He lets go of the counter then and rounds the bar.
My body tenses, every nerve ending springing to life. I should step back. Should maintain the distance. Should protect myself from whatever's about to happen.
But moving’s impossible.
He comes to a stop in front of me, close enough that the heat radiating from his body seeps into mine.
Close enough for me to see unshed tears he's not bothering to hide.
“She did understand,” he says quietly, his voice rough. “She understood everything.”
The air charges between us. It should be a warning, but it only seems to draw us closer to one another.
“She used to tell me—” His voice catches. “Some things take time. That the right things are worth waiting for, even when it hurts.”
“She told me that too.”
We're standing far too close. His breath feathers over my cheek as I study the pulse throbbing in his throat.
My own heart races with our proximity, the beat so devastatingly loud, there’s no way he doesn’t hear it.
“This is a bad idea,” I whisper.
“Probably.”
“We just agreed. No more looks. No more almost-touches.”
“I know.”
“My brothers are upstairs.”
“I know that too.”
Neither of us moves.
His hand comes up slowly—so slowly I could stop him if I wanted to—but when he cups the side of my face, I’m lost. Reason disappears with the swipe of his thumb over my cheekbone, as he captures a fresh tear I hadn't realized had fallen.
“Everett...” I mean it as a warning, but fuck if his name didn’t sound like a plea to keep going. To do everything in his power to come at my walls.
To wreck every last one and never let me build them between us again.
“I'm not going to kiss you.” He brushes my tear over my bottom lip, his voice rough in a way that makes my stomach flip. “Not tonight. Not like this.”
“Then what are you doing?”
“I don't know.” His forehead drops to mine, and for a moment we’re just two people seeking solitude in the shared breaths between us. “I just... I needed...”
He doesn't finish. He doesn't have to.
I close my eyes and let him wash over me. Warm and solid, he’s as steady as she was. Believing in me—in my ability to find a way to believe in us—as much as he always did.
My body remembers his, settles into the nearness of him, even while my brain screams at me to run.
His hand finds my hip, not pulling me closer, just... resting there. Tethering us to one another in an innocently intimate way.
We stand like that for what feels like hours. Foreheads touching. Breath mingling. His thumb tracing slow circles on my cheek while my fingers curl into the fabric of his t-shirt without my permission.
It's not a kiss. It's something so much worse. It’s rediscovery and the stark realization none of this ever ended. It’s accepting that it will never die, it’ll just lay dormant until we find one another again.
