Page 64 of Snowed In with Benefits

I look up at him and he’s looking at me, holding my gaze for just a little too long. His jaw is tight and there’s something working behind his eyes. Not desire, not exactly. I’ve seen desire. I’ve seen it on Hunter’s face in the office, on Beau’s face in the bath. This is something else. Something that looks like a man who has been holding something so tightly for so long that the effort of holding it is starting to show in the lines around his eyes.

He looks away without saying a word.

My pulse picks up. What does that mean? He didn’t take the exit. I handed it to him and he looked at it and looked at me and let it pass. Silence presses down on the room like thickening gravity. I can hear the fire popping and the wind outside, but they’re quiet compared to the sound of my own blood rushing in my ears.

Beau breaks the silence, his voice low. “I think you’re wrong about that.”

I glance at him, then look at Emmett. Emmett still isn’t denying it. He looks uncomfortable, shifting his weight from foot to foot, his big hands opening and closing at his sides like they’re looking for something to hold. A tool. A piece of wood. Something he can shape instead of saying. He turns to face Beau directly.

“This is your fault,” he snaps. “You and Hunter, fucking her right under my bedroom. I woke up to it. To the sounds of it. I heard everything, and it’s been driving me out of my mind.”

The words land like a detonation. The room goes so still I can feel the air stop moving.

My eyes widen. Holy shit. He did hear us. He heard everything. Every sound, every gasp, every moan, every whispered word. He lay in his bed, alone, in the dark, and he listened to me come apart for his brothers, and he didn’t say a word. Not the next morning. Not the morning after that. Not any of the mornings since. He just carried it, silently, the way he carries everything, and it’s been destroying him.

The air in the room is so charged I can barely breathe. My heart is hammering. I’m looking at Emmett and seeing him, really seeing him, for the first time. Not the gruff exterior, not the beard and the silence and the walls. The man underneath all of that. The man who made me hand balm because my skin was cracking. The man who burned a photograph because it made me sad. The man who gave me his shirt to sleep in and never once asked for anything in return.

The man who lay awake at night, listening to me with his brothers, wanting me, and never saying a word. Because he wouldn’t? Or because he couldn’t? I don’t know the answer, but I want to.

Hunter grins, heat in his eyes. “We had a deal, right? One time only. But Emmett never got his turn. Should we fix that? Do you want him, too?”

The question hangs in the air like a lit match over gasoline. I can feel all three of them watching me. Hunter with his easy heat. Beau with his knowing look. And Emmett, who still hasn’t looked at me again, who is standing there with his jaw clenched and his hands at his sides, waiting for me to say the thing that will either open the door or close it forever.

I hesitate, my heart thundering in my chest. I have a choice, here. I can deflect this whole thing, be the good girl, defuse the situation with lots of apologies and platitudes. I can laugh it off. I can say something about how we all agreed it was a one-time thing and we should stick to that and I’m sorry for the confusion and let’s just forget this ever happened.

I can hear my mother’s voice. I can hear Preston’s voice. I can hear every voice that ever told me to be smaller, quieter, less.

Good girls don’t do this.

Good girls don’t want three men.

Good girls don’t cross rooms to claim someone who isn’t theirs.

Good girls don’t burn with jealousy over a delivery woman touching someone’s arm.

Good girls apologize and smooth things over and make everyone comfortable, even if it means making themselves disappear.

I can do that. Or I can be honest.

I’m so tired of disappearing.

Swallowing hard, I nod.

26

JOSIE

Emmett saw me nod. I know he did. Hunter and Beau are looking at him. I’m looking somewhere that isn’t at any one of them, kind of all of them, but mostly I’m just looking miserable. I’m waiting for him to close off, shut down, walk away and hole up in his workshop until the whole house smells like pine and regret.

He looks at me. His eyes are blazing with intensity and they catch my gaze and I can’t look away. I swallow hard. So does he. I don’t know if that’s a good sign or a bad sign, but all I can do is stand here in this damnable silence and wait for him to say something. Grunt something. Walk somewhere. Give me anything at all to react to, because right now I’m just tying myself into knots.

He doesn’t move toward me, but he doesn’t let go of my gaze, either.

“Say it,” he says finally.

“Say what?” I ask, my throat trying to close around the words. Say I’m sorry? Say I was wrong, that I shouldn’t have done that? Say that Hunter was just teasing and he doesn’t mean anything by it, and by the way neither did I, and what do you want to have for dinner? I press my hands together, forcing my mind to stop racing for the briefest moment.

“Tell me what you want,” he says.