Or so I thought. Then he added, “But what you said to me in the sauna was really mean, considering.”
I folded my arms across my thick coat. “I understand that, now. But I know, and now you know, that I didn’t understand what was going on at your house when I said that.”
“Right.”
I studied his handsome face. Even now, the uneducated observer would say he looked happy. Only I saw his slightly narrowed eyes and heard the edge in his voice. “You’re still mad at me anyway,” I said. “I’m sorry I called you a bitch, but doesn’t count as an apology.”
He put up one hand to wipe away the tiny snowflakes sticking and melting in the stubble on his chin. “You don’t know how mad I was at you in the first place. I think I’ve done really well to back down as far as I have. Chloe and Liz say I should ask you out. Everybody in school had been telling me that, actually. But when it came down to it, in the hall last Friday, you made that comment about your lawyer. I thought you might say no and rub my face in it.”
Exactly what I’d thought. If he might lose, he didn’t want to play.
“My parents argued the whole weekend,” he said. “I was pretty much home for the entire thing, except when I was boarding. It’s been coming on for a while, but I couldn’t help thinking I’d brought it on somehow by making those divorce jokes to you in the hall on Friday.”
“Oh.” I might believe in a little karma to go with my yoga, but Nick hadn’t done anything to deserve that. I wanted to wrap my arms around him to comfort him. I didn’t touch him, though. I didn’t dare.
He splayed his hands on his jeans and rubbed his thighs like he could hardly stand to stay in his own skin any longer. “Then, in the sauna, I got a second chance to ask you out,” he went on. “I was really into what we were doing—or, as it turns out, not doing.”
“You never did ask me out,” I reminded him.
“I was going to. I thought we would get together. And then, when you said I never take you anywhere, and I take you for granted, and I ignore you except when it’s convenient, you sounded almost exactly like my mother yelling at my father right before she left.”
That hurt. I knew I hadn’t said those things to him. But coming off a whole weekend of listening to his parents bicker, that’s what he must have heard when I’d said he hadn’t asked me to the Poseur concert, he hadn’t congratulated me on winning the boarding contest, and he only wanted to be with me now that our friends were together. I actually grimaced at a pain in my stomach at the thought I’d hurt him so much. “Nick—”
He waved away what I was about to say. “I’m sorry. I know that’s not what you wanted to hear, and it’s definitely not sexy, but I wanted you to understand what happened. I’d told Gavin and Davis some of what went down with my parents, so I figured you could have known. If you were throwing that back in my face, you were a different person than I thought. I’ve probably never been that angry at anyone in my life. Except my dad.” He bit his lip, looking so unsure and so much younger, for once, than seventeen. “I know that’s not fair to you. I’m going through kind of a tough time right now, and I might not be thinking straight.”
“It’s okay.” I shuffled forward through the snow to hug him, whether he wanted to be hugged or not. As Chloe had said, Nick needed my support. As a friend. All our arguments seemed silly now, compared with what he’d been going through at home.
To my surprise, he put both his arms around me and hugged me closer, until I had to step toward him on the icy pavement. His body curved around me. I felt his hot breath in my hair, and I shivered.
“Are you cold? Here.” He unzipped his jacket, then unzipped mine—my heart was doing flips as his hands passed down my chest, unzipping me—and he pulled me even farther forward, into his body heat.
I’d been shivering from the feelings he stirred in me every time he looked at me, not from the cold. But I certainly was not going to clue him in if he wanted to share bodily warmth. Sometimes it was best to leave well enough alone. His 98.6-degree body was an 80-degree contrast to the cold night all around me. My heart sped up, pumping my confused blood so hard through my veins that I could hear it in my ears.
“So Chloe and Liz think we should make out.” He spoke just above a whisper. The low notes of his voice made my insides quiver.
I looked way up at him, into his dark eyes. “Well, last night we didn’t finish what we started.” I put my hands in his hair and drew his face down toward mine, enjoying every second of anticipation, feeling the aura of heat around him. I kissed his neck, just below his chin.
In yoga class, I could see when people started to let go of their busy schedules and relax into the stretches. Now I could feel Nick leave Mile-High Pie behind, and the snowy street, and the cold mountain, and relax into this little cloud of warmth with me. “God, Hayden,” he breathed.
I kissed my way across his neck. He blindly fumbled under my jacket until his hot hand slid inside my T-shirt. He took my chin in his other hand and turned my face toward his, looking me all over, my eyes, my hair, my lips. I thought for a moment he was going to tell me to stop.
And then he kissed me, softly at first, then more firmly and deeply. He was not going to tell me to stop. His second thoughts were gone. He was fully committed, at least to this make-out session. His tongue swept deep inside my mouth. He gathered fistfuls of my T-shirt on either side of my waist and held me tight. For long minutes, as the cold wind teased us outside our cocoon of coats, we warmed each other and breathed each other.
It went on for thirty minutes, I would say. I’m really not sure. Time flew when I was having fun, but my brain recorded every tiny detail of his mouth on mine like we were moving in slow motion in the hot air. Like I was falling off a cliff.
Finally, when I was absorbed in the sensations of my own body and his, and I’d totally forgotten anything but the two of us in this hot moment, he brought me back. He took his hands away, broke the kiss, and stood up straight. Snow squeaked under his boots as he shifted his weight. “Do you realize we’ve been standing here making out in the snow and the fifteen-degree weather for five minutes?”
“Five?” I asked in a daze, touching my tingling lips and staring dumbly up at him.
“Can we go to your house?” he purred in a sexy voice.
Boy, could we! I couldn’t wait to get him into my warm living room. I wasn’t ready for the tingles to end, and Nick’s lips on mine plus climate control sounded too good to be true. But I wanted to get one thing straight first. “Does this mean we’re calling off the bet?”