“Remember when we used to sneak out here to smoke when we were teenagers?” Jesse asks, his voice softer now.
“You mean when you used to corrupt innocent little me?” I tease, bumping his shoulder with mine.
“Innocent.” He laughs, and this time it sounds genuine. “You were never innocent, Aubree Weber. You were trouble from the day you learned to walk.”
“Takes one to know one.”
“True enough.”
The silence that follows is comfortable, filled with shared memories and the gentle sounds of the night. Crickets chirp in the distance, and somewhere an owl calls out. This is the peace I missed in the city, the way the world slows down out here, the way you can actually hear yourself think.
“I missed this,” I admit, surprised by my own honesty.
“What? Smoking?”
“No. Well, maybe a little.” I smile. “I missed the quiet. The space to breathe. In Chicago, there was always noise, always something demanding your attention.”
Jesse takes the cigarette back, his fingers lingering against mine longer than necessary. “What else did you miss?”
The question hangs in the air between us, loaded with implications I’m not sure I’m ready to explore. But the darkness makes me bold, and the nicotine has loosened my tongue.
“I missed you,” I say quietly. “All of you, but…I missed you.”
He goes very still beside me, the cigarette forgotten between his fingers. When he finally turns to look at me, his green eyes are intense in the moonlight.
“Aubree…”
“Don’t.” I shake my head. “Don’t say whatever you’re about to say. I know it’s complicated. I know things are different now.”
“Things have always been complicated between us.”
“Have they?”
He considers this, taking another drag before answering. “Maybe not when we were kids. But we’re not kids anymore.”
“No, we’re not.”
The swing continues its gentle motion, but the air between us has changed, charged with an electricity that makes my skin tingle. I’m acutely aware of how close he is, how the moonlight plays across his features, how his breathing has changed to match mine.
“Aubree,” he says again, his voice rougher now.
“Yeah?”
“There are things about me, about what I do…things you don’t know.”
I turn to face him fully, tucking one leg under me on the swing. “So tell me.”
He’s quiet for a long moment, clearly wrestling with something internal. Finally, he stubs out the cigarette on the porch railing and turns back to me.
“Some things are better left alone.”
“Are they? Or are you just scared I won’t like what I find?”
His laugh is bitter. “You definitely won’t like what you find.”
“Try me.”
We’re sitting closer now, close enough that I can see the flecks of gold in his green eyes, close enough to count the individual whiskers in his dark beard. My heart is pounding so hard I’m sure he can hear it.
