I shook it, but then pulled him in for a hug anyway. “Hey, buddy. Are you ready to party the night away?”
“Sure, but eight is my bedtime.” He smiled at me, then turned pleading eyes on his mother. “I don’t have to go to sleep at eight tonight, do I?”
She sighed, tutting with her tongue before her lips spread into a beautiful, beaming smile and she shook her head. “Of course not. You can try to stay awake until the new year, just like we do every year.”
“Yes.” He punched the air with his first, his eyes swinging back to mine. “Do you like mac and cheese? We have mac and cheese for dinner every year on New Year’s Eve. Mom says it’s her ‘night-off’ dish.”
“I love it.” I reached out to ruffle his hair. “You’re lucky that your mom makes something as delicious as mac and cheese for a ‘night off’ dish.”
“Yeah, Mom’s the best.” He shot the most adorable smile in her direction.
She returned it, handing over the juice box she’d extracted from the fridge. “So are you, baby. What do you do say? Are you ready to get this party started?”
I had no idea what their idea of getting the party started was, but I had a feeling it was vastly different than mine. Raeanne handed me a juice box of my own, then led the way to a tiny living and dining area.
While the entire room was smaller than my entrance hall, it had twice the character and three times the homeliness than my whole house. There were two gray couches decorated with scatter cushions with bright yellow sunflowers on them.
On the mantel were framed pictures of Raeanne, Lawson, and one or two of them with another woman. None of the frames matched. Some were distressed wood while others were metal. A few were even plastic. Yet the overall effect somehow worked.
A fire crackled happily below them, filling the air with pleasant heat and a faint smoky scent. There were toys on the floor and blankets rolled up on the couches.
A small, square dining-room table stood in front of the window. It had been set with two candles flickering in the middle.
The lights were dimmed, the fire and the candles casting the room in a warm glow that instantly relaxed me. A puzzle sat half-built on the pocked coffee table, and Lawson immediately sank down on the furry carpet beside it.
“Come help me with this puzzle, Declan.” He patted the carpet beside him. “Mom and I rented it from the library downtown.”
“You can rent puzzles from a library?” I lifted an eyebrow, looking questioningly at Raeanne.
“They have a few,” she said. “Not nearly enough to keep up with this young man, but at least we don’t have to keep buying them.”
“Puzzles are expensive,” Lawson said, not sounding sad or even resigned. It was simply a fact. “This one is of a solar system. Mom said it was too advanced, but we’re managing.”
When I thought back to the number of puzzles sitting unused in my parents’ house, I felt a twinge of shame stabbing me in the gut. I’d never thought about it before, but we should probably have donated them somewhere.
Surely, they could be put to better use than gathering dust in that mausoleum. While silently musing over how I had never even considered doing something like that before, I went to sit down next to Lawson. I peered over the top of the table to see how far he had come.
“I’d say you’re doing more than managing. This is really starting to take shape.”
Raeanne ignored the couches and sat down on the carpet, too. She was on the other side of the table, and while I had the sudden urge to ask her to come sit next to me, it was better like this. I could look at her without it being obvious that I was staring.
And it was impossible not to stare at her.
She was so damn beautiful in such a natural, understated way. The only sign of makeup was a mostly gone smudge of eyeliner on her lids, but she looked better than most women I’d seen after spending hours primping.
The soft light in the room softened her features and made her smile seem both secretive and mesmerizing. She pushed her hair back behind her ears and scooted onto her knees, bringing her hands together.
“Right, gentlemen. We have an hour before the food will be ready. Let’s see how much we can get done in that time, shall we?”
“We shall,” I agreed, spotting one piece that slotted into a space right in front of me. “All hail, Puzzle King Declan.”
Doing a victory jig while seated on the floor, I spotted Raeanne chuckling under her breath at me. Lawson grabbed another loose piece and, after trying it in a few places, fit it in. “I guess that makes me the Puzzle Prince.”
I pretended to bow while nodding solemnly. “Heavy is the head that wears the crown, Puzzle Prince. It’s a tough job, but I’m sure you’ll be up to it.”
“Where does that expression come from?” Lawson asked.
“As far as I remember, the original source of the phrase isn’t known.”
“But William Shakespeare used it in his play called Henry the Fourth,” Raeanne said, then winked when she caught me just about gaping at her. “What? You two aren’t the only ones who know how to read.”
“Touché, Princess Shakespeare,” I joked.
As the evening wore on, I awarded everyone with several more bogus titles. We danced around the coffee table to hits of the year we would soon be leaving behind. Or rather, Raeanne and Lawson danced while I tried to hide the growing issue in my pants as I watched her move.
Eventually though, I shut that part of my brain down and joined in. We ate the most incredible mac and cheese I’d ever had and, after shaking our asses a little more, sat back down on the carpet.
Lawson was lying with his head on my lap, and it felt strangely right to be here with them. I stroked my fingers through his hair and checked the time on my watch. “Only about ten more minutes to go.”
“For some of us.” Raeanne inclined her head to the floor as she sipped on her juice. “Others might need a little power nap after all the excitement.”
Looking down, I realized that Lawson was fast asleep. His chest was rising and falling on even breaths, his face relaxed and peaceful. It made him look even younger than he already was.
“Let me take him to bed,” Raeanne said. “He’ll be more comfortable there. He might make a return when the clock strikes twelve, but I’m not counting on it.”
She started getting to her feet, but I held up my hand. “Let me take him. If you’ll just show me to his room, I’ll carry him.”
She shot me a grateful smile. “Thanks. Getting him off the floor isn’t as easy for me as it once was.”
I carefully lifted his head, folding one arm under his neck and the other beneath his knees to lift him against me. “Somehow, I can’t imagine him being any smaller than this. He just seems so meant to be exactly the way he is now.”
“Every phase is like that.” A nostalgic smile spread on her lips. “Every year, I look back at photos from the previous year and I can’t believe how much he’s grown. Have you ever thought about having any kids?”
“Not really.” Bringing another life into my world had never been at the forefront of my mind. In fact, I did everything I could to prevent it from happening. But now, I wasn’t so sure anymore. “Maybe someday. You don’t happen to have a recipe for making one like him lying around, do you?”
“If only.” She sighed. “Then again, I didn’t know I had the recipe for him in the first place.”
“You’ve done a great job with him so far,” I said as I followed her down a short, narrow hallway that ended with a door ahead of me and one on either side. “Not that you need me to tell you, of course.”
“I never get tired of hearing it.” She opened the door on the left, leading me into a small bedroom with a bed covered in superhero sheets. Man, those brought back memories. “You can just lie him down on top of the bed. I’ve got a spare blanket here.”
She rummaged around at the foot of the bed, leaving a red fleece blanket on the corner. “I’ll go get that champagne of yours
ready for the countdown. Meet you out there.”
I nodded my understanding and laid Lawson down as gently as I could. He barely moved a muscle, his hand only fisting the material of my shirt for a second before it relaxed again and he let me go.
After I covered him with the blanket, I took off his shoes and watched him sleep for a second before I left. It was the strangest thing, the clench in my heart at seeing him like that.
Raeanne was waiting for me with a champagne flute filled with sparkling grape juice when I got back to the living room. The TV showed a countdown, but its volume was turned almost all the way down.
“You ready for this year to be over?” she asked me, her voice low but happy. “I think I am. I’m a hopeless romantic for the new year.”
“Yeah, I hear you.” I never had been, but I was in that moment.
Raeanne was standing so close to me that I could smell her intoxicating scent again. She hadn’t stepped back after handing me my juice, her lips slightly parted and very tempting as she stared up into my eyes.
As if we’d been frozen, we stood there looking at each other as we counted down the last seconds of the year. When cheers and applause broke out on the TV, her pink tongue darted out to lick her lips, and I fucking lost it.
I couldn’t stop looking at her, at her lips and her eyes, her perfect fucking face. All I could think of was tasting her, and it was midnight. So fuck it.
Kissing someone was perfectly acceptable at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve. Everyone knew it. Expected it, even.
Throwing everything else out the window except for that intense desire to kiss her, I closed the distance between us. I moved slowly enough that she could back away at any moment before it happened, lifting my hand up to touch her face while my eyes dropped back to her lips.
And then I kissed her.
“Is it the New Year yet?” Lawson’s dazed voice interrupted us.
Raeanne jumped away from me immediately. “Yes, baby. It is. Happy New Year.”
When she moved to him, I wanted to go with her. I wanted to tuck him back into bed with her and then spend the rest of the night in her bed.
Which was exactly why I had to leave. “I’m going to head home. Happy New Year, you two. I’ll see myself out.”
“No,” she said, bending down to whisper something to Lawson before coming back to my side. He muttered a good night and sleepwalked back to his bedroom. Once he was gone, Raeanne looked up at me. “I was wondering if you’d like to have dinner with me tomorrow night. Just the two of us.”
I was stunned that she’d asked, but I could also see how nervous she was about it. There wasn’t any reason for her to be. I only had one answer I wanted to give. “Sure. That sounds great. I’ll text you in the morning?”
“Yeah, you do that.” The nerves evaporated, and a victorious smile touched her lips, even if I could tell she was trying to hide it. “I’ll speak to you tomorrow, Declan.”
“I can’t wait.” And for probably the first time in my life, I really, really couldn’t. This was one girl I was totally calling the day after. There was nothing in the fucking world that could stop me from doing it.
Chapter 16
Raeanne
Eeeeek! That kiss.
I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Lawson and I went through the motions of having breakfast, then lunch later. We finished building the puzzle, and he spent some time reading while I cleaned up a little, but all the while, the kiss was playing on a loop in my head.
To be fair, I didn’t have as much experience with kissing as most other people my age. Again, teenage boys weren’t really masters at anything. But I would have a hard time believing that even if I did have heaps of experience with other experienced people that I would have thought of that kiss as anything but incredible.
Everything about it had been magical. The kind of kiss I’d only read about. The kind that they filmed movies about. It had been so much more than just lips touching lips. My entire body had been electrified. Hell, the room itself seemed to have been.
The air between us had changed when I handed him his juice, and suddenly, Declan looked at me like he was about to kiss me. It was that look guys got that was the perfect blend between adorable and sexy, though there wasn’t usually anything adorable about him.
But the way he had been looking at me made my heart flutter and my hands tremble. His gaze had been almost dreamy on mine, lowering slowly to fix on my lips. Glancing back up like he was hoping he’d recovered before giving anything away, I saw the moment he realized that he wasn’t able to stop himself from looking at my lips.
It exposed what he had been planning to do, drawing us together slowly. Our shoes touched first, then our chests, but neither of us put any space back between us.
Right before his lips had touched mine, he stopped, as if there had been any chance of us turning back at that point. When he realized I wasn’t backing away, he lowered his head and captured my lips in a kiss that had to have been the most perfect first kiss I’d ever had. Which wasn’t saying too much, but still.
It had been way more than just planting my lips on someone and hoping for the best. No, Declan was an expert-level kisser, and despite all the reasons not to, I had kissed him back.
“God,” Tessa groaned as she massaged her temples. “I am so hungover.”
She had come to our house ostensibly to have coffee with me, but I had a feeling it was more about her curiosity over what had happened with Declan last night. I gave her a sympathetic smile, then helped her out with a cup of strong, bitter coffee.
“That’s one plus about not drinking so much. I never have a hangover anymore.”
“Rub it in, why don’t you?” She managed a small smile but winced when her eyes hit the window behind me. “Thanks for the coffee. I need it.”
“No problem.” I fixed a cup for myself, moved to sit on a chair where I wouldn’t be framed by sunlight from behind, and kept my voice low. “Just let me know if there’s anything else you need. You don’t look so good.”
She waved me off as she blew on the surface of her coffee, moaning when she breathed in the scent. “Nope, this is going to do the trick. Well that, and I’ll probably crawl into bed by Lawson’s bedtime tonight. Where is he anyway?”
“Having a nap. He almost made it to midnight last night but not quite. It wiped him out, though. He couldn’t keep his eyes open anymore.”
“I know the feeling.” She leaned forward, her eyes flicking to the door as if she was making sure that Lawson hadn’t appeared there before looking at me. “Speaking of last night, how did it go?”
A thrum of excitement traveled through me. A part of me felt like I was a teenager again, giddy about that first kiss with the boy I was crushing on.
“I kissed him,” I whispered, sliding my elbows onto the counter and propping my chin in my palms. I didn’t even care if I looked like a lovesick puppy. I wasn’t. I just felt like there were a few clouds floating around in my head.
Tessa’s eyebrows shot up, but she had the good sense to keep her voice down too. Although her whispers were more like whisper-shouting. “What? Really? How was it?”
“It was so amazing.” I sighed softly. “And yes, really. Is that so hard to believe?”
She snorted. “I’ve known you a long time, and I’ve never even heard you talking about a guy. Yet here you are, kissing one you’ve only known for a little over a week.”
“Do you think it was too soon?” I hadn’t thought about that. I wasn’t exactly up to date on the rules about sex or relationships.
“No,” she said. “People sleep together without having said ten words to each other. You’ve had dinner with him twice, and you’ve spent time with him during the day. You’ve gotten to know him a lot better than most people do before a first kiss.”
I nodded because I felt the same way. Declan and I had gone through a bit of a crash course in the getting-to-know-you stuff as a result of how we’d met.
&
nbsp; “That’s what I thought too.” My teeth sank into my lower lip and tugged as I thought. “I asked him to dinner tonight. I was hoping—”
“Say no more.” She held up a hand and swiped it through the air in front of her. “I’ll watch Lawson. You need to start the year off right, and there doesn’t seem to be a better way to do it than a date with a hottie who kisses well.”
My cheeks grew warm, but I shook it off. “Are you sure you’re feeling up to it? I can get a sitter, or Mrs. Adamson next door offered to watch him as my birthday present last year.”
“Mrs. Adamson smells like cabbage and cats. Keep her offer for another time. I’m perfectly fine to watch Lawson tonight. How I’m feeling is self-induced, and like I said, I’ll probably be crawling into bed the same time he does anyway.”
“Are you sure?”
“So sure.” She grinned and pushed to her feet, suddenly looking a lot better after her first few sips of coffee. “What are you going to wear? What were you going to do with your hair? Do you have any makeup lying around?”
So it wasn’t the coffee that had made her look better. It was the prospect of getting me all dressed up. She’d been trying to get me dolled up for years, and this was the first time I actually had a reason to agree.
“I don’t know what I’m going to wear. I was going to keep my hair loose, and you know I only have mascara and eyeliner.”
She let out a long sigh, casting a critical eye on me that ran from head to toe. “I have some makeup essentials in my purse. I guess I’m going to have to make do with that. I like the hair idea, but depending on what you wear, I’m reserving my right to veto it.”
Knowing a lost cause when I saw one, I didn’t even try to argue. I gestured toward my bedroom and stood up instead. “Lead the way, oh wise one. I’m in your hands.”
A wicked smile spread on her lips as her hangover seemed to disappear entirely. She was practically gleeful by the time she opened my closet.
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