turning on the TV,” he said, and I could hear the covers rustling. “If that’s okay.”
“Um. Yeah,” I said, pulling the covers up to my chin. Is he not going to say anything at all? That was strange, right? It was bizarre to behave as if that didn’t just happen, right?
Of course, there was no way I was going to bring it up.
No, it was much better to just lie there, wondering. Was he unaffected, or was he affected and unhappy about it? Was he regretting it? Was he chocking it up to additional practice time?
I rolled onto my side, so I was facing away from Charlie’s floor bed, and clenched my teeth to stop myself from sighing.
Because I knew without a doubt that I was going to be awake all night, neurotically wondering what the hell had just happened.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE Charlie
Generally speaking, I considered myself to be a smart dipshit.
I could ace a calculus test （when I wanted to） and get every answer right on Jeopardy!, but I wasn’t always good at making mature decisions.
See: Bailey Mitchell.
I stared at the TV, but I wasn’t even listening to the episode of Seinfeld that was playing because my brain wouldn’t stop screaming, WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?
The volume was so loud that I could hear nothing else.
What the fuck is wrong with me?
Kissing Bailey under the guise of fake dating—that was fine. Fucking funny, actually, that she and I were able to derive a little salacious pleasure from our plan to sabotage Scott. That, my friend, was what you called bonus material.
But kissing her because I looked into her eyes and just wanted to?
Such total dipshittery.
Because nothing good could come of it. I was certain Bailey was lying on the pullout, losing her shit this very second. She would freak out, things would get awkward, and everything would change.
It was asinine that I’d been careful enough to label her “coworker” instead of friend, just to ensure there was a mutual understanding between us, yet stupid enough to try to absorb her sadness into my body through osmosis because I didn’t like hearing her sound unhappy.
But her face; God, her face had been too much.
She’d looked at me through teary eyes, and all at once I’d seen someone whose scrape I wanted to kiss better, the funny friend I needed to convince of her worth, and a stunner whose lips beckoned to me with promises of deep, satisfied sighs.
Combine that with the emotional punch of connecting with every fucking word she’d used to describe her feelings about her family life, and what else could I do but kiss her?
Thank God for Scott, trudging downstairs like an unwieldy bear at a sleeping campsite, because I didn’t know what would’ve happened if we hadn’t been interrupted. I couldn’t speak for Bailey, but I knew I had lost total contact with my smart side. Dipshittery was in control, and I’d been a thousand percent focused on diving into the deep end and drowning myself in Bailey Mitchell.
What the fuck was wrong with me?
I had no choice. I had to fix this.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX Bailey
“You sure you don’t want to try?” Scott asked.
Scott and my mom were all smiles in their ski gear, and I told myself that her glowing face was all about this much-needed vacation, as opposed to a response to spending quality time with Scott.
“No, thanks,” I said, pointing toward the chalet café next to the lift. Charlie and I rode with them instead of going out on our own, aborting ghost town plans to make my mother happy, and we’d all had breakfast together at the Blue Moose before she and Scott changed into their gear. “I plan on reading by the fire with cocoa in my hands all day, only stopping to wave whenever you bunnies reload.”