“Yes,” she said, slowly losing that beautiful smile as she returned his gaze, looking a little lost as her hand fell away and he found himself looking at her beautiful plump lips, wondering how they would feel against his.
“I-I should probably pack,” she whispered softly as she tightened her hold on her towel even as her gaze dropped to his lips and all he wanted to do was to lean down and find out if her lips were really as soft as they looked.
“Probably,” he said, unable to take his gaze away from those lips that he thought about damn near every minute of the day.
Unable to stop himself, he leaned down and found himself pushed back as Kasey shoved him away with a panicked, “I should get going!” as she raced from the bed, threw open the door and slammed it shut behind her, leaving him lying there, staring at the wall and wondering if she had any idea that she’d just escaped into the closet.
Rubbing his hands roughly down his face, he sat up and shook his head in disgust at himself, because he was about to seriously fuck this up again.
Chapter 30
“Oh, my god,” she said, staring into the darkness, “I’m an idiot.”
“Kasey,” came the softly spoken words by the man that she’d just ran into the closet to avoid kissing.
“I’m kind of busy,” she said, feeling like an idiot, but really there was nowhere else to go with this.
“I can see that,” he said from the other side of the door while she stood there, pressed up against all the junk she’d shoved into this closet over the years. Worrying her bottom lip, she shifted to the side only to wince when the move caused her to brush up against Mikey’s old baby stroller, reminding her that it had been a while since she’d been in here.
“I might be a while?” she said, wondering why that came out as a question.
“I can wait,” was the response that had her choking back a whimper, because she really should have known better.
“Any chance that you could wait for me in another room?”
“No,” came the immediate reply.
“Reese-”
“I want to kiss you, Kasey.”
“I-”
“But, I think you know that,” he said softly.
She nodded into the darkness as she closed her eyes in defeat, because she did know. She’d known it by the way that he looked at her, the way that he touched her, and the way that she responded to him, because she wanted him to kiss her, too. Some days that’s all she could think about and other days…
She was scared to death that he was never going to kiss her.
It figured that she would freak out when the moment that she’d been waiting for finally came and she would end up running into the closet! Not that she’d done it on purpose, because she could honestly say that she hadn’t really been thinking when she’d decided to make a run for it.
One second, she’d been staring at his lips, realizing that it was finally happening and then…
She’d realized that it was finally happening!
“Do you want me to leave?” honorable, sweet, kind, patient Reese asked, because he would never push her into doing something that she didn’t want to do and that was one of the things that she liked so much about him.
She opened her mouth to take the out that he was giving her only to end up groaning pathetically, closing her eyes, and banging the back of her head against the door, because she didn’t want him to leave. She wanted to kiss him. Correction, she wanted to have already kissed him so that she could stop panicking and freaking out about it.
She just wanted to kiss him.
“So, this is what we’re going to do. I’m going to leave so that you can change out of that towel. While you’re changing, I’m going to go grab us something to eat. When I get back, you and I are going to curl up on the bed and watch whatever movie you want. Then, at the end of the night, I’m going to tell you goodnight and you can decide how we do that. We go at your pace, Kasey. Okay?”
“Okay,” she found herself saying with a nod and a shaky sigh, wishing that she had the guts to open this door and kiss him instead of waiting until she heard the bedroom door click shut before opening that closet door.
*-*-*-*
“I hope you’re hungry,” he said, as he walked into the cozy bedroom where he’d left Kasey, carrying enough fast food and junk food to give even a Bradford a stomachache.
“Starving,” Kasey said, smiling from where she sat in the middle of the bed, browsing through Netflix.
“Good,” he said with a wink, relieved to find her out of the closet, dressed in a pair of old boxers, that had better not be Eric’s, a lilac tank top, and smiling.
He’d actually considered just grabbing something from the snack box that Kasey kept well stocked since the kitchen was still off limits, just in case she’d decided to lock him out, but he’d decided to chance it. He needed to know just how scared she was, because he wanted to figure out if he’d pushed her too far and if it was time to back off and accept the fact that there was never going to be anything between them.
He wanted her, wanted to be with her, to touch her and-
He just wanted her, but not if it meant hurting her.
“Are we hungry, Yummy?” she asked with a teasing smile as she tossed the remote aside so that she could help him with the bags.
“A little,” he said, returning her smile as he pulled out the bottle of apple juice that he’d picked up for her at the store and handed it to her.
“What else did you get?” she asked with an excited little smile as she started her search with the bag closest to her while he kicked off his boots and sat on the edge of the bed, knowing how she worked by now.
Since her kitchen was out of commission, she either took over his kitchen, or ordered in, which wasn’t often since she was very particular about her food and how it was made. That being said, she had a system when she ate food that she hadn’t cooked.
First, she inspected everything, making sure that the food looked good, checking for things that were missing, condiments, seasoning, etc. Then, if the food was from a place that she’d never tried before, and there were surprisingly a lot of places around here that she hadn’t tried since she usually cooked, she would arrange the food by appetizers, main course, sides, and dessert and taste each one, taking her time, savoring each bite and deciding whether it was worth a second bite.
If she found something that she liked, she’d pull out one of those little notebooks that she kept around the house and in her bag, and start making notes. She’d write down what she liked, what she didn’t like, what she would change, and as soon as she got her hands on a stove, she would start playing around with those ideas.
He liked watching her work. She’d worry her bottom lip the way that he liked while her brows arched adorably as she focused on whatever she was doing. Normally, he hated when anyone came between him and his food, especially since most of his meals were on the go and there was never a guarantee that he was going to get a chance to finish his food before he got a call, but he never minded when Kasey did it.
He liked watching her w
ork and if that meant waiting until she was done doing what she loved then that was more than fine with him. While she took out every item and put it in its place on the bed that she must have made when he ran out, he sat down on the bed with a sigh and pretended to scroll through Netflix when he was really watching her.