An Ex for Christmas (Love Unexpectedly 5)

I try to keep my head. “But that lady said—”

Mark goes perfectly still then pulls away. “Damn it, still with that? You seriously think you’re going to find the love of your life—someone you

dumped or who dumped you—waiting under the tree on Christmas morning? Do you even hear yourself?”

I wrap my arms around myself to shield myself from the chill coming off my best friend. “You don’t have to mock.”

He closes his eyes in frustration. “I’m not trying to mock, but the woman I’m…sleeping with goes dashing off with former lovers the second they call. How’m I supposed to feel about that?”

I swallow. “I didn’t realize…I thought you and I were just having fun.”

“Not enough, obviously, if you sneak out while I’m at work to meet up with an ex.”

“He was gay! He’s in a committed relationship with a new family!”

“Which you didn’t know when you agreed to meet him!”

Rigby comes into the room, and then creeps back out again when he hears our angry voices. I don’t blame him. I sort of want to go hide under a bed myself.

But I don’t. I can’t. Because Mark’s right, and I’ve behaved horribly. But admitting that doesn’t help with any of my confusion.

I push my fingers through my hair and take a deep breath. “I’m confused. I don’t know whether to treat you like my best friend or my boyfriend.”

I expect one or both of us to freak out at the term “boyfriend,” but interestingly the word doesn’t seem quite as awkward as I anticipate, and that right there fills me with a whole fresh kind of terror.

I can’t be falling for my best friend…can I?

He relaxes his arms and steps closer once more. Not touching me, but within reach if I want to touch him. Which I do.

“What do you want me to be? Best friend or boyfriend?”

Both.

I swallow. “I don’t know that I’m ready to put a label on it.”

“Okay. What do you know?”

I reach out, gently set my hand on his chest, and look up. “I know I want you. I know that all I can think about is touching you, and having you touch me. I also know I’m scared of losing you. Of messing up the most important relationship of my life with sex.” He says nothing, and I search his face. “Aren’t you scared? Or at least weirded out? After all this time of being platonic, like brother and sister—”

“No.”

“What?”

He cups the back of my head and rests his forehead on mine. “I have never thought of you like a sister.”

“Sure, but you know what I mean. All this time you’ve never wanted me like that, and I’m afraid you’ll remember all the reasons you didn’t, and—”

Mark stamps out my babbling with a searing kiss. “I’ve wanted,” he says against my mouth, a little gruffly. “God, how I’ve wanted.”

My brain tries to comprehend his words, tries to understand what he means, to wrap my brain around it, but…

I can’t think.

Not when he’s kissing like that, not when his hands are pulling me to him, drawing me into a kiss that consumes every part of my soul.

I lift my hands to his face, my fingers tunneling in his thick dark hair as I finally give myself all the way over to what’s happening here. I want my best friend, and he wants me right back. Not in a one-time hookup kind of way, but in a can’t-get-enough-of-each-other way.

Mark’s hands are on my butt, his tongue is in my mouth, and I let him lift me, wrapping my legs around his waist as he pivots us, setting me on the counter.