Page 127 of Reckless
I stood there in the sand trying to pull myself together, and I was smiling.
I was smiling because I was truly, stupidly happy.
And that was so much more reckless than guilt would’ve been.
Xerses bent, picked up my jeans and sweater, and handed them to me without a word.
That shouldn’t have been romantic, but it was.
He was still gentle.
His attention stayed on my face, not my body, while I stepped into my jeans.He was making sure I was okay.I pulled my jeans up and laughed softly under my breath because this was my life now.
He looked at me.“What.”
“Nothing.”
“That’s not true.”
“You don’t get to read my face after that.Give a girl five minutes.”
“Your face is extremely readable.”
“That is deeply offensive.”
“It’s a compliment.”
“It’s not.Compliments make people feel good.You make me feel exposed.”
“Those aren’t mutually exclusive.”
“For you, maybe.”
I looked up at him then.
At the man standing barefoot in the sand, hair devastated by my hands and the wind, mouth kissed raw enough that I wanted to kiss him again for how beautiful he looked afterward.
And I said the truest thing I had.
“I’m trying hard not to look too pleased with myself.”
That got me a real smile.
His eyes sharpened.“Unearned.”
I shrugged one shoulder, shy in a way I hadn’t been a second ago.“I don’t know.It ” I looked down at my sweater in my hands and then back up.“I’ve spent so long making jokes about my dating life and being the last one left and all of that, and now I feel like I’m standing on a beach after having sex with the man I wanted most and, ”
I stopped because even for me that was a lot.
His whole face altered anyway.
Something softer.
Something that looked like he was absorbing the weight of what I’d said and trying not to make me regret giving it to him.
“That doesn’t sound unearned,” he said quietly.“That sounds overdue.”
That thing he did.
