The apartment is dark when I step inside, and I know Talia probably isn’t coming home tonight, so I lie naked on the couch. The room is lit only by the city lights outside.
I take a long time exploring myself, as if his hands were still on me.
I close my eyes and breathe in the memory of his mouth, his voice in my ear, the weight of him pressing me to the wall.
It’s maddening, how easily he gets under my skin again, how one kiss can unravel six years of distance.
Without thinking, I grab my phone and typeI’ve missed you.
Then I hit send before I can change my mind.
9
LIAM
I can’t help touchingmy lips as I walk away, the taste of her mint lip gloss still faintly there, but enough to wreck me.
My cock’s hard in my jeans, and yeah, I probably look like a creep.
Feels like one, too.
But damn.
Damn Emma Reyes and that hair, those eyes, those lips, the body that curves in ways it didn’t six years ago.
She’s not the girl I used to kiss under the bleachers anymore.
She’s a woman. A beautiful, complicated woman, and every new inch of her feels like a sin I want to commit.
Six years later, and suddenly it feels like yesterday.
Like we’re still seventeen and stupidly madly in love, whispering about our future in the back of my old Ford. Talking about marriage and forever, convinced nothing could ever change us.
Truth is, I would’ve married her then. Thought love was enough to save us both.
I never had much, but I saved what I could and bought a small diamond ring from a pawn shop. It came in a little velvet box, and there were a hundred times I thought about pulling it out to tell her she was the one. That none of hockey, college, or the draft meant a damn thing without her beside me.
Maybe I should’ve.
Perhaps that would’ve kept her from running.
But she did. And I’ve been trying to fill that hole ever since.
I used to tell myself she left because she thought I’d change once I went off to school. That she thought I’d chase puck bunnies or forget her once I was living the dream.
Maybe I didn’t say it enough.
Perhaps I didn’t make it clear that she was more important than all of it.
Because she was, she always was.
Always will be.
She was my best friend before she was anything else. The only person I ever really opened up to, the only one who saw me for more than what I came from.
This mystery ate at me for years. The idea that I pushed her away somehow, that I made her feel like running was her only way out, haunts me.
Maybe it was my shitty home life.
