He doesn't look at me.
Not once.
And somehow, that's worse.
Because now I'm standing here, surrounded by the three people who would absolutely commit fratricide if they knew what just happened, holding a bourbon I don't remember accepting, and my brain is finally catching up to the full scope of this disaster.
Everett Morgan kissed me.
After eleven years of nothing—of silence and distance and that horrible, hollow ache I pretended I'd outgrown—he put his mouth on mine like no time had passed at all.
And my body remembered.
The bickering washes over me, familiar and warm, and I let myself sink into it. This is good. This is normal. This is everything I was trying to protect when I broke Everett's heart eleven years ago.
Roman says something to Caleb—probably an insult, based on Caleb's indignant squawk—and I nod along like I'm following. Smile like I'm present. Make the appropriate sounds at the appropriate moments while my brain runs a completely separate track in the background.
I glance at the window seat.
Just for a second.
Just long enough to remember the way he'd caged me in, hands braced on either side of my face, kissing me like he was trying to punish me and worship me in the same breath.
You tried so hard to get over him.
And with one stupid, devastating, earth-shattering kiss, I’m right back where I started.
Smokey and intense.
Aged to complete domination since my last sip.
The forbidden love letter wrapped in a warning label keeping me from letting anyone else all the way in.
After all, what’s the point when I already know what the real thing feels like?
God. I'm pathetic. I’m every unresolved feeling I’ve ever had parading around in hiking boots.
And I had done the thing dammit.Thething. The one I thought would save us all by killing this endlessly thrumming connection.
I dated someone else. Someone safe.
Justin.
Bland, beige, perfectly-nice-but-utterly-forgettable Justin.
For a month… the longestyearof my life.
I smiled. I went through all the motions, checking off relationship milestones like the most tedious twelve days of Christmas of what he-who-could-never-be-my-true-love gave to me to prove to Everett I’d moved on.
That we were impossible.
That Everett Morgan was just a chapter, not the whole damn book.
On the twelfth day of fake love, Justin gave to me…
Twelve words in a break-up text.
Not a single one spelled correctly.
