Page 94 of Reckless
Kelly sat back first, the smile gone but not erased.Just banked.
The rest of the night moved in fits.Charlie dancing badly.Hope dancing well enough to make him worse by comparison.Miley pretending she did not like bars while clearly enjoying the music.Avril and Kir disappearing onto the little outside deck for ten quiet minutes and coming back looking happier.Jeff and Michael in conversation deep enough to be disarming and boring at once.
And me.
Watching Kelly.
Enough to know Kelly knew it now and occasionally, very occasionally, did things like turn her head at just the right speed while talking to someone else so that I caught the line of her throat and had to deal with that instead of basic rationality.
By the time we left, I was in a worse mood than I’d arrived in and decided I wanted to claim her.
The walk back out to the cars took us along the marina boards under strings of lights and salt-heavy dark.The group stretched ahead in pieces.Charlie and Hope.Jeff and Miley.Avril and Kir.Michael and Britney somewhere just beyond them.Enough distance.Enough sound from the water and the bars behind us that the air around Kelly and me felt half-private.
She’d dropped back beside me.For thirty seconds, we walked.
Then she said, “Ben really bothered you.”
I looked down at her.“More than he should have.”
She agreed as if that confirmed something.“It’s not about him.”
No.It wasn’t.He tensed but said, “It’s about the fact that I’m used to wanting you when I’m the only one who knows it.”
Kelly slowed half a step them met my gaze.
Moonlight, marina lights, the spill from the bar windows behind us, everything found her face and made it look softer.She sucked in her lip for a second, gazed at me, and then asked, “And now?”
I held her gaze.“Now I know other men would want the same thing.”
Her breath caught.
“I don’t know what to do when you say honest things like that,” she said quietly.
I stepped closer.
Not touching.
“You could say what you want back.”
She looked up so fast the movement was almost sharp.And then, we had thrown safety to the wind under the alcohol, she said, “I liked seeing you jealous.”
That one went through me like a strike.“That is a dangerous thing to say on a boardwalk at night.”
“I know.”
“You said it anyway.”
“I said it because it’s true.”
“Kelly.”
“What.”
“Because what I want to do with it is not appropriate for a public walkway.”
Her breath caught.I stared at her.
She stared back.
