Page 137 of Reckless
My body turned toward it before my brain could issue a single warning.
I should have been worried about that.
Instead I was somewhere beyond worry and into the far more treacherous territory of romantic certainty.
Not forever.I wasn’t insane.
But certain in this:
I had made the right choice.
I wanted him again.
And if he watched me one more time like he was remembering the beach and trying to behave, I was probably going to drag him somewhere private and make that impossible.
Sixteen
The Line in the Sand
Kelly
The worst part about having the best sex with the right man was that afterward, all your old excuses died ugly.
That was what I realized around noon, standing alone in one of Roxanne’s guest bathrooms with a lip gloss wand in my hand and a smile I couldn’t seem to get rid of.
Not what have I done.
Just this ridiculous, glowing, body-deep certainty that I had made the right choice and all the old stories I’d told myself about why I hadn’t done it before were lying on the floor somewhere behind me, dead and useless.
I chose Xerses.
That was what made the glow feel so treacherous.
I twisted the gloss shut and stared at myself in the mirror.
I looked different.I mean I still looked like me, same eyes, same mouth, same hair and all, but something in me had softened or maybe the better word was settled.
Lightness entered me and I nodded.Yes, I felt settled into myself.
I laughed softly and shook my head at my own reflection.
“Get it together,” I muttered, but even that had no real force behind it.
I wanted more, more of him.
And maybe, if I was being completely recklessly honest with myself in Roxanne Norouzi’s giant white bathroom, I wanted more than just what happened and will happen again.
I wanted a future.Not a temporary lie.
I wanted a real future.
I opened the bathroom door and stepped back into the hallway, intending to go downstairs and pretend to be a normal woman with a normal amount of self-control.
The first thing I heard was Hope calling for me.Charlie responding too loudly.The whole house still in motion.
The sunroom had filled back up by the time we got there.Hope on the floor with one of the twins.Avril helping Roxanne go through something on her phone.Miley and Jeff in one corner with paperwork because those two needed legal documents to flirt properly.Charlie nowhere visible.
And Xerses,
