“Is that what you think you’ve been doing with me?” He clutched his helmet in his hands so tightly I thought it might shatter. “Performing?”
“I—” The words died in my throat. Because that was the problem, wasn’t it? I hadn’t been performing with him. With him, I’d been terrifyingly, vulnerably real. “I don’t know how to be anything else,” I whispered finally.
His expression softened, and he tugged me closer, out of the falling snow and into the shelter of a nearby storefront. “Alex.” Just my name, but he said it like it meant something. Like I meant something.
“I can’t go,” I mumbled. “I can’t stand in a room full of important people pretending I belong there.”
“You would belong there.” His thumb traced gentle circles on the inside of my wrist, his touch warming mycold skin. “But if it makes you that uncomfortable, we won’t go.”
I blinked, certain I’d misheard. “What?”
“We won’t go,” he repeated. “I’ll tell them we can’t make it.”
“But the tickets—”
“It's just money.” He shrugged as if ten thousand dollars was pocket change. To him, maybe it was. “I bought them because I wanted to spend the evening with you, and I thought you might enjoy the music and art. I’m realizing now that I should have asked you first.”
The fight drained out of me all at once, leaving me exhausted and cold. “I don’t understand you.”
“What’s to understand?” His voice was gentle now, the storm draining from his features. “I like you. I want to be with you. It doesn’t matter where.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“It could be.” He reached up, brushing snow from my hair with a gentleness that made my chest ache. “If you’d stop running away every time things get real.”
I didn’t have an answer for that, because he was right. I’d been running—from him, from the possibility of something genuine, from the terrifying prospect that I might deserve more than what I’d settled for. There was no way I could admit that to him, though.
“I’m freezing,” I said instead, a weak deflection that he saw right through.
He sighed, shrugging out of his riding jacket. “Here.”
“No.”
“Just take the damn jacket, Alex.” He draped it over my shoulders, the leather still warm from his body. It smelled like him. “Before I have to explain to Twyla why I let you freeze to death.”
The weight of it settled around me, heavy and comforting. I slipped my arms into the sleeves, instantly enveloped in warmth that had nothing to do with the leather and everything to do with the man standing before me.
“What do you want from me?” I asked the question, stripped of its earlier accusation.
He stepped closer, crowding me against the storefront. One hand came up to cup my jaw, his palm warm against my cold cheek. “Everything you’re willing to give,” he said. “But only what you want to.”
“What if that’s nothing?” I challenged, even as I leaned into his touch like a flower seeking the sun.
His lips quirked up in a ghost of that wolfish smile that never failed to make my heart race. “Then I’ll respect that. After I do everything in my power to change your mind.”
I should have pushed him away then, should have stuck to my plan to keep this—whatever it was—casual and uncomplicated. Instead, I reached for him, my hands fisting in his sweater, pulling him closer until I could bury my face in the crook of his neck.
“I’m sorry,” I murmured against his skin.
His arms wound around me like he was afraid to let go. “Nothing to be sorry for.” His voice rumbled through his chest and into mine where we pressedtogether. “Though I still think it’s a shame the world won’t get to see you in that tux. You looked devastating in the fitting.”
I pulled back, narrowing my eyes at him. “How would you know? You weren’t there.”
His grin turned mischievous. “Twyla sent pictures.”
“Of course she did.” I shook my head, trying and failing to hold on to my irritation. “You two are a menace together.”
“She cares about you.” His expression grew serious again. “So do I.”
