“Are you trying to say you think I have a thing for Madden?”
“Well…” I hesitate, reading her face and seeing a spark of amusement there. “Not anymore?”
A beat passes before it happens: Hallie’s head tips back, her hair tumbles down, her face cracks in the hugest smile that I realize now she’d been holding in, and a full-chested laugh fills the room. It goes on for a moment before the laughter slows, before her head lifts and she wipes a finger below her eyes, before waving her hands at them, fanning herself.
“Oh, god. That was good.”
“Are you telling me you don’t have a thing for Madden?”
“Hell no. I would rather chew a tire than date Madden. Have you ever seen us in a room together? I’m kinder to myownbrother than I am to him. He drives me up a wall.” Another, smaller fit of laughs leaves her before she settles down, shaking her head. “Madden. That was good, Jesse.”
“Honestly, I don’t see why that’s so funny. You spend a lot of time with him. You flirt with him all the time. You two are always going back and forth?—”
She shakes her head. “That’s not flirting, Jesse. I do all of those things with Colton, too.”
A moment passes before I think about how she acts with her brother, laughing and prodding, and I realize she’s…not wrong.
This reframes everything I thought I understood.
“I thought that’s what happened that night,” I say without meaning to. Suddenly, the room feels too warm, too stuffy, and Hallie too close as she looks at me with a mix of confusion and understanding. “In Vermont.”
My breathing stills in my lungs with my words and the way they spilled off my tongue. We’ve never talked about that night, about the kiss, about her leaving, and honestly, I had planned to keep it that way. But now I’m too tired and comfortable to stop,and honestly, I want to know what happened. It’s been eating at me ever since.
“I…” she says, then stops, her face suddenly stark and unmoving. “Jesse.”
“I figured that was why. That you realized that you’d kissed the wrong brother. You both were always, and you always seemed to have a thing for him, so the next day, when you avoided me and you were like glue on his side, I assumed that was why.”
She blinks once, twice, before a small smirk tips at the edge of her lips. “Well, for one, there was a girl he was avoiding who he had flirted with the night before, so I was trying to help him play defense.”
My head snaps back with confusion as I try to piece this new information into what I already know, and, surprisingly, it does fit. I remember Madden flirting with a woman the night before for a bit and then saying something about trying to avoid her because she was far too intense for his taste, but the kiss with Hallie really threw me for a loop, and I completely forgot about it.
“And I was kind of avoiding you,” she adds.
My head snaps up at that, and I look at her. “What? Why?”
“Well, you see, the night before, I had gotten drunk and jumped the bones of my best friend’s hot older brother and then freaked out and ran away. That’s kind of…embarrassing?”
I don’t bother to tell her that I was the one who jumped her, more eager to focus on the important parts.
“So you didn’t avoid me because you regretted it?”
Again, her face shifts and changes. “I mean…”
Even with her words, a weight has lifted off my shoulders that I hadn’t realized had been settled there for nearly a year, and with it, I’m feeling more like joking, letting humor fill my words next as I mime a stake going into my heart.
“Oof, you really know how to make a guy feel better. Was the kiss really that bad?” My comic relief did what it was intended to, and Hallie smiles, pressing gently on my shoulder before shaking her head.
“Now you’re fishing for compliments. You know it was good.”
“But…?”
“But you’re Wren’s brother. That’s a line I can’t cross.” My brow furrows, but she continues. “Wren is one of the most important people in my life. Honestly, your entire family is. I would never put that at risk by hooking up with you, even if that kiss was very,verygood. It would never go anywhere, and even if we just hooked up for fun, it would give your sister ideas of grand white weddings and red-headed nieces and nephews. The reality would break her heart.” She says it so offhandedly, like it’s a funny joke she’s telling, but there’s a hint of seriousness to it that is unmistakable, a seriousness I can’t seem to touch.
I want to ask her why she would assume it would just be a hookup, but didn’t I just tell her that I don’t date? That I won’t date at all until Emma’s out of school? Now wouldn’t be the time to tell her that, for a moment, I had contemplated throwing that rule out the window for her. Something tells me she wouldn’t be very receptive to that.
Still, I almost do.
I almost open my mouth to tell her that I would take the leap if she were the one doing it with me, but before I can, she lets out a fake yawn, then stands.
