Page 79 of Cross Checked
Stopped.
Started again.
Stopped again.
My pulse was beating so hard by then I felt stupid.
CADE: Pip you know with an obscene amount of certainty how intensely focused my attention is on you
My breath caught in my throat as multiple message chimed on my phone.
CADE: The way I look at you
CADE: spend time with you
CADE: fantasize about you
CADE: joke with you
CADE: Make potatoes with you
CADE: or get caught in my closet rubbing one out because I was hard as fuck from working out with you
My entire body went hot reading it. Cade threw the gauntlet.
ME: oh my gosh Cade… you’re doing it again
CADE: I know
CADE: Just talk to me
I stare at the screen so long my phone dims in my hand. Because there it was. The line in the sand. The moment this stopped feeling accidental.
My fingers hover over the keyboard before I finally answer honestly enough to terrify myself.
ME: I don’t know what to say
ME: tonight changed our entire chemistry
His typing bubble appeared immediately.
CADE: everything that happened today was BECAUSE of our chemistry
I bite my lip smiling helplessly into my pillow.
ME: What happened today was hormones
And that should’ve been where the conversation ended. It absolutely should’ve ended there.
It didn’t.
CADE: what happened today will keep happening if we don’t talk about it
I groan out loud into my mattress. Because at this point choosing the bear was fully off the table. I want the more dangerous option. Which honestly feels like the most humiliating realization of my entire life.
Not because wanting Cade was wrong. It wasn’t. That was the part my brain kept trying to outrun and failing. He was gorgeous, funny, sharp, annoyingly observant, and somehow able to make me feel like the safest girl in the room while also looking at me like he wanted to ruin every thought I hadever had. Wanting him made sense. Anyone with a functioning nervous system and access to eyeballs would want him.
The terrifying part was that I wanted him specifically.
