Page 59 of Never Forever

“Yes,” I snarled at him.

“Fuck me,” Matt Sullivan said, and swung me up into his arms. Like he was Prince Charming and I was a damsel in distress.

I went rigid in his arms.

“Carrie-”

“Let me down.”

“Don’t be so fucking proud,” he muttered.

Pride? He thought this was pride?

It was total self-preservation. This was not the first time Matt Sullivan picked me up like a princess. He took a step forward and I could feel the shift of his hips. The way his chest tensed. I could feel every muscle in his body in motion and then there was his skin.

His warm skin against the clammy skin of my arms. Through the no-protection-at-all tee shirt. His fingers brushed myshoulder and I did everything I could not to flinch. Not to give him that.

“This is dumb,” I said. “You’re dumb.”

“Keep ‘em coming, princess.”

“Don’t call me princess!” I said and folded my arms across my chest.

He grunted and just walked toward the enclave of trailers on the far side of the square. There were four left. At the beginning of the movie there’d been more, but as departments shut down, trailer town shrank.

“Let me guess,” he said, stopping in front of the trailer with the red and green glitter Christmas decorations on the door. The big red sparkle lips. “Yours.”

You don’t know me, is what I wanted to say. In the end, I was too weak so I just nodded.

The sensation of his arms under my legs and behind my back was breaking my brain. The feel of his chest, the flex of his abs under his shirt, all pressed tight to my sweaty side was pulling me places I didn’t want to go.

What I wanted was to curl into him. Press my nose into that spot in his neck and breathe him deep into my body. I wanted to tell him how unexpectedly hard this shoot had been and how tired I was. Not to mention all the things that were giving me low-level anxiety.

My sister and her probably about to be broken heart. My mom. Gran was getting older. The house was falling down.

Him.

It was like my brain was hard-wired to the scent of him and my body was all pudding soft.

Whatever.

He opened the door to my trailer and ducked while he stepped inside. Immediately, it was too small. He was too big. Too rough. Too green uniform and full of memories.

Motion sensor speakers played Christmas music every time I stepped into my trailer. Harry Connick wanted me to have a Merry Little Christmas about a million times a day.

“Holy shit, Carrie,” he said. He set me down on my feet and I fell backward against the tiny couch with red and green and gold throw pillows. Graceless, but whatever. “This is a whole lot of Christmas,” he said.

Every time I felt my interest and enthusiasm for Snowman Magic melting in the August heat, I added more decorations. There were two trees. One pink. One regular. I had garland and fairy lights and a hundred discarded advent calendars from the set. I had those giant nut crackers, and a bunch of small ones.

“It’s called mood, Matt. Thank you for the Prince Charming act, but you can…”

“What’s this?” he asked, turning to the wall.

The wall.

My dream wall. My future wall. My vision wall.

“Nothing.”