One hand slid up my side, leaving behind an unfamiliar, heady rush of shivers. I gasped as his fingers trailed across my cheek, brushing the wet strands of hair back behind my ear.

“You’re soaked,” he said, his voice deeper than normal.

Mouth dry, I swallowed. “So are you.”

His hand lingered, fingers splayed so that his thumb was against my cheek. He made tiny, idle circles on my skin. “I guess we’re going to have to try this another night.”

“Yeah,” I whispered, fighting the urge to close my eyes and lean into his touch.

“Maybe we should’ve checked the weather first,” Cam said, and I had to smile at that.

Then he shifted just a fraction of an inch. A slight movement that somehow brought us even closer together, hip to hip. A shudder rocked its way down my spine. The awareness of my body and his, all of it was overwhelming. I was responding to him in an instinctual way, in a manner I was wholly unaccustomed to.

My body knew what to do, what it wanted, even though my brain was firing off so many warnings I felt like Homeland Security during a Code Red.

I jerked back, breaking contact. My breath was coming in and out in short bursts as I kept backing up, hitting the wall behind me. Soaked, cold clothing and I was too hot. Burning up. My voice sounded unfamiliar when I spoke. “I think we… we should call it a night.”

Cam leaned back, resting his head against the opposite wall, legs spread slightly apart. Everything about him looked tensed and strained. “Yeah, we should.”

Neither of us moved for a full minute, and then we did, quiet as we made our way back down and out to his truck. Whatever had passed between us lingered in terse silence and by the time we arrived back at our apartment building, anxiety had built in the pit of my stomach, erasing the few moments back in the stairwell, when I’d been nothing but sensation instead of thinking.

Muscles tense, I climbed out of his truck and raced under the awning of our building. Cam was beside me, shaking the rain out of his hair. I hovered at the bottom of the stairs, fingers twisting around my keys. I needed to say something. I needed to somehow make all of this go away, because I didn’t want our friendship to be strained or for it change.

It struck me then and a horrible twisty motion occurred it my stomach.

I didn’t want to lose Cam.

Over the last month and weeks, he’d become an intricate part of my life, weaving himself into my every day that if things were to change…

But I didn’t know what to say, because I didn’t know what had happened back in the stairwell. My heart pounded at a sickening rate as he took one step and then stopped, turning to me.

“Go out with me,” he asked, running a hand through his wet hair, pushing it back from his face.