Page 20 of Where the Roses Bloom

We fell into silence again, but it was the good kind. The easy kind. I tipped my glass toward him, chin in my hand.

“I like this,” I said.

He looked up. “What, the wine?”

“No,” I said. “This. Talking to you.”

His face went still for a second, like I’d said something he didn’t know how to hold. And then he gave me the softest nod I’d seen from him yet.

“I like talkin’ to you too, Willow.”

Something in the room changed…like a door inside me creaked open a little wider than it had before.

And the house, old and waiting, seemed to sigh with approval.

The sky outside had gone indigo, stars rising slow behind the kitchen window, and neither of us had moved to clear the plates. Rhett leaned back in his chair again, legs stretched long beneath the table, one bare foot nudging out just a little farther than before.

I felt it before I realized what was happening—the soft brush of skin against skin. Just the curve of his ankle, bumping against mine. Not a question. Not a dare.

Just a quiet…presence.

My breath hitched.

He didn’t stop. Just kept that light contact steady, warm and deliberate, his thumb smoothing along the rim of his wine glass like he wasn’t undoing me with the gentlest touch imaginable. I could imagine him touching me with those hands, and it was almost too much to bear.

I pressed my foot forward in return. Bare toes against his ankle, tentative.

He let out the softest, nearly-silent exhale through his nose—and didn’t pull away.

We stayed like that, legs tangled under the table like teenagers pretending not to notice. But I noticed. Every brush of skin, every flex of muscle, every time his thigh shifted like he was trying not tomove.

The air grew heavy with it. Thick with something unsaid and impossibly close to breaking.

When I looked up again, his gaze was already waiting for me.

Dark. Intense. Wanting.

But he didn’t make a move.

Just drank me in, like he was taking a moment before doing anything he couldn’t take back.

“I should clean up,” I whispered, because it was the only thing I could think to say.

He nodded once, slow. “Yeah. Me too.”

But neither of us stood up.

And when I finally did—when I slid my chair back and gathered the plates with trembling fingers—I could feel his eyes on me. Tracing the hem of my sleep shorts. The curve of my thigh. The slope of my neck as I turned to rinse the dishes.

He didn’t stop looking until I’d left the room…and even in bed, almost an hour later, I could still feel that look.

I’d said we were roommates—but we were already more than that.

It was just a matter of time before we smashed through whatever boundaries we had left.

CHAPTER 8

Rhett