She sighed. “Because good sex doesn’t mean everything.”
“Doesn’t it?” he asked wryly.
“No.” She prodded him with her finger, and the gesture was so playful, so unlike her, something in him settled. “You know it doesn’t. Just because we’re good in that sense, doesn’t mean we’d be good elsewhere.”
“No, I agree. So how about we open ourselves up to the possibility that we could be great together outside of hallways?”
She winced. “I’ve never done anything like that before in my life.”
“Me neither,” he said drily.
“I call BS. No way. You must have had crazy college days.”
“I guess, but I was always scared of getting caught. I wasn’t thinking that day when we were together,” he admitted softly, once again brushing his lips over the top of her head. “I was just feeling. I want to try that again. I’ve never lived like that before.”
She tensed a little in his arms before she exhaled deeply and admitted, “Life’s funny sometimes, isn’t it?”
“In what way?”
“We’ve spent all these years disliking each other. All these years pretty much avoiding one another, and now? Now we’re totally trying to change the goalposts.”
He shrugged. “Jamie made sure we didn’t like one another.”
Her forehead pressed into his chest. “He did that.”
“I’m sorry I believed him.”
“Don’t you believe him now?”
He stiffened. “How can you
ask me that?”
She looked at him, shaking her head. “I didn’t mean that how you’ve taken it. I mean, he might have told you things that were true. It didn’t have to be all lies. Sometimes, I do leave makeup towelettes on the side of the sink, and my shoes are never ordered right. They’re always in a jumble at the bottom of my closet.”
“Those two confessions hardly make you a Nazi,” he told her on a laugh.
She wrinkled her nose at him. “I know. But you can figure out what I mean, Sherlock.”
“Yeah. And I’m sure there’s irritating shit I do too. But, let’s face it, we all have our quirks and habits. They’re what make us who we are. And you don’t start anything with someone thinking that those quirks and habits are going to make you split up ten years down the line.”
“No,” she conceded with a quick smile. “I’m overthinking this, aren’t I?”
“Just a little.” His lips twitched. “But I understand.”
“You do?” When she peeked up at him like that, he felt like his knees had just been kicked out from under him.
There was trust and hope, fear and worry, a whole gamut of emotions that both floored him as well as petrifying him.
He shouldn’t want her to look at him that way. Shouldn’t want her to feel this good in his arms, but she was and she did. And he did want. A lot. Everything.
Swallowing thickly, he turned her slightly so they were facing away from the dance floor where a few dozen couples had merged together into some-good and some-terrible slow dances. Not that he could judge. He had two fucking left feet.
Still, with a bit more privacy, he murmured, “Just try. For me.”
She let out a deep breath. “My pace?”
“Your pace.”