Page 81 of Checking It Twice
“Clare.”
She turns to face me, and I catch the way her breath hitches when she realizes how close I am. The firelight catches the gold flecks in her dark eyes, and I’m struck again by how beautiful she is—not just physically, but in the way she carries herself, the way she thinks, the way she fits into my family like she’s always belonged there.
“This is dangerous territory,” she whispers.
“I know.”
My hand comes up to trace the line of her jaw, and she leans into the touch for just a moment before catching herself. The flinch is small, barely noticeable, but I feel it like a physical blow.
“I’m not him,” I say quietly.
“I know that too.”
“Do you?”
Instead of answering, she looks at me with those intelligent eyes that see too much. “What are we doing, Mitch?”
The question hangs between us, loaded with everything we haven’t said, everything we’re both too scared to want.
“I don’t know,” I admit. “But I know I don’t want to stop.”
Something flickers across her face—want, fear, possibility. Before I can analyze it too closely, I’m leaning in, drawn by gravity and need and the way she’s looking at me like I might be worth the risk.
The kiss is soft, testing, nothing like the desperate heat we’ve shared before. This is a question more than a demand, and when she responds—her lips parting under mine, her hand coming up to rest against my chest—it feels like an answer.
We stay like that for a long moment, kissing slow and sweet by the firelight, her taste mixing with rum and cinnamon on my tongue. It’s perfect and not enough and exactly what I didn’t know I needed.
When we finally break apart, we’re both breathing harder.
“I should probably go get ready for bed,” she says, but she doesn’t move.
“Probably.”
“Early flight tomorrow.”
“Yeah.”
She’s still looking at me like she’s trying to memorize my face, like she’s already missing something she’s about to lose.
“Mitch—”
“I know,” I say, because I do. I know this is complicated, know she’s scared, know I should probably let her go upstairs and pretend this conversation never happened.
But I also know that watching her walk away from this, from us, feels like losing something I didn’t know I could want this much.
“Good night, Clare.”
“Good night.”
She stands slowly, smoothing down her sweater, and I watch her walk to the doorway. She pauses there, hand on the frame, and for a moment, I think she’s going to say something else.
Instead, she just looks at me one more time—long enough for me to see the same want, fear, and possibility reflected in her eyes that I feel swirling inside me.
Then she’s gone, leaving me alone with the fire and the taste of her on my lips and the growing certainty that I’m not ready to let this end tomorrow.
Chapter Thirty-Three
The Long Game
