Page 9 of Too Good To Be True - A One Love Novella
I want to know what else makes her feel this way.
I want to be the one to make her feel this way.
The intensity of those twin thoughts shocks me, maybe even scares me a bit, given my past experience.
But everything feels so right about tonight.
And I know that we could easily spend the whole night in here kissing, but I also suspect she’ll be ticked if we don’t get out of here before the clock.
I separate.
She blinks. “Wow, now my head is foggy. I don’t know if I can concentrate.”
“I don’t know if I can either. But you know what I like more than kissing you?”
“I can’t believe there’s anything you like more than kissing me,” she pouts.
I loop a hand around her hip, my thumb stroking against her. “I like getting to know you.”
She practically purrs. “Herb, let’s get the hell out of here, go to a diner, and get to know each other more.”
We work, solving the final clue when we position all the mirrors in the room so that they’re shining into the portrait’s eye. As soon as they do, his eye works like a laser, then opens the door to the escape room.
We laugh and tumble out of the warehouse. The gamemaster tells us that was one of the fastest times that two people have actually executed an escape.
“Guess we had something we wanted outside of the room,” I say, glancing at Olivia, who smiles back at me. We want to keep getting to know each other.
I thank the man and turn down the street, reaching for her hand.
She links her fingers through mine.
And am I ever glad I’m moving beyond the past.
Maybe this is insta-like. Heck, maybe it’s insta-falling. But screw it. I’m feeling it everywhere.
We wind up at a nearby diner ordering burgers, French fries, and iced tea, and talking. We both agree Madison Square Park is our favorite park in the city, declaring the bench near the MetLife Building a great spot for kissing, then I tell her I like rock, and while she prefers pop, we agree we can coexist on the music front, since everything else is in sync. We chat until we close the place down.
At the end, it feels like we’ve been on three dates.
“Does this kind of feel like we’ve already hit the trifecta of three great dates?” I ask.
“It kind of does.”
“And each one has been better than the last.”
“They’re all so good . . . it’s almost as if it’s too good to be true,” she says, her tone light and breezy.
I stop, tug on her hand, and pull her flush against me. “But it’s real.” My voice is serious.
“It is?” Her tone is pocked with nerves. She looks unsure.
I nod, then cup her cheek and kiss her lips once more, savoring her taste, learning the flavor of her kiss, taking mental snapshots of how she feels in my arms.
Like she’s giving herself to me.
And it’s entirely what I want.
One freaking date, and I’m sold.
“It’s not too good to be true,” I say as we break apart, and I walk her home. But along the way, something seems to shift in her.
Her stance is stiffer. Her eyes are cooler. Her tone reads distant.
When we reach her place, I squeeze her hand. “You okay?”
“I’m great, but I’m so tired, and I need to go. Bye.”
She spins around, heads up her steps, and darts inside without a parting glance.
I stand on the street wondering what the hell went wrong.
5
Olivia
Misery is my companion.
It trips me up on the racquetball court the next morning.
With an unladylike grunt, I lunge for the ball, and I smack it wildly. It screams across the court, missing the mark by miles.
Flynn thrusts his arms in victory.
I’m not annoyed he won. I’m simply annoyed. With myself. My thoughts are only on Herb Smith, and how badly I botched last night.
“Rematch?” Flynn asks, eagerness in his eyes.
I don’t have the energy to attempt to even the score with my brother. “Nah.”
He sets down his racket on the bench. “Clearly something is horribly wrong. Confession time.” He pats the wood. “Tell me how you messed up last night.”
I can’t pretend I didn’t. Misery slithers down my spine. “We were having the world’s most perfect date,” I say, forlorn.
“Yeah, yeah, skip over the sex part.”
“We didn’t have sex.”
“Okay, you didn’t have sex, so how could it have been the world’s most perfect date?”
I swat him with my towel. “Things do not have to have sex to be awesome.”
“But sex does help to make things awesome.”
“You know how you didn’t want to talk about how I look good in clothes? I don’t want to talk about sex with you.”
“Okay, fine, so you’re having an awesome date.” He makes a rolling gesture for me to keep going.
“We hit it off, Flynn. We had insane chemistry. We talked about everything, including how much we liked each other already. That’s what freaked me out. We liked each other from the beginning.”
