Page 45 of Reckless
Then, more quietly, “Do you want to kiss him?”
I stopped pacing.“What?”
“Do you want to kiss him?”
Heat.A hard little pulse low in my gut.Those muscles of his were chiseled to make a t-shirt hot.
“I want to set him on fire,” I said.
“That was not what I asked.”
“No, and I hate that you know that.”
“Kelly.”
I pressed my fingers to my lips, then dropped my hand.“I want him to stop looking at me like he already knows what we could do to each other.”
Britney was quiet.
“Okay,” she said after a beat.
“That’s all you’ve got?”
“It’s enough.”
I almost laughed.
Instead I sat down on the edge of the couch because my legs had remembered they’d had a day.
“No, Kelly.Listen to me.”Her voice changed.Less dry.More direct.“Men like him don’t need much to turn control into chemistry.You need to decide what, when, where, how and you need to know your why.”
That hit because it was right.
“I know,” I said.
“If he tries to make it sound romantic, leave.”
I stared at the ceiling.“That, at least, I can promise.”
My friends were all happy and in love.Hope might secretly believe in miracles.Avril might be gentler about it.Isabel might phrase it more elegantly.And Britney managed us all and British nobility like we were a family.
That should have made this easy because they were all I had in this world.
I showered, changed into sleep clothes, and sat cross-legged on the couch with my laptop open and a legal pad in front of me like I was about to draft a hostage treaty.
On the legal pad, in all caps, I wrote:
RULES FOR NOT RUINING MY LIFE WITH A HOT PSYCHO
Then I stared at it.
Then I crossed out hot because I refused to give myself that much away in ink.
Then I put it back because honesty was the only thing standing between me and complete delusion.
By midnight, my list looked like this:
1No sex.
