19. 19

19

Edie

K alle is…

Incredibly hot.

It's not like I saw much of him—my apartment is dark but a little shade of gray shines through the window, right to where Kalle was standing. I could see enough.

There were muscles on muscles, his abs divided into eight little sections, all cumulating into the sharp V-ridges above his hips.

And I had no idea how strong the urge to reach out and touch one of them would be.

Reach out and touch Kalle .

I lean against my bedroom door. I shut it so I can change, not that there's enough moonlight coming in the window for anyone—Kalle—to see me. It's still the principle of being without clothes with a man in my apartment, even if it's a man I've known most of my life.

Kalle is my friend, not some random guy to be ogled. And he doesn't need to see me undress, since with my luck the power will come on at just the wrong moment.

If I close my eyes, I can still see him .

I've seen him without his shirt on before. We've gone swimming, hung out at the beach. I even interrupted him once after he got out of the shower, wrapped only in a towel.

That was a nice image to remember, but it didn't throw me like this.

I draw in another shaky breath. A crack of thunder sounds and I let out a little yelp.

"You okay in there?" Kalle calls, breaking me out of my trance caused by a fine set of abdomen muscles.

"Good. Fine." The lightning that follows lights up my room. "Great."

I hear Kalle chuckle. "I never thought you'd be scared of anything."

"I'm not scared, I just don't like storms."

"Don't like seeing me naked either."

"I did not see you naked," I cry. "I can't see. It's dark."

"Didn't stop you from trying."

"I'm glad you're enjoying this," I mutter, peeling my wet T-shirt over my head.

"What's that you said?"

"Be quiet or I'll make you stand like that all night," I snap.

He laughs.

When at last I manage to get out of my wet jeans—I have no idea how Kalle undressed so quickly—and into a pair of flannel pants and a thick sweatshirt, I figure Kalle should be shivering by now.

"I don't have much that would fit you but—" I stop short when I come out to find Kalle in the middle of the room, holding Ernie to his chest. "Oh. He never lets anyone pick him up. "

"He's warm so I didn't give him much of a choice." He sets down the cat to take the clothes I hand to him, my baggiest pair of pink tie-dyed jogging pants that I wear as a second layer in the winter, and an old University of Laandia sweatshirt that I stole from Kalle years ago. "That looks familiar."

"Maybe," I say primly.

"I'm going to have to go commando," he tells me. "Unless you've got a pair of my boxers stashed away someplace."

"I'm not going to dignify that with an answer, and please commando yourself in the bathroom. And take your wet clothes and hang them up in the shower while you're at it."

I'm not thinking I'm not thinking I'm not thinking …

With another chuckle, Kalle takes his nakedness into the bathroom while I start the hunt for candles.

By the time he comes out, I've lit a handful of tea lights left over from the pumpkin-carving episode of two years ago, a pair of beeswax tapers, and a fat three-wick vanilla candle and there's enough light for me to really look at Kalle when he comes out.

And laugh, because the pants are snug, to say the least, and only come to mid-calf. And the sweatshirt may have fit him when I took it, but it certainly doesn't now. The shoulders cling to him like a Harry Styles fan given a chance to hug him.

"You comfy?" I ask with a grin.

Kalle rotates his hips and gives a little shimmy. "You have no idea."

The man is in an awfully good mood in the middle of the storm of the year that's knocked out the power.

And then I remember he's been drinking most of the evening .

"I'm hungry," he says, grabbing a light and moving into the kitchen. "What food?"

"Not much," I admit, following him. "Plus, no microwave." I know he's got a childish preference for pizza pockets.

"You've got peanut butter."

I hover nearby, holding a candle as Kalle moves with familiarity around my kitchen, collecting bread and my mother's homemade strawberry jam, and makes two peanut and jam sandwiches. "I thought you had dinner," I say, and get a one-shoulder shrug in return. "How was dinner?"

"Fine."

"And things with Fenella?"

"How are things with you and my cousin?" The abrupt change of topic makes my stomach flip over. Or maybe it's just talking about Mathias.

I've had boyfriends, and I've talked to Kalle about them He's given me advice, told me who wasn't good enough for me, or who would never take the next step.

He has a good read on other men.

But talking about Mathias with him seems wrong. Disloyal somehow. I'm not sure if it's because of the "needling" as Mathias called it, but there's something not right between the cousins.

And I have the strange feeling it might be me.

"He's leaving," I say, watching him spread jam.

There's a pause, and then— "Do you like him?" Kalle asks in a gruffer voice than usual.

Do I like Mathias? If Kalle had asked two days ago, my answer would have been an unequivocal yes. But now… "He's a prince," I hedge.

"That doesn't mean you have to like him."

"Why don't you like him?" I ask in response.

"Family reasons." The aggressive way he cuts off the crusts suggests there's more to his answer.

"Which you're not about to tell me," Kalle grunts his response. "How are things with you and the Lady Carrington then?" If he can ask, so can I. Unlike me, Kalle never says much about his other dates or girlfriends, so if I get anything from him, this will be a first.

"She's not a lady."

"With her family, it's just as well she should be."

" She's leaving," Kalle offers, reaching around for plates, and my stomach gives a leap of relief. "Just like Mathias."

"Do you like her?" Why am I holding my breath? Why does Kalle having an interest in Fenella Carrington suddenly seem like the worst idea ever?

Kalle grunts. "She's nice."

I answer his grunt with a snort. "That's not how you describe Fenella Carrington."

"Works for me."

"Are you going to visit her?" I hadn't given Mathias's invitation another thought, but if Kalle is going to see Fenella—

"No."

"No?"

"She'll be back sooner or later. But… no. There's no need to visit. There's nothing there."

"Nothing where?"

"Between me and Fenella." Kalle hands me a plate and I give him a questioning glance. "Your sandwich. I'm not making one for myself and not for you. "

"You made a burger without making me one," I remind him.

"I was so in my head that I didn't even know I was making a burger."

Kalle's gaze holds mine as his white teeth tear into the sandwich. Is this how we're going to start talking about it? Standing in the dark?

"Anything happen tonight?" he asks.

So, no. Does he mean anything that happened at the bar when he was gone, or anything that's happened today? And what does he mean about there being nothing between him and Fenella?

He means did anything happen at the pub while he was away, I decide. Kalle isn't one to recap conversations. I expect my refusal to be the last I hear of his marriage suggestion.

"We had drinks with Mabel Crow."

He looks at me closely. "Yeah. I saw that."

"We had shots. Kate says she believes Gunnar that nothing happened. She apologized to Mabel."

"We," Kalle repeats, already finished half his sandwich. " You were drinking. You don't usually do that."

This is how we're going to talk about this—standing in the weak candlelight so that looking at Kalle is like watching a night scene on TV in the bright sunlight—you can't see much at all. "You can say it's been a weird day."

"Storm bothering you?"

I give a choked laugh. Maybe he's really concerned or maybe he's being deliberately obtuse. I've never been one to beat around the bush and I'm not about to start now. "I'm talking about how you asked me to marry you earlier today. "

The only sound is the hiss of the candle flame and Kalle setting his plate on the counter. "Ah."

It doesn't matter if Kalle won't bring it up. There's two people in this conversation and I've never held back from saying what I feel. "Yeah. Ah. Is that all you're going to say?"

Kalle looks like he's mulling it over. "Yeah?"

"Seriously? That's all? We're not going to talk about it?"

"'Bout what? You said you didn't want to marry me. No means no. What else can I say?"

His face is expressionless and I think for a moment that he did make a mistake. That it was a total fluke and he didn't mean it at all.

And then he rubs at the back of his neck. Kalle has got so many tells and I can see through each and every one of them.

He really thinks he wants to marry me, and that does strange things to me.

And the worst is the leap my heart gives, like it's ready to jump off a big cliff.

"Tell me where that came from," I say in a quiet voice, trying to steady Kalle as well as my now leaping heart. "Tell me why, out of nowhere, you think you should be looking for a wife."

But more important is what I don't say. Why do you think it should be me?

Because I am not queen material. I'm the girl you want to manage your bar, that you hang out watching television with, that you joke and laugh and maybe have a dance with.

Not the woman that you hold close and look at like she means everything to you .

Kalle looks at me and I can see there's more behind his eyes. But all he says is, "You should go to sleep."

There's more going on but he doesn't know how to tell me.

That realization calms me a little, but I don't stop wanting more.

I know he'll tell me. He always does.

But it's not going to be now. "I'm going to crash on the couch."

"That's silly because you don't fit on the couch. Take my bed."

"I'm not kicking you out of your bed."

"You can sleep—stay—with me." The words come out wrong, too high-pitched. We've shared a bed before, so there shouldn't be a problem.

The problem is that Kalle has just opened a door that had been locked and double-bolted.

I don't want to be queen.

But I want Kalle. I've always wanted him and I don't know what to do about it if he only thinks I'm good for the country.