by Cate Ashwood
“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.” I grabbed the dish towel and wrapped it around my finger, dancing around the kitchen like a crazy person.
“What did you do?” Alec’s eyes were wide as he stared at me.
“I cut my fucking hand, obviously. I’ll be lucky if I don’t lose the finger.”
Alec laughed. Laughed. “Come here. Let me see.”
I knew I was pouting like a surly teenager, and I didn’t care. My finger had bled through part of the towel, and it hurt like a son of a bitch. I walked over to Alec and reluctantly outstretched my arm toward him.
He cradled my hand in his and carefully unwrapped the towel. I felt queasy looking at the blood smeared everywhere. He didn’t say anything but turned on the tap and gently held my hand under the running water.
“Shit,” I hissed, the sting of the cold water piercing through me.
“It’ll hurt less in a minute. We need to get the onion juice out of the cut and clean away some of the blood so I can get a better look.”
He removed my hand from beneath the tap a moment later and softly patted it dry before leaning closer to inspect it. I could feel his breath against my skin as he looked, and I wanted to snatch my hand away. Even in pain, I could only concentrate on him and the weirdness that spread through me, watching him take care of me.
“I don’t think you’ll need stitches, but come with me. We should get it wrapped up.”
I followed Alec through his bedroom into the adjacent bathroom and watched as he knelt down, rummaging through a shoebox under the sink. He stood a moment later, holding a roll of gauze, a tube of antibacterial cream, some steri-strips, and some medical tape. Fuck, he was prepared. My first-aid kit, if you could call it that, consisted of a half a box of Transformers Band-Aids and some expired aspirin.
He took my hand in his again, once more unwrapping it from the towel. He applied the cream before closing up the cut with the steri-strips, then wrapping the whole thing in bright white gauze and securing it with the medical tape. I looked like I’d been treated at some top-notch hospital somewhere rather than my best friend’s bathroom.
I swallowed hard, Alec still holding on to my hand a few moments longer than necessary. When had he started to make me feel like I had butterflies in my chest, just from a simple touch?
This was not good.
Very not good.
I needed space and time away from him, but considering we’d be climbing into bed together in a handful of hours, chances of getting what I needed were not great.
“Better?” Alec asked, and it took me a moment to realize he was talking to me.
“Yeah, much.”
“You didn’t have to mutilate yourself to get out of losing that bet, you know.”
“Did it work?”
He grinned wide. “Yeah. Go sit down. I’ll cook tonight.”
Chapter Eight
Alec
“So how’s your first week of marriage going?” Brynn asked, peering over her glass of wine. She sat on a stool next to her wife, leaning her back against the high bar table, looking smooth and sophisticated with her long red hair cascading in soft waves over one shoulder.
We’d been late arriving because I’d been delayed leaving work, and everyone was already there when I’d walked in. I’d known Chase was mildly irritated I hadn’t called to let him know I’d be late, but I’d been so caught up at work I hadn’t noticed the time.
“It’s fine,” I replied, pulling my attention back to Brynn. I wondered how many glasses she’d already had. Her cheeks were pink, and her eyes were a little unfocused as she stared at me, as though she was trying to analyze those two tiny words to infer some greater meaning.
There wasn’t any.
She gave up and turned to Chase. “Alec’s a good husband, huh?”
Chase grinned at me, lighting a warmth in my belly. The shit had hit the fan at the shop, but at home, we’d mostly been making things work. He’d picked up a lot of the slack as the week wore on, and as uncomfortable and awkward as it had been to have him there initially, by the time Wednesday hit, I was glad to have someone there when I trudged in the door.
“The best I’ve ever had.”
Serena squinted at me, her head tilted to the side appraisingly. “Are you two fucking yet?”
I nearly spit my beer across the table.
“Uh, no,” Chase answered for me.
Her stare never wavered.
I stared back, unblinking. “What the fuck, Serena?”
She shrugged. “What? It’s an obvious question. I think we were all wondering.”
“Chase and I have been friends a long time. Don’t you think if we were going to fuck, it would have happened already?”
“Fair point,” she said, shrugging. “I didn’t mean anything by it. I thought since you’re married for the next twenty-three days, you’d be taking advantage of all the benefits.”
I knew she hadn’t meant anything by it. Her question irked me more than it should have. Long days and sleepless nights meant I was irritable and easily pushed to the edge, but I shouldn’t have snapped at her.
“I was under the impression all marriages were cold and sexless.” Chase pulled the focus off me, for which I was grateful.
“I can attest to that being utterly and wholly false,” Reid said with a waggle of his eyebrows.
“Tell me you’ve at least kissed.” Serena was still prying, and shit was getting uncomfortable.
“That was never part of the deal,” I replied.
“You guys are living through all the boring parts of marriage without any of the fun stuff, even the tame fun stuff,” Brynn said.
“We have fun.” Chase’s arms were crossed, and the expression on his face was defiant.
“Lame fun,” Serena said. “Not a real marriage without the physical stuff.”
A hush fell over our group.
“It’s not a real marriage anyway,” Chase protested, something catching in his voice. He was quiet, almost as though he were ashamed it wasn’t. The bet was fucking with my head, and obviously, it was fucking with his too. Was he hurt I hadn’t tried anything?
He’d never seemed interested. Our relationship had always been completely platonic. There’d never been even an inkling of something more. Once upon a time I had thought maybe he might have had feelings… But looking at him now, his eyes were almost wounded, and I felt more unsure and off-kilter than ever. Had Serena’s words actually hurt Chase? It didn’t seem likely, but the way he sat there, his shoulders hunched slightly forward, told a different story.
Before I could think about it, I was up on my feet, my hands wrapping around his biceps, pulling him from his stool. I gathered him close and slid my hands along his cheeks, tilting his head up as my lips met his.
I had intended it to be quick and chaste, an easy press of my lips against his. Intentions were bullshit. I watched his eyes flutter shut and mine followed, the taste of beer and something deeper in his mouth as I kissed him. He went pliant in my arms, and the little sigh, so quiet I was the only one who heard, nearly undid me.
Everything else dropped away—the bar went quiet, the world stilled—and all that was left was me and him and the way his body felt against mine. I held him closer, deepened the kiss, chasing the taste of him as my tongue slid against his. I could feel myself getting hard, my control fragile. He fisted his hands in my shirt, and in that moment all I wanted to do was drag him off somewhere and fuck him through the wall.
Instead, I pulled back, putting some much-needed space between us.
“There. You guys happy now?” I barely managed the words. It was a small miracle my voice didn’t shake, because the rest of me was sure as shit shaking. Everyone was staring at us, jaws slack, like they couldn’t believe what they’d witnessed.
Fuck, I couldn’t blame them. My mind was reeling, and I could scarcely believe it.
I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and stalked off to find something stronger than the watery beer
in the pitcher.
Brynn found me a few minutes later, ordering a second drink from the bartender while I threw back my first whiskey. If I weren’t driving home, I would have ordered a third.
“You okay?” she asked, turning to lean her back against the bar.
“Yeah.”
“That was intense.”
“What was?”
She looked at me like she wasn’t buying any of my bullshit.
“It didn’t mean anything,” I said.
“Maybe. Maybe not. It was still sexy, though.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be into chicks?” I asked her, trying to make light of the situation. I didn’t want to talk about it, although if I did, Brynn would have been the first person on the list. She drove me nuts, almost constantly, but she was one of my best friends—always had been.
“I am very into chicks. One chick in particular, but that doesn’t mean I’m suddenly blind to all things sexual. You guys have chemistry. You’ve always had chemistry. You’re just too thick to have noticed.”
“I noticed,” I muttered.
“Did you notice before tonight?”
I couldn’t look at her. I rolled the bottom edge of my empty glass along the bar, concentrating on staring at it instead of Brynn.
“We were kids when we met, and he was always just Chase to me. Of course I’ve thought about it. You can’t be friends with someone for as long as we have and not wonder at least once what would happen, but I dismissed the thought just as quickly.”
“Has being married to him changed that?”
“I don’t think so.” I honestly didn’t know how to answer her. Yes? No? It was kind of both. “Emotions are amped up because of shit at work,” I said slowly. “I haven’t slept, but I’m not going to fuck up my relationship with Chase over a stupid bet.” He would always be my best friend, and despite the fact that I had agreed to this insanity, nothing would ever change that. Even when I did something as ridiculous as kiss him in front of all our friends in a crowded bar. “I think if we let anything happen, we’d end up regretting it in the long run.”
“That’s probably smart,” Brynn agreed.
“I shouldn’t have kissed him.” I was talking mostly to myself, but Brynn threw her arm around my shoulder.
“It’ll all work out. Just talk to him.”
Chase was silent all the way home, the tension in my truck thick as stew. I didn’t know what to say to him to erase what had happened. Hell, I didn’t know if I wanted to erase what had happened.
I was torn between wanting to relive what had been, to date, the hottest kiss I’d ever experienced, and wiping the whole moment from existence. It shouldn’t have been good. It was unexpected and very public. All our friends watched as I shoved my tongue into Chase’s mouth.
But it was good. It was so good.
First kisses had never been like that for me before. They were always a little awkward, and sometimes a little sloppy, but the spark of chemistry rounded out the rough edges. There’d been no rough edges with Chase, though. Everything had been smooth and easy, and it had taken every ounce of willpower I possessed to break that kiss.
I pulled into the driveway and shut off the engine. Neither of us moved. I had to say something, to clear the air before we went into the house, or things would fester.
“Chase, about tonight…”
“It’s fine,” he assured me.
“We’re good?”
He turned to face me, his eyes meeting mine. “Always.”
Chapter Nine
Chase
Things had been tense after we got home from the bar the night before. The kiss had thrown me, but more than that was Alec’s reaction afterward. He’d been distant and aloof, and even though we’d sort of cleared the air after we got home, things were still awkward as fuck.
We went to bed, but even turned away from me I could tell from the tension in his shoulders and back that he was still awake.
“Alec?”
“Yeah?” His voice was gruff, like the edges had been roughened up with sandpaper.
“We are good, right?”
He rolled over and I could see the silhouette of him in the darkness. His features were veiled by shadow, and I wished there’d been enough light for me to see his eyes. I could usually tell how he was feeling by looking at his eyes. They were deep brown and so expressive, even when he didn’t want them to be.
“We’re good, Chase.”
His words were harsh but his tone was soft, and for a moment I thought he was going to reach out and touch me. His hand lingered over the blanket for an instant before he tugged the covers up and rolled onto his back.
Despite his reassurance, something had shifted between us. I had hoped we’d sleep it off, and in the morning we’d go back to being us, but when I woke, Alec was gone. I listened hard to see if I could hear the sound of the shower running or noises from him puttering around in the house, but everything was quiet and still.
I closed my eyes and fell back to sleep, too tired to fathom getting up to figure out where he’d gone. He’d be back later. We had a date.
When I woke for the second time, I realized I’d slept through all of the morning and a portion of the afternoon. I hauled my ass out of bed and stumbled to the bathroom to empty my bladder, which was screaming at me for relief. The house was still quiet, and as I flushed, I realized wherever Alec had gone, he was still out.
When he still wasn’t home by three, I texted his cell.
Chase: You coming back soon?
My cell chirped to life a minute later.
Alec: It’ll be a while. At the shop. Have dinner without me.
Chase: I thought we had plans tonight?
I added the question mark even though I knew we’d made plans. Granted, a movie isn’t overly exciting, but Alec had never bailed on me before. I couldn’t imagine him standing me up now, and as awkward as the evening before had been, it would only become more so if he kept avoiding me. I was almost positive that’s what he was doing.
Alec: Rain check? On a roll here and don’t want to slow down.
Disappointment settled over me, and I did my best to shrug it off. I didn’t know what was going on in his head, but it wouldn’t do me any good to speculate.
I made my way to the kitchen, my growling stomach demanding sustenance before anything else. Alec’s coffee cup sat on the counter next to the sink, but other than that, there was no sign he’d been there that morning. Pulling open the fridge, I scanned the contents, looking for anything that might be appealing, until I realized there was absolutely no reason for me to cook anything.
Alec wasn’t going to be home. I could order in.
I grabbed some salsa from the fridge and dug the tortilla chips from the cupboard to snack on while I scrolled through the listings of restaurants that delivered in the area. Settling on Thai food, I dialed, then requested two orders of cashew chicken and some vegetable egg rolls. I knew one dish wasn’t going to cut it. I felt like I hadn’t eaten in weeks, and I was going to take advantage of having the house to myself by pigging out without an audience.
There were some things a guy didn’t share with his best friend, like how deep my love affair for cashew chicken ran.
When the woman on the other end of the phone asked me if there would be anything else, I paused for a moment before tacking on an order of Panang curry and some tom yum goong, Alec’s favorites.
If he was at the shop, there was a good chance he’d been too busy to eat, and I’d be fucked if I was going to prepare something for him when he got home. After my near-amputation with the risotto, I wasn’t willing to make that gamble.
The food delivery was quicker than I’d anticipated, and I scarfed down most of my meal in record time. I eyed Alec’s order pensively, momentarily considering devouring his as well and hiding the food containers so there’d be no evidence, but thought better of it when the fullness in my belly began to hit. I guess I’d eaten so quickly there’d been
no time for my brain to catch up with my gut, but now that it had, I was forced to reach down and undo the top button of my pants.
My phone rang and my heart rate kicked up.
Alec?
“Hey, Travis.” I tried not to sound disappointed when I answered. I’d met Travis when I’d worked for a hot second at the sporting goods store in the mall when I was a junior in college. He was really into sports, and I was really into checking out guys who were really into sports, but we hit it off, bonding over mutual disgust of a customer who’d come in with a major case of foot fungus. We’d been good friends ever since.
“Hey, Chase. It’s been a while.”
I thought back to the last time we’d talked. It had been a couple of months. When had my life become so busy I didn’t have time for my friends anymore? “It has. I’m an asshole for not calling. How are things? How’s Sarah?”
“Sarah is good. We moved in together last month. It’s taking some adjusting for sure.”
“I can relate.”
“You can?”
I could hear his interest piquing loud and clear over the phone line. I baited him. “As a matter of fact, I got married about a week ago.”
“You’re fucking shitting me. To who?” Travis’s voice lifted two octaves in that short question. I held the phone away so he wouldn’t hear me laughing.
“Alec.”
“You’re fucking shitting me,” he repeated.
“Kind of.”
“You really are an ass. I should have known better. You’re not the marrying kind.”
His comment stung more than I’d have liked to admit. Did no one have faith in me that I could make a relationship work long-term? Okay, so maybe forever was a bit extreme, but it wasn’t like me to half-ass something.
“Fuck you,” I said. I am super eloquent when I want to be. “We are sort of married. It’s a long story.”
“I got all night.”
I laughed again, this time letting him hear me. “I got stood up by my new husband. You feel like doing something? We were supposed to catch a movie… the new Matt Damon whatever, but if you felt like doing something else…”