A low sound left his throat.
“That’s like a thousand questions in one,” he began. “But I think you know.” He placed his warm palm on my thigh. “I want you. I think—no, I know—something is there. Something amazing.”
Even though I’d known that was what he would say, the force of his words still hit me hard. My pulse drummed rapidly as he turned to gaze at me in the moonlight. The gold flecks in his gray eyes shimmered as his pupils blew wide. His lips were an inch away. I stared, mesmerized, as the tip of his tongue darted out to wet them. It would be so easy to lean forward and—
The buzzing of Will’s phone on the nightstand saved me from…whatever was about to happen. I pulled my head back.
Wait. It was past midnight. Who was texting him in the middle of the night?
He removed his arm from my shoulders, flipped his phone over, and frowned.
“Everything okay?”
Will exhaled loudly. “Yeah. It’s just Rosalyn. She needs my help with something.”
I tensed and pushed his hand off my leg. Rosalyn, as in former fiancée Rosalyn? They still texted? In all our talking today, Will had left that little nugget of information out.
He clued in to my reaction. “Oh shit! I promise I wasn’t keeping it from you or anything. She still works at Wallingford Capital. She wants me to help with one of my old accounts. Her text is just a link to a shared drive with some files. And she’s a workaholic. I doubt she even realizes she’s texting so late.”
I felt that knowledge in the pit of my stomach. Rosalyn worked for his family’s company. I wondered how often they spoke. How often they saw one another. “Does she know where you are?” I asked.
“No. My parents knew I was coming to James’s party over the weekend, but no one knows I’m still here. Like I said, I don’t want them to find out about this new concussion.”
My brain recalled the annoyed look on Rosalyn’s face five years ago when she’d stuck out her manicured hand and introduced herself to me. It brought another question to mind.
“That day, what did you tell her—your fiancée—about me?”
Will had the good grace to look abashed. “After you left the hotel lobby, she asked me who you were, and I told her you were an acquaintance I’d known in college.”
“Did you ever tell her the truth, later on?”
“No. I thought about it. But when I finally broke it off, the first question she asked was if there was someone else. I didn’t want to tell her about our night because my breaking up with her wasn’t about that. But she wouldn’t have seen it that way.”
“That makes sense,” I concluded carefully.
But understanding his decision-making helped me gain clarity about my earlier reluctance.
It was obvious the aftereffects of Will’s accident were ongoing, even if they’d improved over the past few years. Him feeling uncomfortable telling his parents about this new concussion—the result of a legitimate accident and not carelessness—proved that. Not to mention Rosalyn still had a significant foothold in his world, working for Wallingford. And even though he said hehadn’t kept that information from me intentionally, it felt like something he should have mentioned earlier.
Will and I had already proven we had the power to hurt one another deeply. And so many of the same pain-causers from five years ago were still part of his life.
This. This was what made me hesitate to jump into something with him.
He wanted to explore something between us. But neither of us could afford to behave recklessly.
Yet I couldn’t imagine denying ourselves forever. I felt the heat of him pressed next to my side on the bed, responding to every little touch between us. Each breath an invitation. It would be so easy to let that instinct carry me, to reach over and straddle him, to move my hips back and forth over him until he’d been coaxed to full hardness, to tug down his sweatpants and wrap my hand around his cock. I squeezed my thighs together, wanting it.
Luckily, his concussion recovery protocol kept the urge at bay. But that wouldn’t always be the case. My body wanted to taste, to cash the check Will wrote five years ago.
I needed to get ahold of myself. To think rationally. I needed to be somewhere other than cuddled in bed next to him.
“It’s late, and I’m finally feeling sleepy.” I pulled myself up hastily and stood on the floor, leaning down to kiss Will on the head. “Good night.”
A look of confusion passed over his features, but he didn’t try to stop me. Just as I was closing the door, he called out, “Maureen?”
“Hmm?”
“I meant what I said. We could have something amazing.”
