“I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have done that.” His voice was roughened by remorse or self-condemnation—she couldn’t tell which one. Did he regret kissing her because of what it might jeopardize? Or did he just plain regret kissing her?
“Let’s sit,” she said weakly. Her legs felt like pudding, and she couldn’t take the apologetic look on his face for another second.
She sat cross-legged, her hands melded in her lap, facing the channel. He sat about a foot away, legs bent up, his forearms on his knees.
“I’m sorry,” he said again.
“I’m the one who’s sorry, that I didn’t tell you about my accident. I should have. That I didn’t is my fault.”
“The kiss is my fault, though.”
“I kissed you back,” she reminded him.
After several seconds, she could feel his attention on her. “Britt—” he began in an anguished whisper.
“It’s okay,” she said.
“I don’t think it is okay.”
Best to go with cavalier truth. “I liked it, Zander.” She risked a peek at him across her shoulder and almost laughed when his features smoothed with astonishment. Her enjoyment of the kiss had been so complete that she couldn’t fathom how he could doubt it. “Didyoulike it?” she asked.
“Yes.”
The sound of birdsong drifted between them. “Why did you kiss me?” she asked.
“I don’t know.” A pause. “I was frustrated, and I just ... acted without thinking.”
After the tumult of feeling she’d just been through, his“I don’t know”bumped her back to earth, like a hot air balloon touchingdown.“I don’t know why I kissed you”was a far cry from“I kissed you because I’ve loved you wildly for years.”
At the same time, she wasn’t ready to hear“I kissed youbecause I’ve loved you wildly for years.” At this point,“I don’t know”was on par with what she’d truthfully say if he asked her why she’d kissed him back.
The serene setting struck a stark contrast to the alarm screeching within her. She was excruciatingly aware that she needed to protect the thing that she could not lose. Their friendship.
“I don’t think we should let one kiss make things weird between us,” she said, then felt like a sellout because calling what had just happened between them “one kiss” betrayed the kiss’s magnitude.
“I agree,” Zander said.
“I’m all for living in the moment. We were living in the moment just now, and we both liked the kiss and so—good for us—no harm done.” At least, she sincerely hoped that no harm had been done. “I’m sure a lot of male/female friends have kissed each other at least once during their years of friendship.”
The line of his mouth took on a grim cast. “Probably so.”
“And now that we’ve gotten a kiss out of our system, we can add it to the list of things we’ve done together. Which is a very long list.”
“Very.”
“Today we played football on the beach. There’s no reason to give the kiss any more weight than the football.”
A prolonged silence. When he finally spoke, he seemed to be selecting his words carefully. “I’m guessing that while you’d play football with me again, you’d rather not repeat the kiss.”
“More football wouldn’t be risky. But I think you and I both know that more kisses might be.”
She felt more than saw him flinch.
“Ordinarily, I like the adrenaline rush of risks,” she continued. “But our friendship has never been at stake in any of the risks I’ve taken in the past. Our friendship is much too important to me to gamble.”
He gave a terse nod.
“So one kiss it is,” she said, striving to project a confidence she didn’t feel.
