Rolling in the Deep by Rebecca Rogers Maher Read Free Book Online Page B

her hand. I feel the gentle vibration of her body, the shaking. The emotion that moves through her. The tender and hesitant hope that feels so much like sadness.
    I want to kiss her.
    I’m scared to death. Of what’s to come for both of us, of how this will change us. Of going to sleep tonight and waking up to a life that’s utterly, entirely new.
    There’s no going back to how it was, not now.
    I know a normal person would ask why anyone would want to go back. To driving a beat-up old truck from a one-room apartment to a dead-end job at Cogmans day after day. Or before that, to slinging burgers at a run-down diner in Forest Hills.
    But that little life—that ordinary, run-of-the-mill American life—it was
my
life. I knew it. I understood it.
    This, whatever it’s going to be, I don’t understand.
    I don’t understand anything right now but the softness of Holly’s cheek along the palm of my hand. The blue of her eyes on mine.
    I trace the outline of her lips with my thumb, my fingertips trailing along the side of her throat. Her breath catches. Her pulse beats hard against my hand.
    I want to kiss her.
To follow the line of my thumb with my tongue, to cover her mouth with mine. I want to suck in her gasp, breathe her air, taste her.
    But we’re in a fucking booth at IHOP.
    I might be out of my mind. But I’m not going to kiss Holly for the first time in the middle of a chain restaurant.
    I take out my wallet and Holly sits back, flushed and silent. She takes a sudden interest in organizing the cutlery. I drop a ten on the table, take Holly’s hand, and all but drag her out to the parking lot.

Chapter 7
Holly
    The evening breeze hits my skin and I realize how hot it was inside the restaurant. Or at least how hot it felt, being pressed against Ray like that.
    I don’t know how it happened—how I ended up on his side of the booth. It startled me to see him crying, I guess.
    Brett never cried like that, never showed much emotion at all besides anger and a certain kind of possessive tenderness.
    With Ray, it was like seeing Drew cry. All I wanted to do was comfort him, but then it got all twisted up. He was comforting me, and I don’t even know what for.
    What the hell kind of person cries when they win the lottery? We’re supposed to be celebrating. Getting drunk and whooping it up, calling all our friends.
    But I don’t want to call anyone. At the moment the only person I want to know about this is Ray. The only person I want to be with is Ray, and that’s terrifying.
    He almost kissed me just now. And God help me, I would have let him. Hell, I almost leaned in myself, and that’s not something I ever do. I’m far too reserved for that, too quiet. I put my head down and get my work done, and I…I wait for things to happen to me. I react the best I can. I try to be prepared.
    As if you could prepare yourself for a thing like this.
    We’re rich, Ray and me. We’re rich now. How am I going to put my head down and get through this? And why—
why
—is that what I so desperately want to do?
    Ray has my hand in his still. He’s pulling me toward my car, parked beside his at the back of the restaurant, the lot away from the street and dimly lit. In the growing shadows his face looks more severe. Dangerous, almost, and on some level I realize that should maybe scare me a little. We’re the only cars parked back here, and he’s clearly upset. Anything could happen.
    And, God, I want it to.
    I stop abruptly a few feet away from Ray’s truck, bringing him up short and pulling my hand from his. I bend my knees and cover my face with both hands, and half scream. Half cry.
    I want to kiss him. I want him to kiss me. I’m so tired of
waiting.
    And I can do anything now, can’t I? I’m rich. That’s what people do when they have money. They do anything they want.
    I stand up again so fast it makes me dizzy, and I push Ray. I push him three feet backward against the bumper of his truck, and when I get him there