With a chuckle, she turned and started walking again. “Did you know I was out here or is this a random coincidence?”
“I may have gone to the café looking for you. Molly told me you’d gone for a walk, then I ran into Kayden, who told me which direction you’d gone.”
“Wow, you’re like a detective.”
“Well, I barely saw you yesterday. I’m getting Elle withdrawals.”
“That must be tough. I don’t know how you’re managing.”
“Me either, Tink.”
While she’d been joking, he had a ring of truth in his voice that felt…intense.
She gulped down another mouthful of coffee, the hot liquid burning her throat. “Being away from a friend can be difficult.”
“Friend. Right.”
“We shouldn’t have kissed, Jace. That was a mistake.” The words fell from her mouth, and the second they did, they felt wrong.
“I will never call a kiss with you a mistake. Way overdue? Sure. Hot? Hell yeah. But not a mistake.”
She blew out a breath. “Jace, we’ve been through this, and you agreed we’d be friends. We were always friends. We were good at friends. We should stick to what we know.”
“I said we’d be friendsfirst.”
She frowned, opening her mouth to respond when he got in first.
“April twenty-sixth, fourth grade.”
She stopped. “What?”
“You walked into class. You were wearing your backpack with the Tinker Bell key chain dangling from a zipper. Your hair was in a braid over your left shoulder. Casper was being an asshole to Bianca. He told her she looked like shit in her overalls.”
Why was he—
“You walked straight up to him and told him that if he ever spoke to your friend like that again, you’d kick him between the legs and make sure he didn’t get back up.”
Shehadsaid that. She’d been new to the school, and Misty Peak, and Bianca had been her first friend. Her only friend for a while.
“You came up to me after and said you wanted a friend like me.” Her voice was soft, almost a whisper. She hadn’t known Jace before that, but one look into his ocean-blue eyes and there’d been no saying no.
“And you said yes.”He inched closer.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because that was the day I knew I needed you in my life. Not for a moment. Not for a few years. Forever.” He’d just forgotten for a while.
“That was the first day we met.”
“Yeah, it was.” And he remembered it like it was yesterday, because it was the day his world changed. He lifted a lock of hair from her cheek. “I want to give you what you’re asking for and be your friend again. But when I’m close to you, it becomes impossible tonottouch you.”
“You used to do just fine,” she whispered.
He shook his head. “Not true. Even when I was sixteen years old, not touching you was torture.”
She sucked in a full breath before responding. “That’s not true.”
“It is. I ran from it for a long while. For years, actually. I’m done running. You don’t even realize how easy you are to fall for, Elle.” He lowered his head, and the need to kiss her was so strong that it pulsed through his veins. But she didn’t want that right now, and goddammit, he had to respect that. Instead, he grazed her cheek with his lips, moving across to her ear. “So. Damn. Easy.”
