It’s worse than blackmail.
Worse than tearing apart my café.
Worse than his anger and irritation with me.
It’s forgiveness.
I blink and try to make myself believe it’s something else, but I can’t.
Not when he opens his stupid sexy mouth again. “I’m not mad at you.”
Fuck. “You should be.”
“I get it. I would’ve ghosted me too.”
“I was an asshole.”
“You were brutally honest until the very end, and you did what you thought you needed to do to protect both of us.”
“Stop making excuses for me.” Keep making excuses for me.
His gaze doesn’t waver, but something shifts in his eyes.
Recognition.
Like he gets why I want him to be mad at me. Like he understands that it’s easier to keep people at arms’ length and only let them so far in.
Laney and Emma? My mom? Grandpa?
They’re in.
Emma not talking to me is horrific. I’m hiding from facing it, but it is. It’s bad on a losing my grandma level, and it reminds me of every relationship I’ve ever seen go south.
Which is a lot of relationships.
I’m feeling that thing with Emma that I’ve shielded myself from, and having Grey forgive me right now almost makes me feel like Emma’s forgiven me.
Like I’m still worthy of being someone’s friend.
Or more.
Like it could be okay, even knowing the pain that’s come from my friendship with Emma being up in the air.
“Who told you that you have to be perfect?” All of his intense focus is trained on me, his eyes flicking over my face like he’s taking stock of how every teeny tiny muscle is reacting to the question.
“Me,” I whisper. “Perfect is—”
“Safest.”
“Yes.” I blink and pull back. “No. No. Laney’s the perfect one. The safe one. I’m the gossip. I don’t have to do anything right. I just have to know—”
“How to use it all right,” he finishes for me.
Nailing it.
Again.
He shifts, and I realize he’s been moving this whole time without me noticing it.
And now he has me trapped between his two long, solid arms, my back to the prep table, him leaning into my bubble, and oh my latte, this.
“My parents blamed me for existing for my entire life,” he says quietly, no hiding, no blinking, no hesitation. “I was the accident. The highest-maintenance. The one who wasn’t supposed to disrupt their lives. So I made myself as small as I could be. But fuck that. We get to exist. We get to make mistakes. We get to be wrong. Even when we know we’re being wrong. We’re human. And right now, I want to make another very big mistake with you.”
13
Grey
Bad idea.
Bad, bad idea.
I should not want to kiss Sabrina right now. I shouldn’t be trapping her against the table. I shouldn’t be telling her any damn thing at all about my life.
But it’s so damn good to see her. To feel her. To breathe in the coffee-and-soap scent of her and watch her bright eyes study me while her lids lower and her breathing comes faster and she darts that quick pink tongue out to lick her lower lip.
“Mistakes hurt,” she breathes.
“You don’t date.”
“You don’t miss much.”
“I don’t date.”
“You’re doing very bad math.” She clearly knows where my brain is going.
“Math is my expertise,” I tell her.
Her fingers curl into my shirt right at my breastbone. Both hands, clutching the buttons on my shirt for dear life. “Do you have any idea how much I could hate you? How much I should hate you?”
“I’m good with you hating me.”
Her lips unexpectedly curve up. “Stop being funny.”
“I wasn’t joking.”
“You’re a disaster.”
“Welcome to the club, Duchess.”
She whimpers, and that’s the last thing I hear before she tugs my shirt and leans forward, planting those lips on mine, plump and hot and hungry.
“Don’t—call me—that,” she breathes against my mouth.
“Want you—hate me,” I breathe back.
She’s nipping and licking and sucking and I’m not in a cold silver-and-white kitchen in a snowy mountain town.
I’m surrounded by heat and humidity while waves roll to shore, my hands roaming over the soft cotton of her T-shirt down to the curve of her hips under her thick pants.