Years collapsed between us in a single, devastating heartbeat. And I felt the full, unbearable impact of, everything I’d lost.
Chapter 13
Claire
By the time I zipped up my bag and slipped my cardigan over my shoulder, I was more than ready to call it a day. It had been one of those endless school days, glitter spills, two scraped knees, three friendship dramas, and a tearful lunchtime meltdown over a lost hairclip shaped like a bumblebee. The usual chaos of teaching little kids. The usual exhaustion that was somehow both draining and rewarding.
I had wanted to leave before Ethan and lily came back from their shopping. It should’ve been simple.
But then the front door opened, a burst of cold November air rolling in ahead of hurried footsteps and Lily barreled into the kitchen like a comet.
“Claire!” she squealed, hair a wild halo around her head.
I bent instinctively, catching her as she launched herself into my lap. “Hey, bug. You have fun?”
She nodded vigorously, strands of her messy hair sticking to her cheeks. I smoothed them back, fingers brushing through tanglesthe way I had since she was a toddler. My heart softened, then tightened.
Because if Lily was here…
He would be right behind her.
My pulse stumbled. For a second, just a second, I felt the urge to bolt. To grab my bag, mumble an excuse, and slip out the side door before the inevitable collision.
But I couldn’t move.
I forced myself to finish smoothing Lily’s hair, to keep my breathing measured even though the air felt charged, the way it always did when he was near, even after all these years.
I’d lied to myself when I told Emma I would be unaffected by him. That I was above it. That time and hurt and adulthood had sanded all the edges of that old, naïve love down to nothing.
But standing there in the Walkers’ kitchen, Lily’s small arms still looped around my neck, I felt that old pull like a gravitational force, ancient, familiar and unwanted.
And then I felt it. That prickling awareness along my spine. That unmistakable sensation of being watched.
I turned.
And there he was.
Ethan Walker. In the flesh.
Not a memory, not a ghost. Not the disaster of a teenage dream I had spent a decade outgrowing.
Just Ethan.
I took in a shallow breath.
My body heated instantly, like it was conditioned for him, it betrayed me as it always did when he was near. The inappropriate memory of his relentless mouth on me flooded my mind, how he’d suck bruises raw on my skin in his youthful inexperience, his lips and tongue leaving my skin hypersensitive, too tender to even bear the touch of fabric. He used to keep me on edge, to make me ache for him even when he wasn’t there. Now, just the sight of him was enough to make my breath feel heavy, my skin prickling with anticipation.
His chestnut-brown hair was still unruly, but longer now, brushing the edges of his temples. Those storm-grey eyes, locked on to mine with an intensity that almost knocked me backward. The faint scar on his right cheek, the one he’d gotten in high school and hated for years, no longer looked like something that marred him. If anything, it sharpened him, aged him into someone more real and handsome.
He was broader now too. His shoulders filled out his shirt in a way they never used to. His arms, his stance, everything about him seemed heavier, steadier, like the years had carved beauty into him.
The boy I had loved had been beautiful.
The man standing in the Walker kitchen was devastating.
My throat tightened with something hot and unwelcome. A rush of memory, of teenage longing, of childish belief in impossible things. Of first love and first heartbreak and first everything.
I hated that my body remembered him. I hated even more that my heart did.
