“Oh, I see. So if you go up there now and tell him you’ve changed your mind, he’ll say, Sorry, you missed the bus, I’ve had an enormous change of heart since last night and cannot possibly want a woman who hesitates.”
Abbie bit her lip.
“That was a joke,” Jase added. “He’s obviously not going to say that.”
“Right,” Abbie agreed. “Yes. Obviously.”
“I mean, you do realise he’s been the one desperately asking for this and you’re the one who’s been coolly rejecting him?”
Abbie’s stomach lurched. “Wait. What?”
Jase shrugged. “I’m just saying. That’s the dynamic, right? It seems like you hadn’t noticed.”
No. No, she hadn’t. She’d been so certain of her own … unsuitability for Will, it hadn’t occurred to her that she had the power to bother him with her nos and her can’ts. But what if she did?
Shit shit shit shit shit. Fuck.
“Oh my God,” Jase sighed. “You look like you’re about to throw up. Go and talk to him before you die of worrying.”
“Right. Yes. Absolutely.” Abbie put her embroidery on the coffee table and stood, her spine straight and her nerves wobbling like string cheese.
It was time to risk a little vulnerability for the man who’d given her all of his.
* * *
“You’re not being fair.”
That’s what Abbie had said last night, and the injustice of it had smacked Will right in the chest. Because how, exactly, was he being unfair? At the time, drunk off his arse and dizzy with her nearness, he’d had no idea.
Then he’d slept and woken up and watched the snow falling outside his window and actually used his fucking brain. He’d asked her to trust him, tried to tease out the secrets he could sense hiding behind her clenched teeth, but he hadn’t really shared his own. He wanted her to lay out all her vulnerabilities for him, knowing what she’d been through, knowing how she struggled—yet he’d held back the full truth of his own heart because he was afraid. She was dealing with shit he could barely fathom, and he’d been stressed out about a little light rejection.
“Wanker,” he told himself firmly as he stared up at the whorled ceiling. “You absolute wanker.” Then he got up and got dressed and ran for miles through the quickening snow because he needed icicles in his lungs, clearing his mind, sharpening his senses, helping him figure a way out of the mess he’d created.
It helped, as movement always did. By the time Will returned home, he knew exactly what he was going to say to the woman he loved. He just couldn’t fucking say it because said woman had been distributing cat breakfasts and bantering with her brother and grandma.
The urge to get Abbie alone burned under his skin as he ate breakfast, as he showered, as he dried off and stared at his hazy reflection in the steamed-up bathroom mirror. A beige-and-blond blob stared back at him.
“You.” He pointed at the blob. “Don’t fuck this up.” The blob was silent. “Just tell her everything and try not to die of embarrassment when she’s horrified. No guts, no glory. Get it fucking done.” By this time, his reflection looked a bit less blobby and a lot more determined. Satisfied, Will nodded, wrapped a towel around his waist, and unlocked the bathroom door.
It opened to reveal Abbie standing in the hall, her hands clasped in front of her and a strange expression on her face.
Will stopped dead.
“Erm,” she said. “Were you just talking to yourself?”
Well, shit. “Maybe.”
She must not have heard his actual words, because she smiled and shook her head and released a nervous laugh. “Huh. Okay. Erm…” Her eyes flicked up to his face, strayed down to his chest, then snapped back to his face again. “It has just now occurred to me that standing outside the bathroom until you finished your shower was an incredibly weird thing to do—”
“I don’t mind,” he said quickly, because he didn’t. First, it suggested she wanted to be near him, which was great, because he wanted to be near her. And second, she was clearly having trouble not looking at his half-naked body, which was excellent. Very excellent. He was not above using whatever advantages he had when it came to holding her attention. He had the vague idea that he should be ashamed of himself, but he was too busy trying to subtly flex.
“Right,” Abbie said, her gaze sliding completely away from him and landing on the floor—which was a good sign. Unless it was a terrible sign. He had no idea. This was why he had to get better at the whole talking thing.
With that in mind, he said, “Listen, I’ve been wanting to tell you—”
“Um,” she interrupted, “maybe you should get dressed first.”
He couldn’t help himself. He grinned. “Should I?”
“Yes.”
“Why? Am I making you uncomfortable?”
She rolled her eyes and pushed her glasses further up on her nose. “You wish, Reid.”
“I do, Abbie-girl.”
She looked at him then, a little spark of surprise in her gaze, followed by … a sweet smile on her berry-coloured lips. “Has anyone ever told you that you are an outrageous flirt?”
“No,” he said honestly. He didn’t think he’d ever flirted with anyone but her. He’d never really felt inspired to bother.
“Perhaps I’m just especially susceptible, then,” she muttered, but by the time his scattered brain remembered what susceptible meant and started to feel pleased, she’d already stepped back and moved on. “Seriously, go and get dressed. I can’t concentrate when your delts are staring at me.”
“Delts, really?” he asked. “I would’ve gone with nipples. Much more eye-like.”
She made a strangled sound of disbelief. “Are you really comparing nipples to eyeballs right now?”
“Are you really comparing delts to eyeballs? Be honest, do you actually know what delts are?”
“This is a ridiculous conversation,” she sniffed.
“So no, then,” he said, and she grinned, and God, he’d talk about literally anything if it made her smile like that. He was about to say as much when the door at the very far end of the hall slammed open, and Ms Tricia appeared in the doorway looking like the terrorised heroine of a vintage horror film.
Her brown skin had taken on a greyish tinge, her mouth was a perfect O, and her hands were panicked claws wrapped around a half-price Ted Baker gift set. “Gravy!” she wailed.