To Chloe’s surprise, Maxwell had fallen into a deep sleep when they lay wrapped in each other’s arms in the afterglow of seriously intense sex. And wow, it had been intense. Maxwell’s neck was marked with Chloe’s lips, half-moons of her nails on his back, and the room was still echoing with her screams of his name.
She must have tired him out, she thought. With Maxwell asleep, Chloe had the leisure to look at him as much as she wanted, without that awkward tension that seemed to exist between them now. He looked peaceful. His mouth just a little open, his hair tousled, his arm tight around her waist like he didn’t want to let her go even in slumber. She reached out one hand to trace the jawline that she knew so well. Chloe felt like her stupid, treacherous heart might just burst when she looked at him like this.
“I don’t want you to go.” The words were barely a whisper. Words she couldn’t say to him awake. She couldn’t let him know how much she’d miss him, how the thought of him leaving left her gasping and sobbing like she couldn’t go on. Like her body was being broken in two. Because he had never promised her anything more. She knew that. The logical, reasonable, efficient part of Chloe’s brain that made her so good at her job knew that very well. They were friends who had tumbled into bed together. And she had gone and caught feelings. Unwelcome, unnecessary feelings.
But that didn’t change what this was. He wasn’t the settling down kind of guy, and it was just a matter of time before Miami beckoned. Crowley Lake sure couldn’t keep a guy like Maxwell entertained for very long.
And that was why Chloe slipped from Maxwell’s arms, replacing her warm body with a pillow. She found her rather wrinkled and definitely stretched dress and slipped it on silently, not taking her eyes from Maxwell’s sleeping form. If he could slip off without a word, so could she. Because Chloe knew she didn’t know what the hell she’d say to him when he woke up.
What was she supposed to do? Pretend that his leaving was no big deal? Pretend she wasn’t falling harder than she ever had in her life? She couldn’t do that. No, it was much better to slip silently down the stairs and out of the house.
When Chloe carefully opened the front door, gritting her teeth against the freezing air, she found…
“Snow,” Chloe said out loud, watching as the delicate little flakes arced from the deep blue of the night sky in graceful spirals down to the ground.
“I fucking hate snow.”