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“I just really like seeing you in my car,” he confesses, his sultry voice sending my blood boiling. When the door closes, I take the few seconds before he climbs into the driver seat, my heart beating so fast I’m afraid my ribcage won’t be able to contain it.
The tension inside the car is palpable. The silence sits heavy between us, and when Winter places his arm behind the back of my seat to back out of the parking spot, I have to restrain myself from jumping him right then and there.
The fabric of his T-shirt pulling against his broad chest, the smell of his cologne wafting in the air, the weight of his eyes on me. It’s all too damn much.
I clear my throat.
“So,” I say.
“So,” he repeats, a lopsided smile teasing his lips.
Think, I order my brain. Think. Find anything to talk about. Any topic that can clear this tension.
“Tell me about your writing,” I blurt out.
He chuckles. “You wanna talk about my writing?”
“Yep.” Writing seems like a safe enough topic.
“What do you want to know?” He scans his employee ID at the gate and looks at me while he waits for the metallic barrier to lift.
“Will you ever do anything with that script you wrote? The one about your father?” I consciously choose not to mention Graham stealing it. If he notices it, he doesn’t acknowledge it.
“I don’t think so, no.”
The answer disappoints me. “I wish I could read it.”
This script feels like a window into Winter. A chance to get to know him a little more, past the barrier he seems to always have around himself.
“You do?” he sounds surprised at my confession. “Why?”
Because knowing you seems essential to my survival. Because I feel this strong need to find the missing piece in this puzzle that is you. Because I don’t think I can go on living knowing that you exist in this world and there’s a part of you, any part, that I haven’t discovered yet. Because I think that if you let me read this, you’ll be letting me in. Because I think you’re scared to do that, and if you allow me in, I’ll never want out.
“So I have something to sell when reporters come asking me for gossip about you,” I say instead.
He laughs, a loud, belly laugh that reverberates in the car, and I know I’m irrevocably doomed when the first thing I think is that I want to earn more of this laughter. That I always want to be the one to make him laugh like this. That if I can have the sound of his laughter forever, I might never have another bad day in my life.
Fuck.
I like Winter Davis.
“You’re lucky you’re so cute,” he says, oblivious to the world-shaking realization that I’ve just had. “If I didn’t like you so much, I would drop you off right here just for saying that.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” I quip, my brain too focused on not malfunctioning to register what he just said.
“Yeah, you’re right,” he concedes. “I would never not like you. There’s no chance that would ever happen.”
“Winter.” His name comes out like a warning.
“Sunshine.”
Just like that, the tension is back even stronger than before. If I as much as look at him, I might combust. The sound of that nickname in his lips is like a shot of desire straight into my bloodstream, carried through my entire body.
“You can’t say things like that,” I say without an ounce of determination in my traitorous voice.
“You want me to lie to you?” He quirks his eyebrow in a teasing challenge.
I don’t know what I want. I want him to stop saying things like that. I want him to never stop saying things like that. I want him to tell me he feels it too. I want him to pretend none of this is happening.
