Page 36 of So This Isn't Love
Yes to him.
Yes despite the tangle of emotions and desire dancing chaotically inside me.
That one small word keeps echoing somewhere under my ribs, getting bigger, like I just agreed to a great deal more than a walk. And from the way the corner of his mouth moves, quiet,careful, nothing in it for the room, he heard it exactly that way too.
Two blocks. Alone. In the dark, with Finn Bardot.
I finish my beer standing up.
CHAPTER 15
FINN
Evan gives me a thumbs-up so subtle that the entire bar sees it.
Then the pub door swings shut behind Darcy and me, and it's just us on a quiet sidewalk, two blocks from her apartment over the bookshop.
We walk for a while, saying nothing. Which feels strange as hell, because normally I hate silence almost as much as I hate staying still. I have talked my way onto unfriendly boards of directors, off of deadly mountains, and out of at least one foreign jail.
Two blocks alone with Darcy Gable and I've got nothing. Not a line, not an opener, nothing. In spite of what happened Sunday afternoon in the library parking lot—or maybe because of it—the silence between us isn't awkward. It's loaded. There's a difference, and my whole body knows which one this is.
"Go ahead," she finally says. "Gloat. You've been holding it in for half an hour and I'd hate for you to strain anything."
I grin. "I don't need to gloat. The scoreboard speaks for itself."
She rolls her eyes. "You won by one question."
"A dynasty fell tonight, Gable. History doesn't care about the margin."
"It was trivia night. The prize was just a bar tab."
"And the title. I'm having jackets made. Satin. 'Long Shots, Champions' across the back. I'll send one to the school. They can hang it next to my old lacrosse trophy from senior year."
Her mouth twitches. She's fighting it and losing, and watching Darcy Gable lose a fight with her own mouth is my new favorite spectator sport.
She tucks her dark, wavy hair behind her ear and the streetlight catches the line of her neck. I want my mouth on that soft patch of pale skin. That's not a complicated thought. It doesn't come with a plan or an angle. I just look at the curve of her neck where it disappears into that cardigan and Iwant. The same way I've been wanting all night, every time she leaned over the answer sheet, every time she laughed.
The cardigan is modest, even matronly. Or rather, it would be on any other woman. Whoever designed it never watched Darcy Gable walk. It moves when she moves, and underneath it she is all soft curves and warm skin, and I have spent the past few hours not staring with a failure rate I'd fire an employee over.
"So," she says. "Manhattan's trivia scene is soft, huh?"
"Nope. I lied. It's brutal. They use apps there. Nobody makes eye contact."
She laughs. Hearing it on a dark sidewalk, aimed at me, beats reaching the summit of anything I've ever climbed.
When she turns her head to glance at me it's all I can do to keep my hands at my sides. What I want to do is slide my palm around the soft looking skin of her nape and pull her against me.
"So, you came to the pub just for eye contact?" She's staring at me as she says it, and I decide then and there that eye contact is the sexiest thing I've ever seen.
"I came because Evan insisted I had to. The eye contact was a bonus."
Her smile widens, making those amazing gold-flecked, hazel eyes of hers crinkle a little in the corners. She glances down for a beat. "I think Evan and Annie conspired a bit tonight. She insisted I had to come too."
I raise my brows like I'm surprised, but I saw how my brother could barely take his eyes off Darcy's friend. Even though I didn't want to be social tonight, I have to admit it's been a long time since I had so much fun. All because of the woman walking next to me right now.
As for my own state of fixation, I spent half the night noticing things about Darcy I had no business noticing. The way she chews the end of her pencil when she's sure of an answer or sets it down with a tap of the eraser when she's not. The way that cardigan slid off one shoulder every time she leaned over the answer sheet. The way she laughed at Evan's worst joke with her head tipped all the way back, and the bar light caught her throat, and I lost whatever Colton was saying to me mid-sentence.
Normally, I'd have something smartass to say right about now but walking on the quiet sidewalk next to Darcy with the streetlights casting dim yellow circles on the cracked concrete makes all my jokes and charming quips dry up. I want to slow our pace, make the remaining block last as long as possible.
