An Ex for Christmas(35)

And by running I mean I laughably try to shuffle away from Mark, whose high-school-pitcher throwing arm will easily crush me in any snowball fight.

His first snowball hits me squarely between the shoulder blades. Not hard, but hard enough. Guess he’s mad, too.

The second is a lob that he times perfectly to crash gently on top of my head, and I let out a laughing curse as I brush snow out of my face.

I start to turn to call a truce before I get thoroughly pummeled, but suddenly a body collides with mine, sending us both crashing to the ground.

The fall is mostly pillowed by the thick layer of snow, but my breath whooshes out all the same, both from the ground beneath me and from the big body atop mine.

I let out a little laugh and shove at Mark. “Truce, you big bully. I was going to admit defeat—you didn’t have to tackle me.”

He merely grins.

He tries to be cool about it, but Mark’s always loved snow, too. The tense, frustrated Mark of last night is nowhere to be seen, and my heart feels a little lighter at the boyish happiness on my best friend’s face.

“Sorry for the tackle, or sorry for being an ass last night?”

Before he can answer, a tree branch above our head drops an enormous pile of snow directly in my face.

I let out a startled yelp that mingles with Mark’s laugh.

Eyes closed, I try to use my hands to wipe the cold snow away, but the bulk of my gloves (as well as the fact that they themselves are covered in snow) makes the process cumbersome.

“Here,” he says, his face so close I can feel his breath on my frozen features.

A moment later I feel warm fingers on my cheek, and I open my eyes to see he’s pulled off one of his gloves and is using his bare hand to brush the snow away from my face.

His fingers gently glide over my right cheekbone, then my left, lingering just a little.

I want to smile. Or say thank you. Or recapture the playfulness of just a few seconds ago, which is rapidly transitioning into something . . .

Not playful.

His expression is all business as he goes about brushing the ice crystals off my face, but when his palm sweeps over my lower face, I swear he seems to cradle my jaw, just for a second. The way he traces his fingertips over my eyebrows is just as gentle.

He doesn’t meet my eyes. Not once. Not until he lowers his hand, his fingertips brushing over my lips at the very moment his gaze lifts to mine.

It feels like an electric shock.

The touch of his fingers on my lips, the heat of his gaze, the weight of his body pinning mine to the ground . . .

Somehow all of those combined is creating the most intense, unexpectedly carnal moment of my life.

My eyes flutter in confusion. No, that can’t be right. “Carnal” isn’t a word I associate with Mark. Or at least I haven’t before now.

My eyes drop to his mouth. He has such a full bottom lip. How’ve I never noticed that before?

Mine’s not that full. Which he now knows, because he’s touching—

No, not anymore.

Mark slowly moves his hand away from my face and I bite my lip hard to stop from asking him to keep touching me.

He gets into a sitting position, hauling me up beside him. Neither of us says anything for a long, awkward moment. Then he finally looks at me.

“Sorry.”

I study him, trying to read him, but he’s retreating again. This is neither the boyishly happy Mark nor the seductive Mark with the heated gaze that I swear I caught a glimpse of.

“For?” Damn, my voice is breathy.

“For the fight last night,” he says, his eyes holding mine. “And for . . .” He gestures to the snow behind us, where our bodies left indentations.

“Forgiven.”

He studies me the same way I’m studying him, even as he pulls his glove back on. “For both?”

I shrug and pack a ball of snow between my hands. “I mean . . . it kind of sucks. About last night, I mean. This thing with the exes—it’s important for me to see it through, and I guess I always thought what was important to me was also important to you. I thought that was kind of a best-friend rule.”

He exhales and stares straight ahead at the steadily falling snow. “You’re right.”

I cup my ear and lean in. “Hmm?”

He pushes a wet gloved hand against my face. “Shut it. You know you’re right. I’m not going to pretend to get on board with believing this one-true-love-before-Christmas crap, but . . . if you need someone to talk to about this nonsense, I don’t want you going to anyone else.”

I purse my lips. “That’s actually kind of sweet.”

“I have my moments.”

“You do. This”—I gesture at the two of us sitting in the snow—“wasn’t one of them.”

“You used to love snowball fights.”

“I still do, just not when there’s only two people and I have zero chance of winning.”

Mark swipes a gloved hand over his reddening nose. “I don’t know. I’m finding I kind of like it with just the two of us.”

My breath catches, even as I tell myself to get a grip. He doesn’t mean it like that. He just means right here, in this moment . . .

Hell, I have no idea what Mark means.

And that’s odd. We may be different, but we get each other. I’ve always been able to read him, and he me. But I’m not at all sure we’ve been reading each other correctly for the past few days.