She turned around, smiling and composed, but I could still see the heavy sag in her shoulders.
“Come on, then, Prince Charming. Let’s see what this chivalry stuff is all about. I hear good things.”
That might have been the moment when I stopped blaming her for dragging me to bar after bar in city after city. Not that it hadn’t all been miserable as hell. But there was one difference between Kelsey and the way I’d been a few years back.
She tried. She tried so incredibly hard, which is more than I ever did.
So I smiled, and turned to walk her home.
“I haven’t been called chivalrous in a long time,” I said.
This time she looked before she crossed the road.
“Fine by me. Chivalry sounded pretty boring anyway.”
I laughed because she was funny. Despite it all.
She met my eyes. “Tell me something. If you’re not walking me home because it’s the gentlemanly thing to do, why are you here?”
“Back on the serial-killer bent, are we?”
It was easier to joke than acknowledge why I was really there.
“Nah, you’re not a serial killer. Too soft for that.”
“Soft?”
She threw me a smile before turning onto the street with her hostel.
“Hold on, now. Did you just call me soft?”
I turned her around by her shoulder. Maybe I pulled too hard or maybe she wasn’t quite sobered up yet because she planted a hand against my stomach to keep from falling into me.
I stiffened.
“Well, I wouldn’t call this part of you soft.”
She looked up at me through her lashes, her voice smooth, and want for her punched me in the gut, right where I could feel the heat of her hand bleeding through my shirt. She leaned into me, and the adrenaline pouring through me made everything except the beat of my heart go silent.
“Kelsey,” I said. I was already too sucked in to push her away, but I tried to warn her off anyway.
She tilted her head to the side and said, “How did you know my name?”
Shit. Fuck. Shitty f**king shittery.
“That girl said it. The one you came to the bar with.”
That answer wasn’t any better. Now she’d know I was watching her long before I talked to her.
She reached up to my shoulder and smiled. She didn’t look suspicious.
“Well, then, you know my name, and I know yours. How else could we get to know each other?”
Her hand slid up my abdomen to my chest, and I tensed, barely holding on to my control. I swayed toward her, touching her lightly just above where her waist was smallest. I wanted to touch her everywhere.
She gripped the back of my neck, bending my head down, and I flexed my hands, trying to stop myself from throwing her over my shoulder and taking her back to my hotel room.
She stood on her tiptoes, and her lips brushed my chin. It was a testament to how much I wanted her that I was a few seconds away from kissing her even though I’d watched her be sick on the street maybe an hour or two earlier.
Her shirt was bunched up in my flexed fists and the side of my hand grazed bare skin. I nearly lost it. I cast my gaze up to the sky and growled, “Goddamn it.”
She wrapped her arms around my shoulder, and then reached a hand up to tip my head down toward hers. I let her, even though I was shouting inside to walk away. I was thinking with my dick instead of my head, and I needed to get that under control. I might not have known the real Kelsey, not really, but I knew her well enough to know that if we slept together tonight, she’d be done with me.
Then I’d lose this job and have to go crawling home back to Houston. Then I’d be the one on a downward spiral.
And what would happen to her if I were gone? Would her father send someone else in my place?
For some reason, the thought of someone else watching her and seeing her the way I’d seen her made me irrationally angry. If I was right about the cycle she was on, she needed someone to look out for more than just her safety, and I didn’t trust anyone else to do that.
And if I was honest, I didn’t want to leave. Not just because I didn’t want to go home, but because I didn’t want to leave her.
It was the fascination, I told myself. I didn’t want to go until I knew her story, until I understood.
It was a good thing I was better at lying to her than I was at lying to myself.
Determined, I pushed her away.
Almost immediately, I wanted to pull her back.
Instead, I stepped away. “You should go. Get some sleep.”
She was breathing heavy, and it drew my eyes to her chest, and f**k.
“What?” she asked.
“You’ve had a long night.” That I would not make any longer.
She crossed her arms over her chest, and I knew that armor was coming back up. “That sounds an awful lot like chivalry to me. Boring chivalry.”
I took another step back because she was still too close for comfort, and my control was a thin, thin line.
“This is you, right?” I asked, pointing to the hostel at her back, even though I knew it was.
“Uh, yeah, it is, but—”
“Good. Then I’ll leave you alone.”
I walked backward, my steps stiff. “Good night, Kelsey. Or Good morning.”
Then I rounded the corner. I walked just far enough that she wouldn’t be able to see me anymore, and then I sagged against the building.
Around the corner, I heard her say, “What the f**k?”
What the f**k, indeed.