but he was exhausted.
I started to realize that Holden had spent years as the guy everyone knew would pick up extra hours when needed. Most EMT’s struggle to have a normal life as it is, but Holden’s schedule was extra crazy—by choice. He wasn’t just being a hero and making extra money. He was overworking himself, pushing himself hard toward burnout, and there was no way he could last forever.
I wondered if maybe all the hours he worked had something to do with Caleb.
But it wasn’t my place to start managing his schedule. We were still too new. If Holden had told me to stop dance classes or quit auditioning, I wouldn’t have taken it well. He had a life, just like I did, one that he was already living when I came along. I just wanted whatever time I could get with him, and he wanted the same thing.
So we snuck time when we could, sometimes in the evenings, sometimes early in the morning before I went to work. We had sex as much as we could possibly fit in, but weirdly, it wasn’t enough for me. I’d never considered myself a really horny woman, but suddenly I was the spinster virgin heroine of every romance novel I’d ever read, who goes from demure librarian to wildly sexual siren as soon as the hero shows up. I’d been given the female version of Viagra, and it was called Holden Whittaker.
“Sorry,” he said as he crawled into my bed after his shift at eleven o’clock one night. “I should have warned you that dating an EMT has complicated scheduling.”
I’d rolled over toward him, thinking greedily and predictably about getting his boxer briefs off, when I paused. “Is that what we’re doing? Dating?”
He looked at me, his features surprised in the dim light from my window. “What did you think we were doing, Mina?”
“I don’t know.” The word dating made me oddly sweaty, and I couldn’t tell if it was from joy or terrified nerves. “You’ve never said we were dating. We don’t really go on dates.”
“That’s my fault.” He frowned to himself. “I’m going to take you on a proper date night, I promise, as soon as I can.”
“No, it’s fine.” Now I felt like a jerk. “I wasn’t hinting at that. I just hadn’t thought about what word to put to it.”
“What would you call it, then?”
I felt my face heat. “I don’t know. Hanging out, maybe?”
“Hanging out?” He looked like he wasn’t sure whether to be mad or amused. “Like we used to hang out in high school, except now we hang out with my cock inside you?”
“Not exactly.” My heart was pounding all of a sudden. Why was this tripping me up? Why was I hanging so much importance on a word? “Okay, we’re not hanging out. Because of the sex.”
Holden was watching me closely now, as if I confused him. “So it’s just casual sex, then.”
“No.” That idea made me sweaty, too. What the hell was wrong with me? “I’m not a casual-sex person. I mean, I don’t judge. But that isn’t me.”
“Uh huh,” Holden said slowly. “Right. So we aren’t friends, we aren’t hanging out, and we aren’t doing the casual thing. That’s what a lot of people call dating.”
“Okay,” I said. I wished this had never come up. I wished that instead of complicating things I’d just let him push my tee up and my panties down and have his delicious, delirious way with me. If I had, I’d be halfway to an orgasm right now instead of in this stupid situation, wondering what to say next. “Okay, you’re right. We’re…dating.”
“You can’t even say it.” He shook his head, frowning. “Say it, Mina. Say, ‘I’m dating Holden Whittaker.’”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“You’re hedging. Say it.”
“Holden.”
He moved over me, pinning me to the bed, his long, hard body over mine. Gently he took my wrists and held them on either side of my head. “Say I’m dating Holden Whittaker.”
I gaped at him while my body woke up and my nipples went hard. Still, my throat felt tight. “This is insane.”
“You’ve just upped your punishment,” Holden said. He pressed himself on me so I could feel his hardening cock through the fabric of our clothes, and he dipped down and kissed me on the mouth. Then he broke away. “Say I’m dating Holden Whittaker and I’m his girlfriend.”
“Girlfriend?” I breathed, the panic growing.
“You can’t just say the one word. You have to say the whole thing.” He leaned down