“Oh, I’m fine,” I assured him, reaching for one of the crates. The ladder wasn’t quite tall enough, and I flexed my feet to get me a little taller. I stretched for the crate with singular focus on grabbing it without breaking my neck.

“Seriously, this ladder is old—”

“I’ve almost got it,” I insisted, reaching.

My fingers brushed the very edge of the crate before gravity shifted, the round-legged ladder slipping out from under me. My weight pulled me sideways, down, and my only thought was that for the safety of the clinking milk bottles.

Luke caught me with an oof and a small bounce, the landing easy and gentle even though my limbs had flailed, wheeling as I fell. Somehow, he hooked me almost perfectly, though I managed to crack him across the face with my forearm.

He shook his head, blinking and wincing as he tried to clear it, and I didn’t think, just grabbed his face, wide-eyed as I inspected it.

“Oh my God, are you okay?” I breathed, tilting his face so I could look at his nose, wondering if it would bleed. I’d felt his teeth through his lips, so I checked those next, moving his face around with my hands so I could examine it.

When he laughed, I noted a slight swelling on the plump part of his upper lip but nothing more. “You almost broke your neck, and you’re worried about me?”

A smaller, more nervous laugh left me. “You caught me like a sack of flour. How’d you manage that? I must have looked like a windmill.”

He shrugged, his cheeks high under my palms and scruff tickling my skin. “Just lucky, I guess. And you looked more like an octopus than a windmill.”

Another laugh, this one easier, lighter. And when it was gone, I took a breath that locked in my lungs.

His face was close to mine, his arms holding me like a crucible. And I melted in them like metal, an amalgamation of emotion. Surprise and desire, need and want. No logic was present, only the creases of his lips and the sweet puff of his breath. Only his jaw, hard in my hands. The heat of his skin, his chest bare and pressed against me. His eyes, blue as a cornflower. His lashes like raven feathers.

There was a kiss waiting on those lips, waiting for time to start again.

There was a kiss on those lips, one I wanted.

The realization was a snowball in the face of my desire, and I jerked my hands away, laughing like a crazy person while my brain chemicals went ballistic.

Those lips of his ticked down, but he took the hint, hinging to set my feet on the ground.

“Thank God you were there to catch me,” I rambled, putting a few feet between us. My face was on fire. “That’ll teach me not to listen to you.”

“I’ll remember you said that.”

I kept laughing to cover my confusion and discomfort, the sound strange, my cheeks hot. I bumped into the table, catching the tobacco baskets before they toppled over and onto the ground.