Page 62 of Worth the Fall

Our eyes hold and try to read what the other is saying. It’s then that I feel his hand tighten around mine and realize our fingers are still interlocked.

“I know a way we can mix both ice cream and alcohol,” he says, eyes never leaving mine.

“How?”

“Mudslides. They have them here.” My stomach rumbles. “You want one?”

“Like you have to ask.” I laugh when he raises his finger to the bartender before I even finish the sentence.

* * *

“I’m a big girl, Grant. I don’t need you walking me home,” I say and then giggle when I realize that I’m nowhere near the airstrip. But still. Saying it is like meaning it, right?

He swings our joined hands as he walks beside me. “I’m not walking you home. I’m walking you to my home since we aren’t sober enough to drive.” He veers off the sidewalk and up a short little path.

“Grant?” I ask as I take in the wood porch of the house in front of us.

“I know you’re a big girl, Em. I’m well aware of it.”

His words hang in the air, hitting my slightly fuzzy mind as I follow him up the steps to stand under the porch light. “Is that flirting, Malone? Are you flirting with me?”

He yanks on my hand, and I land solidly against him. It takes a minute for our minds to register what’s going on—that our bodies are pressed together—because we’re too busy making sure our wobbly feet don’t give out.

But when we’re steady, everything registers for me. The heat of his body against mine. The hardness of it, too. The hitch of his breath, answering the gasp of mine. The darkening of his eyes. The tensing of his hand on mine. The flick of his tongue across his bottom lip.

And, oh, how I want him to be flirting with me.

Better yet, I want him to be kissing me. All of me.

The thought makes me giggle as we continue to stand body to body, a lot a bit tipsy, beneath a dim porch light on an empty and darkened street.

“We shouldn’t do this,” he murmurs more to himself than to me. It cues the panic inside me, screaming that this insane display of foreplay between us needs to have the match lit before I combust from sexual frustration.

“Why not?”

“Because you’re Emmy.” He brings his free hand up and runs a finger down the side of my cheek.

That touch, skin to skin, is like a mainline of electric current to charge that slow, sweet ache burning inside me. It only serves to make me want more.

“And you’re Phony Maloney.”

“Exactly.”

He steps back, and I tighten my hold on his hand and step forward with him. “Are you telling me there is nothing here? No lust? No attraction? No anything?”

He gives me that sly smile of his again, the one that lights up his eyes and does funny things to my insides. “I never said that.”

“Then what are you saying?”

“I’m saying . . . Christ, Em, I don’t know what I’m saying.” He runs a hand absently up and down the plane of my back.

“Maybe you’re saying we need to get each other out of our systems.” I utter the words before I think them and then feel ridiculous.

“What?” He laughs. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

His body is against mine. His cologne is in my nose. His laugh is in my ears. He’s everywhere all the time.

Too much talk right now. Too much saying. Not enough action.