by Julia London
“Plié!”
“My point is, you loved ballet. You should try it again.”
She didn’t say anything for a moment. She looked out the windshield at the rivulets curving down the glass. “I really did love it,” she agreed, her voice gone soft. “But sometimes, you have to own up to what is. I wasn’t as good as I needed to be. Genevieve was good. She was really good. I was always so envious of her.”
“You were good, too, Hallie. You went to New York—”
“But not good enough,” she interrupted. “That was the final verdict. I was not good enough. They told me so. They told me in New York, and not so directly, they told me in college.”
He was going to say something, but she put her hand up. “Look, I’ve accepted it. I’m over it. What I’m not over is how I utterly lacked a plan B. That was my biggest mistake. And I feel like I’ve been looking for that plan ever since.”
The rain started falling harder. They both stared out the window. People were coming out of the theater, running to their cars.
Rafe understood what she meant. He hadn’t had a plan B when he fell in love with Hallie all those years ago. He’d joined the army to get away. It had seemed the only way to move on, because like Hallie, he couldn’t carry the tune of loving her. Thank God for the army—at least he’d figured out his plan B there. He had a vision, but the goal was the same—escape Three Rivers.
“I guess we’re not running,” she said, and slumped in the driver’s seat. “Probably just as well. My core is currently engaged with a Thanksgiving dinner.”
People were hurrying to their cars, dragging along little sugarplums. Cars began to pull out of the parking lot.
“We’ll give it a few minutes,” Rafe said. He adjusted his seat, leaning back.
“So, speaking of plan B,” Hallie said, and began to trace her finger around the steering wheel. “Uncle Chet suggested I go to Aspen for a couple of weeks and think about things.” She glanced at him from the corner of her eye. “He thinks I should get out of the house. And by getting out of the house, he means away from my mom.”
“Oh.” Rafe could feel his heart deflate a little. There seemed like so little time left with her as it was. He would be off to Chicago, and she would be taking pictures of dresses, and they would text, but it wouldn’t be the same as these few weeks had been. “When?”
“Now. Early next week.”
Rafe had never been to Aspen. He’d probably never go to Aspen. People like the Fontanas went to Red River in New Mexico if they wanted to ski. Rent was cheap, ski passes were cheap. He imagined Aspen was full of jet-setters and glittering Michelin-starred restaurants and perfect powder. It was amazing to him that, at times, it would seem as if there were no differences between him and Hallie, nothing to stop them from being, as she’d said, together, and then, in the space of a breath, something would pop up that might as well have put the Gulf of Mexico between them.
“I think I might do it,” Hallie said. “What do you think of that? Do you think I should go to Aspen?”
“That sounds great,” he said, and forced himself to smile. “I’m envious. I’ve never been.”
“Hmm,” she said, and folded her arms, twisting about in her seat to look at him. “Maybe I should just stay here. I’m feeling much better about things. More optimistic and all that. I have some ideas of what comes next. So maybe my plan B is right here.”
“Maybe,” he said.
“What do you think, Rafe? Should I stay at the ranch and learn how to run? Or should I go to Aspen for a couple of weeks and think?”
He didn’t understand this conversation. “I think you need to do what your gut tells you to do.”
Why that would cause her to look as annoyed as she did, he had no idea. He didn’t know what he was supposed to say. “Your uncle is very generous.”
“Rafe!” she said, as if he were being intentionally obtuse.
He laughed with confusion. “What?”
She groaned. She twisted forward in her seat, bounced her head back, and closed her eyes as she gripped the steering wheel. And then she opened her eyes and twisted again, and this time, she planted her elbows on the console between them. “You know what I think? I think it sounds kind of lonely.”
“Then don’t go.”
She stared at him. “Are you kidding me right now?”
He dragged his fingers through his hair, perturbed by the mystery of the female brain. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
She was glaring at him now. “We’ve had a great time the last couple of weeks, haven’t we?”
“We have.”
“Do I need to spell it out for you?”
“Obviously, because I have no idea why you are annoyed right now.”
“I have always done what is expected of me. But I’ve been talking about being a new leaf—”
“Turning one over.”
“I’m a new leaf, and I’m reaching for the brass ring. Are you with me so far?”
“No,” he admitted. He didn’t think it was wise to point out her mix of metaphors at this particular juncture. “So . . . the brass ring is, what? Aspen? If that’s your brass ring, you should go for it.”
“Really? You think I should just take off for a couple of weeks,” she said, shrugging as if it were no big deal.
But it was clearly some sort of deal, even if the deal escaped him. Selfishly, he didn’t want her to leave. He was already counting the days before he had to go. He wanted her to stay as long as he was here, give him this magic bit of time for as long as she could before their lives inevitably diverged. “Okay, Hallie. What do you think you ought to do?”
“You didn’t answer the question,” she said, and poked him in the chest. “Maybe you’re the one who needs to stop doing what is expected of you, did you ever think about that?”
“What are you talking about?” he demanded. “I’m trying to be supportive here.”
“I know!” she shouted, and banged her hand on the console. “You’re always very supportive! You are the one person in my life who thinks everything I do is amazing! But this is not a plea for a pep talk, Rafe. Like, I know I ask that from you a lot, and I am trying to be better about it, but I would really, sincerely, like to know if you really have nothing to say about me going away for two weeks, other than encouraging me to go and be my best self. Does that mean I imagined everything?”
He suddenly understood. She wanted him to tell her not to go. And Rafe did what every self-respecting male with a long-burning torch for a woman would do: he panicked. “I don’t . . . I think that . . . I mean, maybe you do need some space.”
“From you?” she asked, and shoved him in the chest. “Why are you so . . . determined?”
“Determined about what?”
“Is it that girl? Is it Brittney-no-A? Are you seriously dating her?”
He blinked. He had a sudden image of Brittney’s bright smile, her delicate, small hands.
“You are.”
“Sometimes,” he admitted.
Her eyes widened. She slowly sank back. “Do you love her?”
He laughed. “No, Hallie. She’s someone to hang out with.”
She bit her lip as she studied him. “You’re sleeping with her?”
He didn’t like where this was going. It was too intrusive, even for her. “You don’t get to ask that.”
“Why not? Aren’t we friends?”
“It’s none of your business who I sleep with.”
“I told you I was sleeping with Chris after I met him.”
“That’s your choice—it’s not mine.”
“What are you afraid of? Why the hell are you so determined to fight it?”
Myriad emotions began to churn in his gut. He wasn’t entirely sure what she meant. Had he given himself away? Had he stayed too long in her company, was it
clear he’d wanted too much? “Fight what? Will you just say what you’re trying to say?”
Hallie suddenly climbed halfway up the console and worked to get one leg over it.
“What are you doing?”
“Coming over there,” she said, and freed the leg, sliding it over his lap until her knee was on his door’s armrest. She caught his face with one hand and turned it toward her. She leaned awkwardly and managed to graze his temple with her mouth.
“Wait a minute,” Rafe said, and put his hands on her waist, pushing her back a little. “Are you kissing me?”
“No, Rafe, there’s a smudge on the window I want to wipe off. Yes, I am trying to kiss you! Could you just work with me here? Because this is already a lot more awkward than I thought when I pictured it in my head!”
“Come on, Hallie,” he said reprovingly.
She did not move away. Quite the contrary—she slid onto his lap and pressed her palms to his cheeks.
“I don’t . . . I don’t understand what you want me to do,” he said, and removed his hands from her, holding his arms back, his hands gripping the leather interior to keep from touching her.
“Are you blind? Look,” she said, as if she were about to propose a Faustian bargain—one that he feared he might take. “You’ve always been such a good friend, Rafe. You always know exactly the right things to say. But I think you’ve been saying them so long that you’ve convinced yourself there is nothing more here, nothing bigger between us. I think the reason you never told me about that girl is because there is more to us, and you don’t want to admit it. And I don’t want to go to Aspen wondering if there is something more.”
Rafe swallowed down the lump in his throat. This was the moment he had worked so hard to avoid. So many images raced through his head. His dad. The view of the Chicago skyline when he flew into Midway airport. The days, the weeks, the months and years of denying himself his true desire for her, and yet never being able to let go of the idea of her. “Listen,” he said, and his voice, he realized with some mortification, was shaking.
“Don’t lie to me, Rafe,” she said. “Don’t you dare lie to me.”
His thoughts were so jumbled he didn’t know how to even think through such a highly charged moment as this. It felt like right before combat—that buzz of anticipation, that rush of adrenaline.
Hallie’s eyes were locked on his, her gaze piercing, and he knew she could see right through him. She saw past his facade. His heart began to hammer in his chest. He had no plan B for this. He had no idea how he was going to get out of this. He had reached the middle of the lake, and the ice had broken, and he was sinking.
“Why do you think we keep pretending this isn’t happening?” she whispered. “Because we both know it is. I mean, I’m sitting on your lap, and you’re hard, and you haven’t thrown me off.”
“Jesus, Hallie,” he said, and his voice was rough and full of need, and he would have been ashamed if he hadn’t ached so much with the truth. “You are so fucking outrageous.”
He didn’t know who reached first, but the rush of adrenaline turned to desire, and she was in his arms, and her body was pressed against his, and she felt so good, curves and softness, just like he’d imagined she would feel.
It was pure electricity, pure adrenaline. Her lips were butter soft, her skin smooth and pliant. It was just a kiss, but the thrum of something deeper was there, and his body was responding rapidly. Too rapidly. He felt himself tumbling hard and fast down the cliff.
He caught her head in his hands to look at her. He wanted to groan—she looked so alluring with her tousled hair and wet lips. “I wasn’t done,” she said, and grabbed the collar of his shirt, pulling him up, so she could continue kissing him.
They fell back again into the reclined seat, and Rafe caught her, ran his hand against her cheek and temple. The fire between them was dangerously hot, arousing him to the point of bursting. He slipped his hand under her shirt and moved to her breast, slipping his fingers beneath her bra and cupping the mound of flesh.
She made a soft little moaning sound into his mouth, and that was it. Rafe sat up, still anchored to her, and with a Herculean move, twisted her around and pushed her onto the back seat.
Boxes of champagne flutes fell to the floorboard. He was on top of her, their legs tangled and half off the seat bench. Hidden behind tinted windows, they were rolling around like teenagers, and Rafe didn’t care. This woman, with the irresistible smile and glittering hazel eyes, this woman who had captivated him and had made him yearn and ache in ways no one else had ever come close to matching, was at last in his arms, and he was kissing her, and his tongue was dancing with hers, and his hand was riding her body, seeking warm flesh wherever he could find it.
The kiss went from arousing to molten, incinerating him from the inside out, turning his thoughts to ash. He was a puddle of desperate desire, a man formerly known as Rafe. This was everything he’d wanted, and it wasn’t nearly enough. He wanted all of her. He wanted to feel every bit of her skin against his, wanted to run his hands over every line, every curve. He wanted to be inside her. Inside her.
Those prurient thoughts were pushing him down, beneath the surface of rational thought, sinking him deeper and deeper away from his reserve.
Hallie arched her back, pressed her leg in between his, against his erection. She swept her hands up his chest and into his hair, her fingers grazing his ears, then his neck. Her kiss was full of promise and anticipation, and if it had been any other time, any other place, Rafe was certain he would have abandoned all his principles and lived in the moment. He would have fulfilled the single most pressing desire he’d ever had; he would have put her on her back and taken them both to a place that neither of them would ever forget.
His body was hard with anticipation, but when she reached for the drawstring of his sweatpants and slid her hands into the waistband, something awful happened—his damn head overruled his groin.
His traitorous head began to whisper that she was a friend, not a lover. She was a Prince, not a girl he could sleep with. She was not some one-night stand, some temporary infatuation. What they were doing would complicate things.
What they were doing would ruin the most important friendship he had.
She nipped his lips, and he lifted his head. She wiped the pad of her thumb across his lower lip. “Sorry,” she said breathlessly. “But not sorry.” She looked like a woman who wanted to rip his clothes off of him then and there. He felt like a man who wanted that to happen. It all felt so strong and real and maybe even a little inevitable. But it also felt incautious. Dangerous.
“We have to stop, Hallie. Right now.”
“What? Why?” she asked, and shifted up onto her elbows. “We’re having a good time. A very good time.” She slipped her hand around his neck and tried to pull his head back to hers.
Rafe winced, but he resisted her. His desire was so potent it sliced through him like a blade. He had fantasized about this for so long, and it was happening, and he, the good son, the one everyone could depend on to do the right thing, was putting on the brakes.
He leaned down and kissed her cheek.
And then he pushed up, moved her legs from the seat bench, and raked both hands through his hair.
Hallie pushed up, too. “What’s the matter?”
“We can’t do this.” The words stuck in his throat—it felt like he needed to cough them out.
“We just did this.”
“But we can’t go any further. You know that.”
Her small laugh sounded strangled. “Last time I checked, I’m a grown woman and I can do what I want. What are you talking about?”
“We are friends. You just got out of a relationship,” he said. “An engagement. This is some sort of rebound for you.”
“No, it’s not.”
“And I’m leaving for Chicago—”
“So what?”
“My family—my father, me—we work for your family, Hallie. We are your employees.”
Hallie stared at him. “What are you doing right now? Why are you ruining this?”
“Because we don’t want to ruin a lifelong friendship—”
“Hey!” she snapped. “You can’t deny there is something more here, Rafe. It’s been simmering for the last two weeks for sure, and I think maybe it’s been there even longer. Am I wrong? Tell me I’m wrong, and I will apologize profusely and go away.”
She was more perceptive than he knew, and he still couldn’t bring himself to admit it. Admitting it would be the first step in confessing the truth about his feelings for her. “Even so, it doesn’t change our reality.”
The fight seemed to go out of her. She drew her legs up and wrapped her arms around them and buried her face in her knees. “I think I could die right now.”
“Hallie,” he said, and put his hand on her leg. “I’m trying to spare us both. This could never go any further, so why even start? Why risk our friendship?”
“Is that what you were thinking of while I was kissing you?” she asked, raising her head. “That I was ruining our friendship? Man, I was somewhere else completely. I can’t believe I was so off the mark.”
“Come on, you know I’m right,” he said.
“I don’t know that,” she said. “I don’t think we have to declare our intentions here and forevermore at this very minute, Rafe. It’s entirely possible to just enjoy the moment, and we were off to a pretty great start, or at least I thought so, while you were being so fucking responsible or honorable or whatever it is you’re being right now.”
He didn’t know what he was being. He thought about how Hallie was still reeling from a broken engagement. This wasn’t about him. He thought about his dad telling him that Mrs. Prince was looking for a reason to let him go. He thought about their friendship and tried to imagine what it would be like if he and Hallie ruined it—could he live with no more text messages? Would he have to avoid the main compound forever?
This was going to torture him forever, he knew, but he’d thought about this moment for so long that he already knew the answer—this could not be.
