Chapter 6

Bring it. Sure, big talk from the tough guy.

Sean changed into jeans and a T-shirt and then stood in the center of his room, staring at the door and wondering what kind of beast he was going to encounter on the other side. Really, he just wanted to unwind and watch some TV with Molly. Listen to her laugh while they picked apart the ridiculous plotlines of some show she couldn’t get enough of. He wanted Molly the way she was supposed to be with him. Kicking his hip with her foot when she wanted his popcorn or the remote. Just being—hell, just being his Molly. The one he didn’t have to worry about what he said with and could relax with like no one else. Fuck.

Maybe he’d luck out, and she’d get distracted by the show and forget about coming on to him for a few hours. Maybe she wouldn’t manage that look again—the one that was getting to him in all the wrong ways and had him a hairsbreadth from bringing it along with him to the shower and giving in to the kind of base need he’d successfully kept Molly separate from for the past twelve years.

Yeah, maybe.

Molly was watching some documentary on the fittest people in the world when he made it to the couch. Setting his laptop on the floor beside him, he leveled her with a glare before sitting.

It didn’t work, because the minute she blinked up at him, that look was back. If he hadn’t already been standing, it would have had him leaping off the couch. Her big blues skimmed over his face, down his neck, and slowly over his stomach until—

“Christ, Molly!” he croaked, dropping his hands in front of his fly.

She sighed and sat back into her corner of the couch, letting her eyes linger just long enough to make her point—before she peered up at him with an appreciative smile.

“Have I ever mentioned how very nicely you fill out those jeans?” She swallowed, as if her mouth had gone dry or something, and then bit her lip. Only this time, it didn’t look like she was trying to gnaw it off or bite through it or anything. It just looked—fuck, it looked like he really didn’t want to know what she was thinking right then.

She was getting better at this. Which was a problem, because he did not want to be getting ideas about Molly’s mouth.

“Knock it off, Moll. I just want to watch some TV in peace.” There was another chair he could sit in, but this side of the couch was always his. He didn’t want to give it up just because Molly was being a belligerent brat.

“Hmm. Pretty sure the TV at your parents’ place is free.”

No way. And to emphasize his point, he sat down, holding her stare as he did.

“Have it your way,” she said with a sigh. “We’ll just have to get comfortable here.”

His head whipped around at that, because he could take the fake porn-star voice. The cheesy come-on lines were even kind of adorable. But every now and then, she gave him a taste of something that looked and sounded just a little too real and put a lot of bad ideas in his head.

He was handling it for now. But if she got any better, if she took things any further?

“That T-shirt is one of my favorites on you,” she mentioned casually, her eyes back on the show. “The fabric’s thin, and the way it hugs and hangs across your chest and stomach doesn’t leave a whole lot to the imagination. Really nice.”

Sean’s brows pulled together, and he crossed his arms over his chest. Great. Not only was he thinking about his best friend in a way he didn’t want to, but now he was thinking about his favorite shirt in a way he didn’t want to either. It was super thin, but still hanging in there without any holes. And the fabric across his chest and stomach was damn soft.

A flash of Molly’s hands sliding over it fired through his mind.

Enough, Wyse. She doesn’t belong there.

He squinted his eyes shut, willing himself to sac up, because he was making this whole damn thing way too easy on Molly. And if he didn’t get his shit together quickly, she was going to have him moved out before Max and Sarah even got home from the honeymoon on Monday.

No way.

Molly shifted beside him, and suddenly things got a whole lot worse, way too fast.

His eyes shot open as the cushion dipped beside him and Molly’s hand settled on his shoulder.

“Excuse me, Sean. I just need to grab the remote,” she said, throwing her knee over his hips so she was straddling him. He gulped. Trying hard not to stare at the hot-pink bra showing through her tank, getting closer and closer to his face as she reached for the remote on the end table beside him.

“Moll, don’t,” he warned through gritted teeth.

Instead of springing off him and retreating to her side of the couch the way he wanted, she cocked her head and looked down at him. “Something wrong, Sean?”

Her knees were on both sides of his hips, and his hands were balled against the cushion so they didn’t fist in the shorts covering her ass. Yeah, something was wrong. And it got even more so when she rested both her hands on his shoulders and sat back on his thighs. Because another inch and she’d be right there.

His molars ground together. He couldn’t think about it. About how close she was. About how it would feel to have her pressed against him like that.

Except he was totally thinking about it, and worse, he was thinking about it while he stared into those bright blue eyes.

And now there was less than an inch between him and Molly figuring out exactly what kind of victory she’d scored with this little stunt. If she knew, she’d do it again. She’d push further. And he’d let her, because as much as he didn’t want to, he liked this.

“You’re playing with fire, Molly. Enough.”

“Am I?” she asked, watching him like she wanted the one thing he knew better than to give her.

It wasn’t real. He knew it.

And even if it was, neither of them would ever act on it. Because Molly wasn’t disposable. She wasn’t someone he could take the edge off with and then walk away from like he did with all the other women. Not even if she kept looking at him the way she was right then.

Her lips parted, and the pink tip of her tongue peeked out to wet her bottom lip.

This was bad.

He could move her if he needed to. But then he’d have his hands on her hips, and what if he touched her thighs? What if he finally found out how it felt to have his fingers splayed wide across them, to feel how strong they were when they flexed? What would happen if his hands slid higher—

Her shriek cut through the fantasy that was rapidly spinning out of control.

“Sean!” she gasped, rising fast from where she’d been sitting back on his thighs, her hands clutching at his shoulders as she shifted in a panic from one knee to the other, which wasn’t helping the situation in the slightest, because all that shifting around while she was practically mashing her chest into his face was sending the wrong signals to a part of him that wasn’t very rational to begin with.

“Molly, stop!” he barked, capturing her hips with his hands and jerking his head back from a place that had been just the perfect amount of soft and sweet—and fuck, how was he going to keep that shit from following him into the shower?

Molly stopped her squirming and, safely out of his erection’s way, glowered down at him, her face a very satisfying shade of beet. “You… That… I… It…” She sucked in a breath and scrunched her eyes closed, apparently giving up on the completely unnecessary recap.

About time the tables turned here. He knew he shouldn’t be thinking about the fact that his thumbs had brushed those sexy hip bones of hers or that the way he was holding her, half suspended above him, was feeding the part of him that liked a little control.

Because this was Molly.

And clearly she’d gotten more than she bargained for.

“Yeah, you straddled my lap, Moll. I’m a guy. What the fuck did you think was going to happen?”

When she opened her eyes again, all that saucy confidence was gone, and a part of him missed it. But the greater part of him recognized the woman looking down at him as the best friend he wasn’t seeing enough of lately. The one who, despite all her hard edges and bluster, had a vulnerable side she didn’t trust to many people.

“Yeah, but…you’re you. And I didn’t think…” Her eyes cut away, and she blushed even harder. Christ, she was so uncomfortable, it was killing him. Even if she’d brought it on herself, he couldn’t watch her squirm. So he said the only thing he could think to make it better.

“Don’t freak out. It’s a physiological thing. Nothing else. You put any woman across my lap like that, and the man downstairs is going to get involved. It’s not about you.”

And shit, not only was that a lie, because it most definitely had been about her, but he also realized what a world-class dick thing it was to say. He opened his mouth to apologize and say he didn’t even know what—but she was nodding like that flimsy-ass explanation had actually made her feel better.

“Okay, so we’ll just forget about it then. Pretend it didn’t happen.”

He sure as hell was going to try, but he wasn’t holding his breath. Because for the first time in a dozen years, he knew exactly what Molly felt like above him. How soft and sweet those modest curves were against his cheek. How easily he could hold her. Guide her—yeah, forgetting about it wasn’t happening any time soon. But pretending? Sean was a master at maintaining a facade.

Only… “This shit stops now, Molly. Keep it up, and you’re going to start something we can’t just forget about and pretend didn’t happen. Is that what you want?”

Pinching her lips between her teeth, she shook her head.

“Me either,” he said, finally releasing his hold on her hips and helping her up. Probably something he should have done immediately. Definitely. “You mean too much to me.”

“Same here, Sean.”

There was something about the way she said it that got him deep in the chest. Made him want to pull her back in to him and hold her for just a minute. But it wasn’t the right time to get his hug on, so instead, he grabbed the remote she’d been going for in the first place and turned up the volume. “So CrossFit, huh? Those guys are huge.”

Molly nodded. Then she shook her head and pushed off the couch, her shoulders low. “You know what? I think I’m going to hole up in my room for a while. See about getting some more work done since we’re going out tomorrow night.”

He sat up. “Molly, don’t—”

But her hand was already up, waving him off. “I’m good. We’re good. But…” Again, she pinched her lips together and looked away, which was bothering him more every time she did it. “Yeah, you just hang, and I’ll catch you tomorrow night.”

“You sure?”

She nodded.

Molly going to hide out in her room was the last thing he wanted, but maybe a little space wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.

* * *

Working on the brewery website turned out to be a total fail when it came to distracting Molly from the train wreck her plan to flirt Sean out of her spare bedroom had ended up being. She’d wanted to make him uncomfortable. Well, she’d done it all right. But climbing over him like a sex kitten in training hadn’t panned out the way she’d expected.

Sean wasn’t moving out.

She hadn’t won.

All she’d done was embarrass herself by acting like an idiot who didn’t value their friendship enough to respect the lines that shouldn’t be crossed and embarrassing Sean by…well, causing the physiological response that had nothing to actually do with her.

She was done.

Done pushing his buttons and done lying to herself about being able to handle it. Her feelings for Sean weren’t just some passing crush, and they’d never totally gone away. She loved him like she always had. She’d just learned to manage it. And come morning, she was going to start managing it again.

* * *

Sleep was hard to come by.

Molly heard the TV turn off around eleven. The sound of Sean getting a glass of water. The door to his room closing and then, a few minutes later, opening again, followed shortly by a muffled curse and the shower starting to run. She shouldn’t think of him in there, peeling off his thin T-shirt and shucking his jeans. Like she shouldn’t think of the spray running hot over his back muscles or what he’d look like soaping his chest.

She shouldn’t have done a lot of things lately.

A torturous twenty minutes later, the water turned off, and the apartment went quiet.

Eventually, she fell asleep, but it was fitful, her dreams the kind she wanted to return to and avoid in equal measure. She was awake before Sean but again waited in her room, listening to the sounds she’d be hearing for the next month or more. Yes, she could find a new roommate…or at least she could try. But Sean didn’t want to stay at the hotel or in his parents’ place, and after what she’d done this week? She owed it to him to give him a room.

Once she heard the front door close and the apartment was quiet again, she ventured out into the space where Sean had been only minutes before. She was a chicken for waiting until he was gone, but she was still feeling a little tender, and it was only a few hours. She’d see him at the party later. Following the scent of fresh-brewed coffee, she found a sticky note on the mostly full pot.

Slept like shit. Today will be better. Brand-new day.

She pulled the note free and leaned back into the counter, feeling some of the tension that had been knotting up inside her ease.

Everything was going to be fine.