“Not really.” I hear the way my words come out wavy.
I mean, I think I know where he’s going with this, but I need him to articulate it carefully. He could mean a lot of things. Like, this year is different because Theo and I aren’t super close. Or this year is different because I finally told Andrew how I feel about him. Or, for example, this year is different because I’ve traveled through time, and he has no idea.
“Remember how I said I was at a party a couple months back,” he whispers, “and a friend of a friend was reading tarot cards?”
“Yeah.”
“I was teasing her about it, I guess, and she made me sit down. Put these cards in front of me and was like, ‘I’ll do your reading.’ What do I have to lose? She doesn’t know me. So I told her, ‘Sure.’ She looked down at the cards and said I could be happy being second at work. Told me I didn’t need a big life, didn’t need to set the world on fire. She’s right—I don’t. But then she told me I’d already met the love of my life, I just wasn’t listening.” He laughs. “And all I do is listen.”
There is a swarm of dragonflies inside me, colorful and bright and taking up too much space. It’s hard to breathe, because I feel this weight of all the things that he might mean by this.
“I still can’t believe I didn’t ever know,” he says, and turns his head down. “How you felt about me.”
I gnaw on my lip. “I can’t figure out if you’ve been put off by that,” I whisper. It feels like a decade passes before I decide to push the next words out: “Or turned on by it.”
He shifts beside me, angling his body into mine. When I realize what’s about to happen, my heart is no longer a heart, it’s a gloved fist, punching the wall of my ribs again and again. Andrew lifts a hand, so unhurried, and rests it on the side of my neck.
His breath shakes when he exhales. “Turned on.”
And just like that, Andrew’s lips are on mine. Again, he breaks it too soon, but even in that single, perfect second, his touch was hungrier, playful. It was nothing like the public moment under the mistletoe.
And even though our lips are no longer touching, the intensity continues to ratchet higher because he stays right there, maybe only an inch from me, and he’s struggling to breathe just like I am. It’s dark in here, compressed and warm. A few of his shirts are on hangers—slid to the side so they bracket us—and they smell like him. Those same shirts have been on his skin when he’s worked and sweated, napped and played cards with me in the basement, and now they’re brushing against my back just after he kissed me.
“Is this okay?”
“It’s better than fine,” I whisper.
He laughs, breathlessly, and this here—breathing with him, deliciously anticipating what comes next—is easily the most erotic moment of my life.
I stretch forward just as he bends again, and his mouth is there, lips parting. When his arms come around my waist, pulling me into him, I moan and he takes the opportunity to sweep his tongue across mine.
That’s it.
I get it. I will no longer snort derisively at descriptions of women in novels falling to pieces with barely a touch. I can’t imagine what kinds of noises I’d make if I ever managed to get this man naked.
Heat blazes a path from my mouth down my throat, across my pounding chest, and down the center of my stomach. A million times I imagined this, but my brain is an uncreative disappointment in hindsight, because this is beyond anything I’ve conjured. Andrew tastes like peppermint and chocolate, smells like the smoke from the wood in the fireplace, and feels like sunshine. If you put all my favorite things in a Willy Wonka machine, I’m pretty sure Andrew Hollis is the candy that would come out. It’s all I can do not to press my hips against his and push that flannel shirt off his shoulders.
“You look growly,” he says on his own growl.
I’ve never known this side of him, but it’s like being shown a glimmering, dimly lit hallway. Gemstones line the floor. Gold winks on the walls. Let’s see where this goes, a voice says. For just a breath, I panic that this isn’t the right path. That kissing Andrew in a closet isn’t what I’m supposed to do.
But then he bends, nipping at my jaw, and the hesitation dissolves.
“I feel growly,” I admit.
“Whoever thought Maelyn Jones would be totally fucking irresistible,” he muses to himself, kissing down my neck.
“Not me.”
His hand grips my hip and slides up over my waist, stopping painfully far from my breast. “For so long, you were just a kid,” he says. “And then a couple years ago, you weren’t.”
I’m out of words. Instead, I just reach forward, running a finger down his neck to his collarbone.
“I’d had a sex dream about you,” he says, and then breaks out laughing.
“You what!”
“In the bunk bed,” he admits. “Mortifying.”
“When we were all here?”
Andrew nods. “You know how when you have a dream like that, it just stays with you all morning?”
“Yeah.”
“After breakfast, you and Theo were wrestling on the floor, and you were screaming laughing. Having the best time. I just had to push the thought aside—of seeing you that way. I couldn’t give it any more space to breathe.”
Every word he says requires me to rewrite my mental history. “If I knew that back then, I would have happily reenacted the dream.”
Andrew laughs. “And now you told me you wanted me, and I remembered the tarot cards, and—I don’t believe any of that, or at least I didn’t think I believed it, but I just thought—‘What if all this time, she’s been right in front of me?’ It felt so obvious. When we were on the sled?” he says. “And you smelled like caramel and sweet shampoo?”
“Yeah?” I’m in an Andrew trance.
“I almost leaned forward and kissed your neck. Just like that. Just out of the blue.”
Without thinking, I make a gentle fist in the front of his shirt, pulling him closer. When he lets out a quiet grunt, his breath mixes with mine and suddenly I want to take this sunshine man and do very, very dirty things to him.
“I’ve had almost the identical thought,” I say. “Many . . .” He stretches but then diverts away from my lips. His open mouth lands on my neck, sucking, teeth sinking gently in. I can barely think. “. . . many times.”
Andrew’s hand slides down over my ass to the back of my thigh, and he pulls my leg over his hip, leaning in. A slow grind. I feel him, the heat of his hips against my legs, the solid weight—
Bright light slices across us, and a small body bolts into the closet.
Andrew drops my leg, jerking backward. I throw my hands up like I’m under arrest. We are both breathing so hard and fast we sound like we just did closet CrossFit.
“Found you!” Zachary whisper-screams giddily.
“Oh—hey!” Andrew takes a deep, steadying breath and reaches up, adjusting the neckline of his shirt. “Took you long enough, squirt.”
Even in the dim light I can see the flush on Andrew’s neck, the quick flicker of his pulse beneath the skin. I wouldn’t be surprised if I looked down and found that my skin was on fire.