Chapter Ten

Matt was definitely not fine.

If he had any sense, he’d have left the house. Instead he sat there, watching the clock, wondering what Lexi was doing. The unfortunate part was that he had a pretty good idea with whom she was doing whatever, and it was killing him.

He hadn’t imagined that moment between them earlier in the kitchen. And she wasn’t wrong to ignore it. But he didn’t know how either of them could pretend it didn’t happen. If she’d only laugh, agree that yeah, that was definitely weird, and start one of those stupid movies she liked, maybe for good measure toss some popcorn at his face, everything would be fine.

Once she moved on, things never would be the same between them, but he needed them to be okay. He could live with okay.

In the meantime, he was so distracted by the clock that he sat through thirteen minutes of an ad on his music app because he hadn’t noticed the skip option had popped up. Frustrated, he tossed his phone onto the sofa beside him. He thought about taking Waffles for a walk, but it was nearly nine at night and Waffles wasn’t the active sort. He was more of a warm boulder that required five pounds of food each day, and Matt had enough troubles without picking a fight with a dog that nearly outweighed him.

Eight fifty-five.

Fifty-six.

When headlights finally swept the wall seventeen minutes later, Matt jumped from the sofa and walked out just as Lexi and Dave stepped onto the porch. Lexi’s eyes flared wide, then narrowed, suspicion darkening them to an intriguing shade of cobalt.

“Can I help you?” she asked. It was a striking rendition of a customer service voice, which meant she was pissed, and he should probably sleep with his eyes open, just in case. But the damage was done. He had nothing to lose.

“I was worried,” he said. To his credit, it was the truth. He nodded at Dave, who seemed somewhat wary when he returned the gesture.

“If you’re so worried,” Lexi said, “maybe next time I should arrange a police escort. Oh, wait.” She crossed her arms across her chest. “This dad routine is getting old, Matt.” She turned her back on him to face the cop. In a much nicer tone, she said, “I had a great evening. Thanks for allowing me to tag along.”

“It was my pleasure,” Dave said. He threw another nod in Matt’s direction before saying to Lexi, “I’ll text you?”

“Please do,” Lexi said. She watched him get in his car, offering a final wave, and didn’t look at Matt again until Dave was out of sight. Finally, she turned to him. “What. Are. You. Doing?”

Despite the literal hours he’d spent thinking about this moment, he realized he wasn’t sure what to say to her. That his world seemed to spin a few degrees left of center when she was off falling for some other guy? That she meant too much to him to ever risk what they had, so why was she out there doing that exact thing? And wasn’t that the crux of it? Everything was in her hands, and he had nothing to do but watch every precious piece of it crumble, because he couldn’t any more hold on than he could let go.

She watched, expectantly, her ruined front porch moment with Dave probably at the forefront of her mind.

Matt knew he was out of line. He just didn’t know what to do about it. He kept everything casual, his fierce loves only those of his job, his mutt, and his friendship with Lexi. And now he saw her, but was it because her plans threatened to upend his life? And even if this growing awareness for her was real, why now? There wasn’t a thing in the world he could say to justify it to himself, much less her. And what would he say?

That he was so terrified of losing her that he didn’t know how to ask her for…what? A chance? The thought made heat prickle his skin.

“Is it really that easy?” he asked. He wasn’t sure what he meant, or what he wanted her to say. “You just join an app and a week later you have a date and just like that it’s real?”

“Whether it’s real has nothing to do with you, Matt. That’s between him and me.”

They stood there, her words lingering, the moments they had left between them so heavily numbered that every passing second seemed to echo and thud with unbearable finality. And in one of those miniscule slivers of time, or perhaps over a lifetime of them, he knew he couldn’t leave the questions unspoken.

He wouldn’t be the one who let go without first taking a chance.

He could agonize what was or should be right. He could spend all day trying to figure out his motives. He could worry for days about why everything had suddenly changed. But none of that mattered.

Because everything had changed, and she had every right to that. And maybe one day he’d find peace in such a monumental shift, but right now he had a narrowing window of time with her, and he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life wondering what he’d missed.

He took a step forward, causing her to tilt her head. “What’s real, Lexi?”

She looked up at him, unmistakable heat flaring in her eyes, softening the edges of her narrowed gaze. She might be annoyed with him for interrupting the tail end of her date, but the passion newly glinting in those fields of cornflower hadn’t sparked with that guy.

This was all for Matt.

She stood taller, not the least bit waylaid by his question. “It’s an adult relationship. Shared goals. Plans. Dreams. Taking a chance that something amazing is waiting.”

“Something amazing?” His heart pounded, like it knew. “Something like this?”

Before he could think, he was kissing her. Not the kind of event that happened and was done, but something that exploded into driving need, like every emotion he’d ever had for that woman demanded to be recognized in that moment.

And she stunned him.

She didn’t melt. It was more of a fiery surrender, a palpable shock that ricocheted between them, a longing that splintered and uncoiled until it found a tenuous resting spot on this new ground they’d charted. Everything he knew in that moment he felt through her. The softness of her lips. The sweet whisper of her breath. The instant surprise eclipsed with a quiet whimper. But undeniably, untouchably, the moment she kissed him back. The gravity of what he’d done hit him then, with all the subtlety of a shovel to the forehead, and he wasn’t sure if it was she who nearly brought him to his knees or the force of his own regret.

Not because this was the best damned kiss of his life.

But because he’d just ruined everything. He’d crossed that line and ruined a lifetime of Lexi and Matt.

She hesitated, and he felt it to his bones. Startled and beyond screwed, he broke free. With no distance between them, he muttered an oath, his lips dragging against hers as he spoke, her blue eyes fixed dangerously on him. Resigned to the fact that she was already plotting to render him nutless, he asked in a graceless demand, “Was that real enough for you?”

It took everything he had to form words. To breathe.

He felt her trembling in his arms and fully expected her to lay into him.

If only she would.

Instead, her voice shaky, face flushed, eyes wide and brimming with something he didn’t care to define, she simply said, “Is that all you’ve got?”

He stared, not sure he’d heard her right. He was two inches from her, and he was 98 percent sure of the fact that she’d just intentionally grazed his erection with her fingertips. She’d developed a real habit of that lately, only this wasn’t a carnival in front of a few hundred people. This was personal.

“Lexi…” He couldn’t find any more words. It was the worst possible time to say the wrong thing, but he wasn’t sure what the right thing was. Probably walking back to his room and closing the door and pretending this never happened, but not even an actual saint could walk away from this woman.

His next move didn’t come close.

He didn’t walk.

He dove in.

In one smooth motion that utterly defied the flailing in his head, he walked her backward into the house, fumbling with the latch, both of them nearly falling over the sofa-sized dog that waited just inside. He regained his balance and kicked the door shut, knocked off-balance a second time when he managed to slam his ankle on the corner of the wood. He recovered and didn’t give it a second thought, because holy hell, this was Lexi. His fingers wound through her hair, her name on his lips, he swore every word he knew and then some that this wasn’t really going to happen.

But it was.

They slammed against the wall, his arms around her taking the brunt of the impact. He freed one, then the other, snatching at her shirt, her bra, closing his mouth on the first nipple he saw. The moment, the taste of her, was a reckoning. Her fingers tore through his hair, her head making an unceremonious thump when she arched against the wall. With the impact, a nearby picture crashed to the floor, sending shards of glass flying, but all he could think about was the sensation of that tight nipple piercing his tongue. How she wriggled against him, gasping, riding him through his pants, about to finish him that way.

Blindly, he fumbled in his pocket, knowing he had to have a condom in there somewhere. He found it, and it was all he could do to stop twisting his tongue against the sharp bud of her breast to shove enough of his clothing down and out of the way to get the damned thing on.

Her heat assaulted him from somewhere in his abdominal region, where he had her pinned against the wall. She wore a skirt—the one and only reason he’d ever be glad she went out with that loser—and while it offered precious little protection for his own sanity, it made sinking headfirst into a bad decision a hell of a lot easier than it ever should have been.

He barely had to touch her to find she was ready, and if he spent a single solitary second ruminating on exactly how ready she was, he’d be done. He ignored it, pushing the thought away, yanking on her underwear until it had enough give for him to work around.

She met his moment of hesitation with a phantom thrust, so hot and needy and leaving what felt like gouges with her fingernails across his back that he would have gone blind with lust if he hadn’t been so determined to see her. In that moment he existed in the stunning clarity of her eyes and the way her lips were swollen and pink and trailing his name in a whisper that distracted him from the sting of her nails at his nape.

His last chance to walk away. To have a prayer of undoing this.

Fuck that.

He entered her in a single thrust that sent two more picture frames to the hardwood floor in a hail of shattering glass. He ignored them. The whole world could crash and burn and he wouldn’t have noticed. Not in that moment, when he was buried in this woman who already trembled around him. He ached, his legs shaking with the need to drive into her, but she was so close, her body so tight he couldn’t do anything but oblige. He was already deep, afraid he’d hurt her, but the moans she breathed when he ground against her didn’t originate from pain.

It was her body taking some unholy revenge, squeezing and milking him until he couldn’t take it anymore. He gave in and withdrew, slamming back into her liked he’d been starved and had just found salvation.

She gasped, her nails digging deeper. It was all he could do to breathe, to find the blue of her eyes. That was the contact he craved the most, he realized. The rest thrummed in a disbelieving haze, but they grounded him in a way that let him know this was real.

Oh, my God, she whispered. Profanity followed. Then his name. Harder.

He obliged, drowning in it. What the actual fuck, Lexi.

Her orgasm ripped through him like it was his own. Instantly, he went over the edge, rocking his hips, pulsing and rolling deep inside her, capturing her moans with a hungry kiss that started off frantic and turned sweet, deep, and lazy, shuddering around them.

And then reality came crashing in.

Nothing. Nothing had ever been that damned good. And there was no way he hadn’t just lost her. She wanted forever, and that wasn’t something he’d ever been tempted to give anyone. Maybe one day he’d have tried, maybe he would have failed, but he couldn’t live with himself if he ever failed Lexi, and he didn’t know how to promise her that he wouldn’t.

“Oh my God,” she murmured. And she sounded more stunned than elated.

Well, that was his cue to exit. Fighting for balance against hot battering waves of dizziness, he started to set her down, but then he realized she wore only one shoe. The other was across the entry, a shard of glass sitting daintily atop it. Dazed, still holding her, still inside her, he stumbled, carrying her to the sofa several feet away. That had avoided the fallout zone, but he was pretty sure he hadn’t.

He eased her to the cushions, and in the most awkward post-sex moment of his life, withdrew from her while his legs shook, a tidbit that the porch light seemed to spotlight through the glass. That picture window was getting an eyeful now, for sure. And so was Lexi. Her gaze stayed pegged on him until he cleared his throat. She turned a delectable shade of pink and averted her eyes.

Good luck finding that from an app, he wanted to say, but he was shaken to the core. That wasn’t some random hookup.

That was trouble.

Remembering her earlier question, if that was all he had, he asked, “Better?”

It didn’t sound like the joke he’d intended. In his head, it sounded like he wanted her to tell him it was the best sex she’d ever had in her life. That maybe they should get a snack and attempt it a second time, but in the horizontal position. That if something that good could happen against the wall, that they’d never have to get out of bed again.

He wanted her to tell him she wanted him.

Instead, he got a shaky grin he didn’t want to trust. And for good reason, because she nearly tore him in two when she sat up, adjusted her skirt, and hit him with, “That was a respectable attempt.”

He managed to keep his jaw screwed shut. She was teasing him—she had to be—but he’d been kidding himself if he thought this could have ended any other way. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know what she really thought.

That was his cue to throw back a joke, to keep things light, to make sure there was still air left in the room to breathe. Unfortunately, all he could think about was where they’d go from here—or, rather, the impossibility of them going anywhere.

And then she was standing, her face a mask of uncertainty and something he prayed wasn’t regret. He wanted to say he didn’t regret it, that if that was all he ever had of her, he already had more than any one man deserved.

Once again, the words wouldn’t come, and finally she just left.

He couldn’t watch her go. He had no clue what would happen if he followed, so he stayed behind, cleaning up the literal glass and the figurative pieces, wondering what the hell had just happened. Knowing that whatever it was, things were forever changed between them.

One way or another, what they’d had was gone.