The Real Best Man: Part 3 — The Demolition

The last of the whiskey burned a slow, pleasant trail down my throat, but it was nothing compared to the fire Rhys’s gaze was starting in my belly.

The space between us on the worn leather sofa had shrunk with every confession, every shared glance, until I could feel the heat radiating from his body.

The storm outside had softened to a steady, percussive drumming on the roof, a rhythm that seemed to beat in time with my own frantic heart.

His knuckles were white where he gripped his empty glass. “So that’s it, then,” he said, his voice a low rumble. “You build walls to keep the bad guys out, and I just run so they can’t catch up. ”

“Something like that,” I whispered.

The admission, raw and exposed, hung in the air between us. My entire life was a fortress of my own design, and this man, this infuriating, perceptive man, had just walked through the gates without even bothering to knock.

He set his glass down on the hearth with a decisive click. The sound was a period on a sentence I hadn’t known we were writing. He turned back to me, his eyes—that impossible shade of storm-cloud gray—pinning me in place. “What happens when you get tired of living in a fortress, Ava?”

My breath hitched. “I… I don’t know. I’m not. ”

“Liar. ” The word wasn’t an accusation. It was a statement of fact, soft and devastating. He leaned closer, and the world narrowed to the scent of him—whiskey, woodsmoke, and something uniquely, dangerously Rhys. “I can see it. You’re rattling the bars from the inside. ”

His hand came up, not to touch me, but to hover, his fingers tracing the line of my jaw in the air just an inch from my skin. I felt the phantom touch like a brand.

Every rule I’d ever written for myself—Don’t be reckless. Don’t be impulsive. Don’t get involved with men who are complicated and transient and the best man at your most important client’s wedding—screamed at me in a chorus of panicked, logical protest.

I ignored every one of them.

Leaning into that space, I closed the gap.

My lips met the back of his hand, a soft press against his knuckles. A tremor went through him, a current that shot straight back into me. His eyes darkened, the storm inside them finally breaking.

“Ava,” he breathed, a warning and a prayer all at once.

“Don’t,” I whispered, my voice trembling. “Don’t say my name like it’s a mistake. ”

Because in that moment, it felt like the only right thing I’d done in years.

That was all it took.