What If (If Only.... #2)(49)

And now—now there’s this guy who is more than a worthy distraction, and for weeks I’ve been keeping him at a distance, but the pull is stronger than my push. Because for weeks, I’ve also been falling, and all it would take is one more tug from him, and I’d have no push left.

“Is that it?” I ask. “Because you can draw another card if you want.” He leans forward, his elbows on his knees as he contemplates my invitation to ask more, to mend the ripping seam between us.

He stands and makes his way to the bench next to me. He angles his head toward mine, and I suck in a breath, waiting for his lips to be his response, and they are. Just not on mine.

Warm breath tickles my ear before I hear his voice.

“That depends. If I had another, could I ask you if you could fall in love with…this?”

His tongue flicks at my earlobe, and his teeth follow close behind, grazing and tugging, and a sigh of pleasure trickles off my lips.

“Or this?” His tongue trails the length of my neck to my collarbone, and this time a word forms.

“Oh.” In my head I scream my response. Yes! I could fall in love with…this. But the answer will not form. Nor will the mounting question of Why? and What does this mean? and How could you still want me when I keep doing everything in my power to push you away?

As if he can hear inside my messed-up head, he answers my questioning thoughts.

“For this weekend only, shut everything else out…except me.”

His ragged voice, filled with need, only has to ask once because my answer is a resounding, “Yes.”

I wriggle out of my coat and, without further pause, rise up on my knees as I face him, lifting my top over my head and unclasping my bra, needing his mouth on me. One quick glance to my left assures me, despite the wall of windows we’re up against, we are hidden in the privacy of our height above the city, nothing but the lapping waves of the lake to see us. I don’t hide my need. He obliges immediately, after he lets out a soft but hungry groan.

His tongue tastes and then lips close around me, his hand making sure my other breast isn’t left out of the fun. My fingers tangle in his hair as he licks and pinches and devours, and in my head I hear myself say again, Yes! I could fall in love with this.

Because of course it’s more than this. It’s always been more than this. But I can’t say it, can’t give him the three words I’ll take back once we leave this fairy tale. So I return to that night at his place, when I stopped him before the words were too much to reciprocate, and I think it.

Griffin, I…

I let the thought dangle, unfinished, unsaid. If saying it aloud makes it real, thinking it plants the seed of reality, and I don’t know how to make it grow.

I can shut it all out for a night. That much is true. I can wrap my arms around his neck and climb forward, my legs straddling him as I lower myself to his lap, his lips dragging up my collarbone, my neck, my chin—until they meet mine. And then—fireworks.





Chapter Eighteen


Griffin


Chicago winters, brutal as I hear they can get, are nothing compared to Minnesota, and certainly not in November. So we walk the two blocks to the Hancock, Michigan Avenue ablaze now in holiday lights.

I check the time on my phone, a quarter after seven, and see a text I must have missed when Maggie distracted me on the window seat. Not that I’m complaining. She gave me an opening to ask her anything. Then she offered me more, which is exactly why I didn’t take it from her. All I needed to know was that she was willing to let me into her secrets, if only for a small peek. And to touch her. God, I needed to touch her. Just thinking about it stokes the need, so much I’m almost willing to say f*ck it to this whole reunion thing. Then my phone buzzes again.

It’s Jordan, as was the previous message. Though her texts have lost their effect on me since Maggie came into the picture, there’s a sort of twist in my gut, a knot in my throat, at the thought of seeing her again after so long.

Jordan: You’re late! Did you get my other text? We have a surprise for you!

We have a surprise for you. We have a surprise for you.

“You okay?” Maggie’s voice cuts through the memories, reminding me it’s not Jordan I miss but the What if? What if someone like her could have fallen for someone like me? How different would I be now? Would Maggie trust me enough to let me all the way past her walls? Would I let her past mine?

I look away from the screen and into Maggie’s green eyes and realize Jordan Brooks is not my What if? It’s this girl in front of me right now, nose red from the cold and fingertips poking out of the openings in her gloves to grab the lapels of my coat.

I drop the phone back into my pocket, text message unanswered. We’re late. And I don’t give a shit. My hands cup Maggie’s cheeks, and I tilt my head down, forehead resting on hers.

“What if?” I ask her, and she doesn’t respond with anything more than the warmth of her breath mingling with mine, the air between us the only source of heat on a Chicago winter night.

“What if?” I ask it again, quieter this time, because maybe the question is only for me. Maybe this step is mine to take whether she’s with me or not, because either way the risk is huge, but I don’t want to walk into that building pretending. I don’t want to face the person who didn’t see me as a real option without proving to her—no, to myself—that I can be real. That I can want something f*cking real more than my own self-preservation.