Page 106 of Rising Heat

“Yeah.”

He closes the distance again, gentler this time, his hands settling briefly at my waist before he presses a lingering kiss to my temple.

“Goodnight, Trouble.”

Then he follows Mack through the door.

I stay exactly where I am, my back against the wall, my breathing still uneven, my body running several thousand degrees warmer than seems medically advisable as I stare at their apartment door.

Eventually I push myself upright and head for the stairs.

I make it halfway before I stop, a quiet, disbelieving laugh slipping out into the empty stairwell.

Okay. We’re doing this.

I don’t try to talk myself out of it. I just go upstairs and wait for tomorrow.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

mack

I made the right call.

I’m reasonably certain of this.

I’m at my kitchen sink in the dark, one hand braced on the counter, drinking cold water straight from the tap because I’m still running hot and I need something to do with my hands that isn’t what I’ve been thinking about doing with them for the last forty-five minutes.

She said yes and she meant it—I felt how much she meant it—but she’s also been drinking since noon and running hot off a full day of alcohol infused adrenaline, and I’m not doing this for the first time on St. Patrick’s Day after all of the parade chaos. She deserves better than that.

So, she gets the chance to wake up tomorrow and decide if she still wants this.

My brain understands this, but my lips still feel the ghost of hers, and my cock is still straining against my boxer briefs like it has its own opinion.

I turn off the water and just stand there recapping the night.

I think about Abby and the way she put her hand on my shoulder the second she spotted me, fake smile already in place before she’d even looked at my face. Saw the uniform first.

We’d had a thing four summers ago, which is a generous way to describe it. She wanted a firefighter. I happened to be one and wasn’t paying close enough attention to realize that was the whole appeal. Took me two months to notice I couldn’t remember a single conversation we’d had that wasn’t about the job, the station, or whether I was taking her to the summer cookout.

I ended it.

She was with another guy from a different house before the month was over.

No hard feelings. No feelings at all, really.

Bunnies never did much for either of us. You can tell in about thirty seconds that they’re not looking at you, they’re looking at the idea of you, and there’s nothing lonelier than figuring that out after the fact.

Abby had just been the thing that made me stop giving it the benefit of the doubt.

I’d clocked the shift in Darcy’s expression the minute Abby’s hand landed on my shoulder. The way she’d picked up her beer and found something else to look at. Darcy couldn’t pull off indifferent if her life depended on it.

I knew exactly what it was and spent the rest of the night pretending I wasn’t checking on her every few minutes.

I wanted to tell her that Abby hadn’t meant anything in four years. That none of them had. That nothing comes close to what she’s done to this house—to me—in six weeks just by being in it.

I didn’t say it. But the fact that I wanted to and I hadn’t even touched her yet said enough.

Tyler comes down the loft stairs in his usual end-of-the-night state, looking like he’s been thinking for a while and has finally decided to involve me in it. He leans against the counter across from me, folds his arms, and studies me for a second.