When We Met

“You’re making it seem like I’m someone better than I am.”

“No, I’m not. I told you,” I whispered against her lips before placing a kiss there. “I see people, and I see you. Now I know what you’ve been hiding, and I still see the same girl I want to take care of and spend my time with. Nothing’s changed over here. I’m just waiting to see if you’re going to give me more reasons why you think I should run.”

She huffed and rolled her eyes. “I’ve given you plenty.”

“Well, not ru

“Kier . . .”

“Tell me something. Yesterday when I was here, you’d been crying, and you didn’t want to see me. Did that have to do with me, or did that have to do with this week and Ian?”

Her eyes roamed my face in the shadows. “Ian. I was—I was struggling.”

“Understandable.” Placing a soft kiss on her throat, I moved away from her and spent a few minutes burying her under her blankets before grabbing the ones I’d been using and wrapping them around me. When I was done, I moved so I was lying next to her and she laughed at the amount of time it was taking me to do this. “Now that we’re not going to freeze, why don’t you tell me about Ian?”

Her smile fell. “What? What do you mean about him?”

“This is a hard time of year for you, and you were struggling alone yesterday. You told me tonight you didn’t want to be alone, and you’re not. So instead of struggling, why don’t you tell me all the good things you remember about him?”

Her eyes shone in the dark as she stared at me in silence for what seemed like countless seconds before whispering, “Okay.”

chapter five

Indy

Kier and I had spent the rest of the night doing just that. I’d told him stories about Ian as we lay bundled up in blankets, and eventually we fell asleep that way. The power kicked back on sometime early in the morning before we woke up, and at some point we’d shed our multiple blankets. We had woken up with two blankets covering us together and Kier’s body curled around mine.

I hadn’t woken up next to anyone since last school year with Dean, but even then it had never seemed as perfect as waking up with Kier. On the rare occasions Dean and I had spent the night with each other, it was always awkward, and when I woke I was uncomfortable—and that was if I’d been able to fall asleep at all. But my body seemed to fit perfectly against Kier’s, his head resting just above my own, one of his legs fitted between mine, the arm he wasn’t using as an additional pillow wrapped securely around my waist, his hand splayed across my upper stomach.

As I lay there enjoying my stolen moments with him, his pinky started lazily dragging back and forth against my stomach before he grumbled, “Power’s back on?”

“Must be.”

He made a tired sound in the back of his throat and rolled away from me. “Do you have anything pla

I rubbed at my face and tried to hide how unhappy I felt about him moving away from me. “No, they’ve been gone working, so we haven’t talked about doing anything.”

“Do you want to spend the day with me?”

“Maybe,” I said softly, my smile telling him my answer. “What’d you have in mind?”

His normally golden-brown eyes looked like they were shining from the light filtering in through the window as he studied me. A few moments later he said uncertainly, “A non-Thanksgiving day.”

“Now that sounds perfect.”

After I’d taken a shower and gotten dressed, I met him at the guys’ house. He’d already started to cook breakfast for us. After a non-Thanksgiving meal, we spent the rest of the day talking, watching movies, and eating food that had absolutely nothing to do with the holiday. It was weird, and it was just as I’d thought it would be—perfect.

Yesterday he’d shown up not long after I came back from my run, and we bounced back and forth between the kitchen and living room as I read and worked on two papers I had due within the next couple of weeks, and he finished homework and studied for a test. He’d fallen back into his quiet self, and while I liked that he could spend an entire day with me just doing homework—not mauling me or even touching me, considering that he was always a couple of feet from me—as I tossed and turned last night, I couldn’t stop thinking about it, and it started bugging me.

He’d even kept his distance on Thanksgiving—something I hadn’t noticed until now because I’d been so busy feeling comfortable and safe in his presence. And when I thought back, I realized I couldn’t remember him actually being close enough to touch me since we’d woken up in the pillow room.

Saturday morning I knocked loudly on the door to the boys’ house until he answered, his face easily slipping into a smile when he saw me. He took a step back to let me in, shutting the door behind me.

“Good mo—” he began, but I cut him off by grabbing his hand and staring down at it. He watched me and asked, “Is my hand okay . . . ?”

“Why haven’t you touched me since Thanksgiving morning?”

His laugh ended on a sigh. “Honestly? It makes it easier for me.”

“Makes what easier?” I asked, looking up at him.

“Being near you.”

My eyes widened at his blunt honesty and I bit down on the inside of my cheek, looking at where his fingers were playing with mine before glancing back up at his face. “You haven’t kissed me since the night in the pillow room,” I murmured.

“No, I haven’t,” he said simply, his golden eyes never leaving mine.

I didn’t know what I’d been expecting—for him to grab me in his arms and kiss me right then, to try to make an excuse for not wanting to kiss me anymore, something . . . but I hadn’t expected him to just agree. I blinked quickly and dropped my gaze and hands as I felt my cheeks burn. “O—um . . . okay.”

He didn’t say anything, and my embarrassment only seemed to build. I turned and started for his door, only stopping when his hands came down around the top of my arms, his chest pressed firmly against my back. “You came over to say those two things, and then leave?”

“Uh, yeah . . . pretty much.”

His laugh was quiet and deep, the sound sending vibrations from his body to mine. “What did you want me to say?”

“Nothing, I didn’t have any expectations.”

“Liar.”

I gritted my teeth and dropped my head to stare at the floor, and my eyes fluttered shut when the faintest touch of his nose trailing up the back of my neck had a shiver going through my body.

“You didn’t ask why, so I didn’t tell you why. But I could already see your mind working in ways that are dangerous for both of us, and I’m not go

“We’re not dating—technically you can’t leave me,” I whispered, and he laughed against my skin.

“Now you’re bringing technicalities and labels into this?” His hands moved down my arms to wrap around my waist, and he leaned in to speak in my ear. “And you and I both know people don’t have to be together to leave each other. But us? No, we don’t have a label. I don’t need one, but if you do—we can talk about that on a day that isn’t today. I’m your safe place, and when you’re ready, you’ll be mine. If you ask me, that means more than a bullshit label.”

“Again with the ‘when you’re ready’?” I asked, and turned in his arms to look up at him.

Kier gently pushed me back until I was pressed against the door, and rested both his forearms against the wood, leaning in so our foreheads were resting against each other’s. “It’ll always come back to waiting for you to be ready, Indy. You weren’t ready to tell me about Ian, or face what you were doing to forget Dean—because you weren’t ready to get over him—so you weren’t ready to know what I was doing for you. I kissed you, partly because I thought I would go insane if I didn’t, but mostly because I needed you to be able to see what you were doing to me, to get a glimpse of what you’ve come to mean to me, and to see that no matter what you could possibly have told me, I wouldn’t run.”