“Explain to me what’s happening here.” He tapped her temple. “Is this some kind of postadrenaline ‘Thank God we’re not dead’ thing? Because as fierce as that storm was, we were never really in any danger.”

There was her out. And she didn’t even have to articulate it. All she had to do was nod. Move her head up and down a few inches, and she’d be off the hook. She could peel herself off him, and they’d go back to their usual state of being: friendship with an occasional side of awkwardness.

“No,” her mouth said firmly.

He raised his eyebrows. “I notice you’re not wearing any underwear.”

Right. She’d been singularly focused on the achiness of her breasts. But as soon as he said the word underwear, it was like a neon arrow lit up in her consciousness, blinking insistently toward the corresponding ache between her legs.

She inhaled a shaky breath. “My clothes are in the dryer.”

“You were just lying here on my couch without wearing any underwear.”

She wasn’t sure if he was merely stating the obvious or if he was trying to convey disapproval. His T-shirt was long. It covered her butt. She didn’t say any of that, opting instead to follow his “stating the obvious” lead. “I wasn’t planning to fall asleep. I was planning to be dressed by the time you got home.”

He grinned. So not disapproval, then. “The best-laid plans…”

“Sometimes turn into plans to get laid?” her mouth said hopefully.

“This is a bad idea. Remember that? Who said that?”

“I’ll take overly cautious librarians who live in their heads for one hundred, Alex.” She wiggled herself so the neon arrow–illuminated area of her body was more firmly on top of his…neon arrow.

“You probably weren’t wrong.” He groaned as he said it, though. Like she was torturing him, but in a good way.

So she did it some more. “And yet, we’re already so far down the bad idea road.”

His eyes danced with laughter even as he bit his lip. “If we backed up now, would it really make any difference?”

“Exactly. We’ve already put the miles on the car. We might as well enjoy the ride.” She felt like her face was going to crack from smiling. She loved bantering with him.

He closed his eyes and spoke with them still closed. “God, Evie.”

She suddenly thought of what Maya had said. “Get it out of our system.”

“‘It’?”

“It,” she said firmly. “You know what ‘it’ is.”

“So we do this, and we get ‘it’ out of our system.”

She wasn’t sure if that had been a statement or a question—his eyes were still closed, and she couldn’t read his face—but she decided to answer it just to be safe. “Yes. Like…friends with benefits.” Was that a thing people said in real life?