“I don't know how to do this,” I whisper, my voice hitching with the pain lodging my throat. “I don't know how to be around you and not?—”
“Not what?”
Not want you. Not remember. Not fall right back into the same impossible situation that almost killed me the first time around.
“Not make it complicated,” I finish instead.
“It's already complicated.” His lips brush my forehead—barely a touch, barely anything—and my whole body shivers. “It's been complicated for eleven years.”
“I know.”
“So maybe we stop pretending it isn't.”
I pull back. Just a little. Just enough to look at him. “What does that mean?”
“I don't know yet.” His hand falls away from my face, and the loss of his heat, his touch, leaves an impossible ache behind.
“But I think we need to figure it out. Don't you?”
Before I can answer, a crash echoes from somewherein the kitchen. We spring apart like teenagers caught after curfew.
“What the hell was that?”
Roman's voice carries through the darkness, muffled and sleepy. “Everett? You down there?”
My heart pounds so hard it threatens to punch its way out of my chest. My cheeks flame as the blood surges through my veins.
Everett looks exactly like a man who was just interrupted on his way to doing something scandalous on this very bar—adjusting himself with zero subtlety.
Those goddamn sweatpants hide nothing.
“Yeah, give me a minute,” he calls back, his voice impressively steady.
He looks at me.
I look at him.
“I should go,” he whispers.
“Yeah.” But he doesn't move.
“Everett...”
“I know. He takes a step back, running a hand through his already mussed hair. “Go. Before Roman comes looking.”
I grab my camera from the bar and slip toward the stairs, my legs unsteady, my thoughts a tangled mess.
“Sierra.”
I turn back to him from the first step.
He stands by the bar, haloed by moonlight, looking at me with an expression I can't quite read.
“Thank you,” he says quietly. “For telling me. About the funeral. About Grammie Bea.”
My throat tightens to the point I can only nod before climbing the stairs without looking back.
My hands shake and my lips tingle from a kiss that never actually happened.
