Eventually, one of his hands drifted up my back, under my hair to curl hot around my neck.
“Lexie, baby, calm down,” he whispered in my ear.
I nodded but kept crying.
His fingers squeezed gently. “Baby, you gotta get a handle on this.”
I nodded again and sucked in a broken breath. Then I sucked in another one.
Then, face still in his neck, I mumbled, “I’m sorry. I just never… something like that…” I took in another broken breath and whispered, “It was unexpected.”
“Got good friends,” he murmured.
I nodded again because he did, he had good friends, the kind of friends you didn’t just get, the kind of friends you earned.
And I didn’t know what to do with that either.
I kept my face in his neck and held on.
Then I took in another breath, this one didn’t break and my voice wasn’t trembling but it was quiet when I said, “I’m glad you have that.”
“Me too.”
I held on awhile longer.
Then I swallowed. Then I admitted, “Maybe I am part-goof.”
“Total,” he replied on another squeeze of his fingers at my neck with a corresponding squeeze of his arm around my back. “Total goof.”
“Not total. Part.”
He didn’t reply.
I drew in a last breath through my nose and finally pulled my face out of his neck. His head came back and his chin dipped down so he could look at me.
And God, God, he had beautiful eyes and their beauty increased exponentially when they were close up.
“Sorry,” I whispered.
“Don’t be,” he whispered back.
“I know…” I started, stopped, pulled up the courage and started again, “I know it’s fake but thank you, Ty. I never expected to have anything that nice and it is nice, no matter what. So thank you for giving it to me.”
He didn’t speak but his eyes changed, one of those changes I didn’t know, didn’t yet understand but this one was meaningful. They all were but this one was more meaningful than the rest.
A lot more.
And then I couldn’t stop myself, his eyes so close, that look in them, my arms moved from around his shoulders, my hands framed his face, I leaned up and whispered, “Thank you.”
Then I pressed my lips to his.
I meant to give him a soft kiss of gratitude. This was not to say I didn’t want to give him a long, hard, wet kiss of something else. And just what I wanted to give him and what that would lead to had also been filling my headspace the last couple of days but that wasn’t where I intended to go just then. Not yet. Not with a houseful of people downstairs waiting to eat fried chicken.
But when my mouth hit his, he didn’t give me the chance to give him a soft kiss of gratitude. Instantly, his fingers slid up into my hair, cupping my head and his mouth opened over mine making a demand. Mine complied. Then his tongue spiked into my mouth and I liked the taste of it, I hadn’t had it in what seemed like a decade, I missed it and he tasted so f**king good my body pressed into his and not just because his arm around me grew super tight.
Then I was twisted, on my back in what was, I noted vaguely and was unbelievably happy for, a bed. His torso was on mine, his h*ps beside mine, his long, heavy leg moved to tangle with mine as his tongue moved in my mouth and I wrapped one arm around his back, one around his shoulders, my hand moving to cup the back of his head and hold him to me.
God, he couldn’t kiss. He could kiss.