He stares into my eyes as my hand hovers in his hair and drops his voice low so only I can hear. “It’smonthsof fucking sexual energy. I haven’t looked at a woman since that charity gala at The Songbird where my date threw her drink in my face.”
“Oh.” My hand freezes at the base of his neck. I remember that night well. I’d chosen to wind him up and ask him to introduce me to his date. He got her name wrong, and she was less than impressed. “You haven’t—?”
“No,” he answers immediately, a gruffness in his voice.
I hold his gaze, desperately wanting to ask him why it’s been so long. I knew after we agreed there would be no one else while we pretend to date that it must have been a few weeks, tops. But to learn that Reed, the guy who was ‘entertaining’ a different woman almost every night at one point, hasn’t had sex in months? It’s like being told Santa is real after all.
“Oh,” I say again. It’s the only word I’m able to form, my tongue turning to jelly in my mouth. I swallow hard and eventually force out a croak. “Maybe that’s why Freddyreallylikes you.”
“The feeling is not mutual. My balls feel bruised,” Reed huffs and his eyes drop to my cell phone. “You can delete that.”
“Not a chance!” I grin, my normal voice returning as I stuff my phone into the back pocket of my jeans.
“Harls.” There’s a warning tone in his voice, but the fact that he said Harls again does not warn me of anything, except the imminent surge of the weird, warm, fuzzy feeling I get in my stomach when he calls me that.
“For my eyes only, I promise.” I wink at him as Paige calls through the side of the pen.
“When I hurt myself, Mommy and Daddy kiss it better.”
Reed turns to her. “They do, do they? That’s very nice of them.”
Paige nods enthusiastically, resting her chin on one of the horizontal bars as she watches us expectantly.
Waiting.
“Do you think Harley should kiss my hurt better?”
I look at his smug bastard expression. He’s enjoying this.
“I am not kissing your dick if that’s what you’re hinting at,” I whisper out the side of my mouth so Paige doesn’t hear the word ‘dick’.
“It’s her birthday. She’s the birthday girl. You shouldn’t refuse a request from the birthday girl.” Reed smirks at me as Paige looks between the two of us.
“My tongue would probably disown me. Pack up my tonsils and fuck off to Timbuktu if I had to do that,” I murmur. “The only thing hurting is your giant fucking ego from falling on your ass, which is covered in grass, by the way.”
“You’ve been looking at my ass?”
I narrow my eyes at him, and he laughs and looks back at Paige. “Sorry, Book Page. Harley doesn’t like kissing me in public. She thinks I taste like candy, and she’s scared she won’t be able to stop.”
“Would you kiss forever?” Paige’s eyes go wide.
Reed looks at me with a smile. “I think we would. I think I would kiss her until I’m all old and wrinkly.”
“Eww.” Paige screws up her nose and then lets out a shriek as Reed darts out of the pen and scoops her up into his arms.
“But you? You taste like gummy bears!” He grins before he lifts her stomach to his lips and blows raspberry after raspberry on it.
Her laughter rings out around the garden, and I can still hear it in my head as we say goodbye to everyone, and ride back in Reed’s private car, and as we walk inside our apartment, and I sink my feet into my slippers.
I can still hear it hours later.
It sounds like happiness.
Pure, unbridled happiness.
And I know that any time I think of her laugh again, it will make me smile like it is doing now.
Until I’m all old and wrinkly.