I set to work clearing the dishes and wiping the sides down, trying to think of anything but what was happening.
Stupid wine. Stupid Shelby. Stupid brain.
Jay brought his plate over to the sink and put it in on top of mine. He paused, hovering behind me for a second. The sound of him sighing filled the air, and just when I expected him to say something, he didn’t.
He turned around and he walked away.
I’d had enough.
I slammed the wet cloth into the sink, splattering water over both me and the backsplash. Storming after him, I straightened my spine. “Jay.”
He gripped his bedroom door handle, keeping his back to me.
“If you have something to say, say it.”
“Nothing I have to say will be productive,” he ground out, his shoulders visibly tightening.
Damn his tight t-shirts.
“But clearly you have something you need to get off your chest. If you don’t want to share, then fine, but don’t get on my back when I don’t feel like talking to you, either.” I turned away, heading back for the kitchen.
“Fuck,” he muttered. “Fine.”
I stopped and looked over my shoulder, raising my eyebrows in question.
He let go of the handle, slowly turning his body so that he could meet my eyes. “The only reason I stepped away from you last night is because you’d been drinking.”
I drew in a short, sharp breath that quickly shuddered out of me. “What?”
“You’d been drinking,” he said simply. “I…didn’t want to be responsible for something you’d regret this morning, so I stepped away and left.”
The lump in my throat was big. Suffocating, almost.
What was he saying?
“Are you saying you don’t care that I kissed you?”
“I don’t care that you kissed me.” His eyes never wavered from mine. “But you do care, so it’s a moot point.”
“Right.” I swallowed and wrapped my arms around my waist. “A moot point.”
Except it wasn’t. Nothing about any of this was moot. It was all very, very valid.
“Like you said, we can forget it ever happened and move on.” Jay threw his arm out like he didn’t care, but I could see otherwise.
The muscle in his jaw ticked. His biceps were taut, and there was a glint in his eye that told me he was lying.
More to the point, I knew he was.
I knew him. Better than I knew anyone. Better than I knew myself.
And I knew he was lying.
“You’re lying,” I said softly.
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are,” I challenged, an edge to my voice. “Why are you lying to me?”
“Because you don’t want to know the truth, Shelby. Trust me on that.”
“If I didn’t want to know, I wouldn’t be standing here.” I lifted my chin a little, defiance flaring inside me. “I’m your best friend, Jay. You can tell me anything.”
“Not this.”
“Yes, this.”
He dipped his head, running his hand through his hair. “Fine. Fucking fine.” He jerked his head back up and took a step toward me, fire flashing in his eyes. “I don’t want to forget that you kissed me last night. I don’t want to pretend like it never happened, because if you’d been stone-cold sober, I wouldn’t have stopped you. I would have taken it a hell of a lot further and done something we’d both be regretting right now.”
I felt like I couldn’t breathe.
I knew the man standing in front of me, but I’d never seen this side of him. I’d never seen this… strong, almost darker side of him. I didn’t know how to describe it, but I did know that my heart was beating soundly against my ribs and filling my ears with the frantic thud-thud-thud of my pulse.
“See?” He shrugged his shoulders. “Told you that you didn’t want to know.”
“Jay, I—”
He stepped out of my way when I reached for him. “Don’t. Don’t touch me, Shelbs, or this time I really will do something we’ll regret.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN – SHELBY
No Kissing Your Best Friend
His words were a warning as much as they were a plea, but I didn’t care.
We’d already crossed the line. At this point, our friendship was irrevocably changed. It didn’t matter what we did.
So I swallowed the lump in my throat and dragged up some of the confidence I instilled in the heroines in my romance novels, and I closed the distance between us.
We weren’t quite touching.
Not yet.
“Then do it,” I whispered.
And grabbed his shirt.
He hesitated for all of a second before he framed my face with his hands, tilted my head back, and covered my lips with his.
Want pumped through my veins, filling my body with heat as Jay kissed me.
And it wasn’t just a kiss. No—it was more than what last night’s kiss had been. This was a kiss you felt in every inch of your body. My awareness of his lips moving against mine heightened each time he moved. Every kiss, every sweep of his lips, every inch closer our bodies moved together set me on fire.