“Why do you look like you’re on the verge of a freak-out?” Miles's voice rumbled softly in my ear.
When I could only stare at him helplessly, his brow furrowed. Wordlessly, he scooted his chair back and stood up, motioning me to follow. We were toward the back of the lodge, and only those seated at our own table took note of Miles taking my hand and leading me toward the doorway. Once we passed through the threshold, he kept walking, leading me down the hallway and into an empty room.
Miles flipped on the lights, lighting up a large room with shelves lining the perimeter and a bundle of shelves in the middle. It was a storage room of some sort, probably for all the tables and chairs and decorations it would take to pull off events for a large crowd. Empty storage tubs sat open, the lids flung off as if someone had just rushed in to grab something really quickly.The air had the briskness of a room with a closed heating vent. I rubbed my arms to ward off the chill. Miles closed the door, and the space grew smaller. He filled every inch of the room. I leaned on one side, against the wall between the door and a shelf full of bins, bracing myself for this conversation. He watched me with cautious amusement, mirroring my stance against the wall, both of us facing each other but not touching.
“Now, one more time,” he said, “why are you freaking out?”
“I’m not freaking out,” I said, wiping my sweaty palms on my pants. “I’m concerned a very normal amount for a rational woman.”
“What are your concerns?”
His voice was so soft, so tender and sweet that I almost wanted to lie and tell him I had none and kiss him senseless right here. But when the kissing was over and we left tomorrow, I’d be right back where I started, which was, I’d say, a healthy 7 out of 10 on the freak-out scale.
“That this bubble will pop. Christmas is over. Tomorrow, we leave and go back to a place where you’re not some sweet and sexy alter ego moonlighting as a hot lumberjack man.”
“A hot lumberjack man?” He folded his arms across his chest, looking very pleased by this assessment.
I ignored him. “We have our rhythms at school. You do things to bug me, and I get mad at you for it.”
“That all sounds perfect to me.”
I stumbled on my rant. He kept breaking into my stride, leaving me not quite remembering what I was going to say next.
“Me annoying you and you pretending to hate it,” he clarified.
“These feelings will all go away when we’re back in the real world where we barely tolerate each other.”
He took a step closer. “Let me explain something to you. I’ve always liked you. I’ve had a massive crush on you since the second I started working at the school.”
I was all primed and ready to fire off more reasons at him, but instead, my mouth could only gape at him. “The second you started?”
“Yeah. You were like this big, brown-eyed, sexy librarian bombshell. Right out of my dreams.”
Another step closer. One more step and I would feel the heat from his body. “And I can’t imagine myself breaking up with the woman I’ve been into for nine months.”
Okay, that was a pretty good answer, even if it was hard to believe.
“Well, why were you so rude all the time? Telling me what to do and making fun of me?”
He sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. “The first time we met, I just poked my head into your room to say hi, and you looked up from your desk and gave me the biggest smile. To say I was blown away by that moment would be a massive understatement. Your smile lit up everything. And I stood there with my mouth open like a freaking idiot because I lost all words for about thirty seconds.”
Heat flamed my blushing cheeks at his confession. I remembered that moment so plainly. I was in the middle of reading essays at my desk when a knock at my door sounded. I looked up, and there stood the most attractive man I’d ever seen, grinning at me. I don’t care who you are, there was no way a person couldn’t return that smile. But our interactions after that initial meeting had been much more underwhelming.
“But then, I never saw that smile again—until we came to the lodge. From our first meeting, I had this idea of you as this vivacious woman, but I didn’t see that in almost any of your interactions at the school. You lit up for your kids, and you were real with Millie, but I watched you with everyone else, and it felt like you were always sizing down for your audience. Your smiles were fake. You took on everybody’s workload because you wouldn’t tell them no. You cleaned up after everyone. You edited papers without getting paid. I didn’t handle it the way I probably should have, but in my own stupid way, I thought I was trying to help you.”
I thought of Miles in the kitchen, not letting me wash Jason’s dishes, physically taking them out of my hands and putting them back in the fridge. I thought of all our other interactions together the past nine months. I had seen him as arrogant and bossy, but now…
“What’s next?” Miles asked.
“What?”
“You’ve still got your freak-out face on. What else are you worried about?”
“We work together,” I whispered. If he really wanted to know, I had to tell him all of my concerns.
He didn’t even flinch. “It’s not against the rules.”
“What if we break up? I’d have to change schools. Or you would. I’ve already done that once, and I…really like it at Stanton.”
His brow furrowed. “Why would you have to change schools?”
Were men really that dense?
“We work across the hallway from each other. Can you imagine how awkward that would be? What if it’s a bad breakup? One of us would have to go.”
A grin spread across his face. He was laughing at me, and suddenly, I wanted to punch him. I glared at him as I began to move away when his arm shot out, nudging me back against the wall, facing him. He removed his arm.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to laugh. How about this? If we ever break up, I promise I’ll make it a manageable amount of awkward. Nothing too terrible.”
A small smile managed to escape my lips, even as I tried to hold it back. I turned my face away. With a thumb and a touch as airy as a whisper, he turned it back.
“Hey,” he said softly. “I know what this is. I’ve seen the movies. I write the books. The part where one of us gets scared. Our dark moment. And I get it. It’s scary to go back somewhere when everything’s changed.” He grinned. “Especially with the fact that you have to face Millie again, knowing she was right about us. It’ll be the worst.”
Again, my stupid smile came back, unbidden. I shook my head and tried to press my lips together, unable to meet his gaze.
He took a step toward me, and my breath caught, though he still wasn’t touching me. I stared at the top button on his flannel shirt.
“But what about this? What if, instead of breaking up with each other, we just broke up with all the fake parts of this week? Let’s break up with the notion that any part of this has been fake. Because it hasn’t been fake for one second to me.”
I covered my face with my hands, unable to take the sweet fire in his eyes as he stared at me.
“What else?” he whispered. Warm hands slowly uncovered mine from my face. It was all so sweet, and his eyes were the kind of eyes I could get lost in. Inviting and warm. I wanted to wrap my arms around him so tight, but I couldn’t. Not yet. I wasn’t done, so I removed my hand from his and kept them lonely at my side.