deciding to leave something unvoiced.
A daring hope flourishes through me. Perhaps she does know and she’s giving me time to work up to telling her in my own way. Perhaps she doesn’t resent me and her father being together at all.
Or perhaps – and this is just as likely – this is unrelated and I’m just populating my consciousness with hopes so I don’t have to give in to the gnawing guilt.
Two halves of me war, one half an excited woman ready to go on her first proper date, the other a glaring witch-eyed betrayer who knows that I’m possibly doing my friend the worst harm of her life.
“Well,” she says eventually, turning to her window, “don’t go getting any ideas about us not being best friends anymore. Even if I meet a hundred cool writers at this convention, they’ll never beat Goldilocks.”
“That means a lot to me,” I say honestly.
“We’ve been through too much to let the little things get in the way, haven’t we?”
“Jeez,” I say, laughing to try and diffuse some of the tension. “You’d think you were riding off to war or something, Fi. Why so glum?”
You know why. She knows why.
“Well, you know, the best writers are emotionally tortured, right? Maybe I’m just getting into character.”
Is that what we are now, I wonder, just two characters to each other, hiding what we really know because facing it would be too cataclysmic?
I find myself thinking of mine and Saul’s bet, or fake bet, or excuse or whatever the heck we’re calling it. I try to convince myself that on the date we’ll find out that we’re not compatible at all and then this whole improbable edifice will come tumbling down.
Yeah, right.
And maybe I’ll sprout wings and fly alongside Fiona’s plane.
I walk up to the mansion, the large almost-Gothic building glittering like a beacon. Beads of snow sway and dance in the light wind. Jasper sits on the front porch, head tilted at me, tongue hanging out to catch the snowflakes.
“Hey, boy,” I say, leaning down and ruffling him behind the ears. “How’re you doing, huh?”
He grins and then his lips split into a yawn, making the cutest high-pitched noise I never would have expected from a dog his size.
“Aww, aren’t you just the sweetest?” I gush. “How’d you feel if I just scooped you up and carried you away, huh? Do you think Saul and Fiona would mine?”
“I think Saul might have something to say about it,” his voice rumbles as he opens the door.
If any icy resistance had built up in me during the car ride, it melts gloriously at the sight of my man.
My man.
He stands there in a suit of pale blue, a winter alpha wreathed in the fabric of his jacket, his muscles engorged, swollen, freaking ginormous-looking. He strides forward and then before I know it, he’s caught me and our lips are pressed together frantically.
I gasp and drag my fingernails through his hair, my sex wet right away, my womb continuing its war-drum pounding inside of me. She yells at me to forgo the date and instead just leap on him, wrap my legs around him, and then …
Oh, God, we’re doing it, somehow.
My legs are wrapped around him and he’s holding me up, the brick of the house cool against my back as we inhale each other. His growling sounds through the closeness of our kiss, his hands tight and rough on my ass cheeks, massaging, maddening.
“Jesus fucking Christ, Sparkplug,” he growls, pausing the kiss so that we can stare intensely into each other’s eyes. “You’re goddamn magic.”
“Magic?” I giggle.
“Yeah,” he smirks. “Because I don’t remember how we got here.”
“But now that you’re here …”
“It feels fucking perfect,” he finishes for me.
As he places me down – taking an exaggerated step back that makes me laugh – I almost tell him about my half-hope that Fiona already knows and is condoning our relationship.
But then he’d ask why I think that, and I’d have to reply that she made some nebulous comments.
Then what?
What do those comments even mean, exactly?
I’d have to face the blunt truth that she doesn’t know and when she finds out—
“Hey, Sparkplug,” he says, touching my chin and guiding my gaze to his. “Today is about us. Let tomorrow take care of itself.”
I lash my hand out and wrap it around his wrist, sinking into the moment, unable not to.
“Maybe I was just thinking that we still need to choose a nickname for you,” I sass.
His smirk widens,