Page 77 of Edged
Snorting, I rolled my eyes. “You make it hard.”
“That’s never been a bad thing before.”
“There’s more than justthatbetween us, Owen,” I said, finally turning my attention to his face. He studied me earnestly, elbows resting on his knees and his fingers tapping together in front of him.
“I know,” he agreed. “There always has been, though. You don’t have to abstain to prove it.”
“I don’t want sex to be the first thing you think about when you think about me.”
Owen smirked. “That’s not a bad thing.”
“But it’s not the only thing.”
“No,” he said softly. “It’s not the only thing.”
The sentence didn’t end with any sense of finality, and I couldn’t shake the feeling there was abutcoming, so I jumped up and walked toward the house before he could continue on with it. The back door had a keypad that matched the front, and I pushed the four digit code and let myself in.
From the lounger, I heard Owen laugh and then settle, and I closed the door behind me, not daring to look back at him. Rob’s house was silent, save for the low hum of the air conditioning unit that kept the entire space at an entirely too cold 68 degrees. My nipples almost immediately hardened, and I wiggled my shoulders, hoping to relieve some of the nerves that had already started to take root in the base of my spine.
“Kitchen whiskey,” I muttered to myself.
After pouring a shot and wasting Rob’s money by swallowing it back without even tasting it, I braced myself against the sink and let my head dip low between my shoulders. If Owen looked in, he’d be able to see me. I wondered what he would think. If he would think I was flustered over pretending to break into Rob’s house, or if he would know I was distressed over him and the unfairly rapid passage of time.
The air conditioner switched off, and the house lapsed into a deafening silence. The door opened and then Owen’s body heat pressed against my back, a welcome shift from the coldness of the house. His arms wrapped around my front and his cheek rested against my back between my shoulder blades.
“Are you pretending that we’re breaking up in two days?” Owen kissed my spine. “Because that doesn’t sound very fun.”
“It’s not,” I rasped, covering his hands with my own.
“Then why are you doing it?”
“It’s hard to stop,” I admitted. “I know I said I wanted to play pretend, but there’s not a single person on this planet that I’ll ever love more than you, and that’s the honest-to-God truth."
“I don’t think you’ve ever had to pretend to love me.”
He grabbed my hips and gave a tug until I turned around and faced him. We were a mismatched pair, him with no pants and me without a shirt, none of our skin touching in the places that it mattered. Like always, something between us, keeping us apart.
“I used to pretend tonotlove you,” I admitted, kissing his forehead. His curls smelled like my shampoo, his skin like salt from the hours we’d spent in the sun.
I grabbed his hand, remembering the way he’d squeezed me and pulled our shoulders together while we hunched over one of the illuminated manuscripts at the museum earlier. The room was cold and Owen’s hand against mine was like holding a fire poker. He was burning. Heburned. For me.
And I for him.
“What are we doing, Owen?”
“I thought we came to swim,” he answered, but the humor in his voice fell flat. He cleared his throat. “You know, when I fell in love with Frankie—”
I cut him off quickly, turning us both so it was his ass pressed against the kitchen sink. I didn’t glare at him, but I towered enough to show him how much I meant what I said, “I don’t want to hear about the way you loved another man.”
“You may not want to, but you need to,” he said, and then he waited.
He waited and I finally, begrudgingly, nodded for him to go on.
I could still taste the whiskey in my throat, licking like fire as it settled in my stomach, which was already tumultuous just from being in Owen’s presence.
“I fell in love with him and he was nothing like you. At first, it felt like a blessing. He was so patient with me, so full of grace when the cracks in my heart showed.”
“Owen.”
