Total pages in book: 143
Estimated words: 138881 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 694(@200wpm)___ 556(@250wpm)___ 463(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138881 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 694(@200wpm)___ 556(@250wpm)___ 463(@300wpm)
I pull on sleep shorts, grab the phone, and head down to the kitchen. Time to do some prep for tomorrow. I pull out ingredients from the pantry and the fridge.
It’s okay if he doesn’t show up.
We’re not a thing.
We’re also not a fake thing anymore either.
It’s not like we need to fake date for the town, like Theo said. Even if people make assumptions from Tiffany and Brittany’s post, there’s nothing riding on us pretending to be together. Corbin and I aren’t fake dating, and I feel a little empty about that.
Which is an annoying way to feel. I remind myself we’re just business partners with benefits and that’s fine. It was my damn idea. It’s fine, too, if we don’t have the benefits tonight.
I’ll survive, even though my chest aches with the wish that he’d come over.
Fine, it’s not only my chest aching.
I toggle over to my playlists and queue up some Christmas music as I prep the dough for the Christmas cookies I’ll make tomorrow—red trucks, wreaths, trees, and snowmen and snowwomen.
When that’s done, I wash my hands, my gaze straying to the cupboard with the letters. There’s a tug in my chest, like an invisible rope is pulling me toward it.
I check my phone again.
Nothing. I could text him. But I don’t want to be needy. I was already the neediest when I twisted his arm to open this bakery. I have no idea what the rules of the road are for navigating a one-time-only fling that morphs into an anytime fling. I don’t want to text with a Hey, are you coming?
That feels like relationship territory. I need to put my mind on something else. Maybe I’ll peek at the next letter myself.
I pull out the stepladder, climb it, grab the strawberry jar, and then freeze.
I’m the kid with her hand in the cookie jar.
Isn’t this how I wound up leaving this town in the first place? I wasn’t patient. I didn’t put the sugar cookies away, and the llamas ate them, and the story of Old McMabel and the Four Animals of the Firehouse Apocalypse began.
Here. Right here in this firehouse. And I hightailed it out of town.
This time around, I need to slow down, be patient, be precise.
I made a deal with Corbin, so I put the jar back, climb down, and turn off the lights.
I go upstairs, and tumble into bed, slipping under the covers as a yawn comes over me at last. The full-body kind. I stretch and before I know it, the day floats before my eyelids and the night pulls me into its embrace.
A hand slides up my thigh. A voice, gravelly and familiar, drifts past my ears.
I reach for the strong hand, guiding it toward the ache between my legs. I wriggle closer. My hips arch. My legs fall open. I chase the sensation, needing more, but it’s still not quite enough.
I part my lips to ask for more pressure, more contact, something, but—
I wake with a start, blinking, pushing up onto my elbows, eyes orienting to the dark.
“Hey.” Corbin’s standing by the bed wearing jeans and a T-shirt. His shoes are off. He’s not sitting on the bed. He’s not touching me either. Was I…dreaming?
“I just got here,” he adds.
“You weren’t—” I cut myself off from asking Fucking me with your fingers?
Shaking his head, he sinks down on the edge of the bed, clearly knowing what I was about to ask. “No. I wouldn’t touch you like that while you were asleep.”
Oh, right. “Of course.”
He roams his hand over my thigh, covered by the blanket. “Were you dreaming?”
“I guess,” I say, feeling a little embarrassed. I fiddle with the covers. Was I moaning out loud? Punching up my hips? I can only imagine how horny I must have looked if he saw that. “I was baking earlier. Well, prepping for tomorrow. I made the dough for sugar cookies. For Christmas.” And now I’m rambling.
“I had a feeling,” he says, nodding to the stairs that lead down to the kitchen. He must have seen some of the mixing bowls I left out as he walked through Afternoon Delight. Tilting his head, he studies me with a furrowed brow, eyes soft in the moonlight. His dark hair is a little messy, his stubble thicker than it’s been lately. “You okay?”
It’s asked with such concern.
I tug the blanket up, protecting myself as I say something vulnerable. No point hiding it. My weird mood is obvious. “I thought you weren’t coming.”
He slides his hand down my arm. “I thought when you said slip over in the middle of the night that’s what you wanted. The middle of the night.”
I wince. He took me literally. He waited to show up when I asked him to. And I worked myself up for no reason. “I did say that. I’m being silly,” I say, waving a hand like I can dismiss my own desire for him to have arrived earlier.