It was delicious to kiss like this, slowly, lazily, able to enjoy every anticipatory moment. I found myself leaning down, pressing her back against the SUV I had to return tomorrow. When our lips came into play once more, her hands strayed down from my neck to my chest and abdomen.
“I love you,” she whispered, and I held onto the words like they were my salvation.
“I love you,” I said.
We continued kissing like that, on the cusp of somethingnew. Just when I was about to pull away and suggest we finish the drive home, I heard a car door slam.
“Macey?” a deep voice asked.
My girlfriend stepped off the car and out of my arms.
Huh. I didn’t like that.
She squinted her eyes as she stared at the man who had pulled into the pump next to us. “Landon?”
That name sounded familiar, but I couldn’t put my finger on why. Old friend? Ex-boyfriend?
When the man in question, Landon, got closer to us, the light above us illuminated his features. Tall dude, about my height, around our age too. He had short dark hair that I couldn’t find a word to describe other thancurly, and based on the muscles on him, he lifted a lot of heavy weights.
“It’s so great to see you again!” He pulled Macey into a tight hug as she gave her nervous laugh.
That laugh was worse than the ones she had around Jennifer in Aruba. This was DEFCON 1. Who the fuck was this guy?
Macey stepped back after the hug, an all-teeth smile frozen on her face. I wrapped an arm around her shoulders, trying to launch her back to the present with a squeeze of a hand on her shoulder.
“Landon,” she gritted through her teeth, “this is my boyfriend, Noah.”
The male pride in me roared.Take that, stupid lifter.
But Landon was unbothered, offering me a hand to shake. “Nice to meet you, man.”
Okay, ex-boyfriend was out of the realm of possibilities.
“So,” Macey stuttered, her usual confidence momentarily faltering. “What are you doing here?”
Landon blinked, his brown-as-soil eyes squinting in confusion. “Getting gas?”
Idiot.
Macey let out that nervous laugh again, high-pitched and rickety. “Obviously. But I thought you lived in some other state.”
“Oh!” Landon adjusted, and I took a moment to glance at his car. It was an SUV, like my rental, filled with boxes. “I did for a bit, yeah. I’m moving back to Chicago, though.”
“What?” Macey shrieked, her voice rising higher than intended before she caught herself and calmed down. “I mean, uh, why are you moving back to Chicago?”
“It was time,” he said, deflecting.
The words hung in the air between them for a second, begging for the addition ofthis is why…
It never came.
“Oh, right,” she said. “Funny how there are so many cities in the world, and yet you’re moving to Chicago.”
I didn’t need to be good at reading people to pick up on the annoyance in Macey’s tone and stance. Almost defensive. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why she felt the need to be like that.
Landon tensed, his laid-back vibe replaced by something more guarded. “Life is funny sometimes.”
“Sometimes,” Macey repeated dryly.
