Page 21 of Give In

“It’s what makes sense,” I say.

He crosses the room. He moves with purpose and an unhurried attention locked on me. Then he’s close enough that I have to tip my head back to look at him. How is he already so familiar to me? The warmth of him… the scent of him. Being this close to him does something to my chest that I am trying very hard to classify as something other than what it is.

“That’s not what I asked.” His voice is low. “What do you want? Do you want to pretend last night never happened?”

I open my mouth. Close it.

The problem with Heath is that he asks the actual question. Not the polite version of it or the easy version of it. The real one, delivered in that rumbly voice without any softening, and it lands somewhere in the middle of all my careful sensible thinking and scatters it.

“It’s what makes sense,” I say again, which is not an answer and we both know it.

Then someone knocks on the door.

I close my eyes briefly. Of course.

Heath steps back and opens it, because he is apparently also the kind of man who opens doors, and there is Leo, looking between us with the sharp eyes of someone who has just walked into a situation and is rapidly doing the math.

“Dad? What are you doing here?”

And then Juniper appears at his shoulder, and her eyes find mine immediately, and I watch her do the same rapid calculation that Leo just did, and I watch the moment she arrives at the answer.

“Clover?” she says.

“Family meeting,” I say. Because what else is there. What else do you say when your life has arranged itself into this particular configuration at nine o’clock the night before your sister’s wedding?

“What’s going on?” Leo demands. There’s an edge to his voice that I don’t think is directed at me specifically, but is looking for somewhere to land.

“Oh my God.” Juniper covers her mouth with both hands. She is staring at me with an expression that is doing several things at once, surprise and dawning understanding and something that might, if I’m reading it right, be the very early stages of finding this funny, which I both appreciate and am slightly terrified by.

I just nod. Yes. What you think happened, happened.

“Will someone explain what the hell is going on right now? Dad, why are you in Clover’s room?”

I can feel Heath beside me and I can feel the particular quality of his stillness, the way he’s waiting to see how I want to handle this, and something about that, about him giving me that, makes something in my chest loosen the smallest amount.

“Because your dad and I met on the plane and, for reasons, I ended up sharing his suite last night.” I say it plainly because there is no version of this that benefits from being complicated. “We spent the night together. We hooked up.” Then I wince with my own admission. I made it sound cheap and unmonumental. But I don’t make an effort to explain.

Leo looks from me to his dad, then back a couple more times.

“What the hell, dad? You slept with my fiancée’s sister?” Then as if he is still picking up pieces of a puzzle, he says, “This is who gave you a hickey?”

“Oh damn,” I say.

“I didn’t know that’s who she was at the time,” Heath says, with the measured calm of a man who has decided that this conversation is going to go a certain way and is going to be the steadying force in the room whether anyone else cooperates or not.

“So you didn’t sleep with her?”

“No, I did.”

There’s a beat of silence that has a very specific texture to it.

“She said it was the best sex ever,” Juniper says helpfully, and then hiccups.

I turn to Leo. “Did you let her drink champagne?”

“She had two glasses,” he says, defensive.

“Two glasses of champagne and a complimentary glass of prosecco at the welcome dinner,” I say, because I know my sister’s relationship with bubbles and it is not a responsible one. I reach past him and grab the water bottle off the counter by the mini kitchen and press it into Juniper’s hands. “Drink all of it.”