Page 71 of Beautiful When He Breaks

I slide my hand a little farther around his side, pulling him closer. Eli’s whole body is wound so tight it feels like one wrong move will either send him crashing into me or running out of the room. I don’t know which possibility scares me more.

He leans in first—maybe an inch, maybe less. But enough that I catch the full warmth of his breath now. Enough that if I moved at all, just a little, our mouths would touch.

“Jules,” he says again, and that’s not my name anymore. It’s a surrender.

I have imagined kissing him in a hundred different cruel little daydreams over the years. Angry. Desperate. Drunk. Sweet. Impossible. None of those fantasies prepared me for this. For how quiet and careful it is, and how much my chest hurts from the wanting before I’ve even gotten what I want.

I lean in too and lift my free hand slowly enough that he can stop me if he wants to. He doesn’t. I brush my knuckles once along the side of his jaw, and his eyes flutter just slightly at the contact before they lock back on mine. He’s shaking. It’s almost nothing, but I feel it there in the tension of his body, and the way his mouth parts on a breath.

We are so close now that there is no world left outside this one. No house. No den. No pool table. No week of messages in my pocket or fear in my spine or anything except Eli Matthews in front of me with his hand braced behind my side and his mouth one inch from mine, breath skimming my lips.

Then footsteps hit the hall, coming straight toward the den, and the spell breaks so violently it feels physical.

My hand drops from his face. He takes a step back at the exact same time the den door swings inward hard enough to crack the silence in half. Ryan barrels halfway in with his phone in one hand and zero awareness in his skull.

“Has anyone seen the—” He stops dead, looking between us with the kind of confused slowness that means his brain is definitely going to catch up in the next three seconds. “Why do you both look like that?”

I step back so fast I nearly clip the corner of the pool table with my hip.

Eli turns away first, grabbing his cue even though the game is clearly over. His face is flushed all the way down his neck now, and if Ryan were any smarter, he’d see everything. Thank God he isn’t.

“Look like what?” Eli says, which would sound more convincing if his voice weren’t half a note too high.

Ryan squints at us. “Like I interrupted a hostage negotiation.”

I snatch my cue from where I left it, set it back in the rack with far more force than necessary, and grab the first excuse that presents itself.

“You did,” I mutter. “He cheats at pool and then acts shocked when I call him on it.”

“That’s not even remotely what’s happening,” Ryan says.

“Cool,” I answer, already heading for the door. “Good talk.”

“Julian—” Eli starts.

I don’t stop.

That’s the problem with almost getting the one thing you’ve wanted for too long. Almost is unbearable. Almost after years is worse. Almost with Eli—after all the weeks of weirdness and heat and watching him wake up to whatever he’s feeling—is enough to turn my whole body into a raw nerve.

So, I bolt fast and don’t look back, leaving the den before I do something even dumber, like turn around and finish what we started in front of a witness who can’t keep a secret to save his own life.

I make it halfway down the hall before I stop with one hand braced against the wall while my pulse tries to hammer itself out through my ribs.

Fuck.

Fuck.

My fingers touch my mouth without permission, and that somehow makes it worse because we didn’t even kiss. We didn’t. We came so close the air between us changed shape, and I can still feel the almost of it.

A few seconds later, I hear footsteps in the den again, lighter now, followed by Ryan’s voice fading into some complaint about missing a charger or a snack or whatever the hell he actually came in for. Then there’s silence. No one follows me.

I don’t know whether that’s a relief or a disappointment.

Probably both.

I straighten slowly and drag a hand over the back of my neck, forcing myself to breathe. My whole body still wants to go back. That’s the worst part. Not the interruption or even the panic. The want. It’s still there, hot and impossible, and no longer deniable in any direction.

Eli wanted that too.