“Because I don’t think your heart would be beating this fast if you thought I was just ‘all right.’”
“What do you want me to say?” she asks, looking up at me. My hand stays on her chest, the frantic rhythm of her heart thumping beneath it. “That I’m attracted to you? I think you already know that I am.”
“Doesn’t mean I don’t want to hear it.”
“Why?”
“Wouldn’t you want to know if I found you attractive?”
I can see the question in her expression even though she doesn’t voice it.If?Instead, she asks, “Do you?”
“The first time I saw you, Pres, I thought you were the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. You were standing by your locker, and I remember thinking this school might not be so bad after all. But then Hendrix stepped in between an altercation between Alex Carpenter and me and decided we were going to be best friends.”
She snorts. “That sounds exactly like him.”
“He was very persistent about it.” I smile, remembering how hard I tried to dodge him those first few days. I didn’t really do friends back then. Honestly, I still don’t, but like Hendrix, Jonas had been insistent. In school, forming attachments was messy, and it only got harder when my mom decided it was time to pack up and leave. But Hendrix wouldn’t take no for an answer.
“I remember that, you know?” she says, looking up at me. “That moment by my locker.”
“You do?” She’d never mentioned it. I just figured our brief eye contact was nothing more than a passing glance for her, and I’d been just another student in the hall.
“When you’ve gone to school with the same kids forever, it’s kind of hard not to notice a new face. Especially when they look like yours.”
I grin. “There you go, calling me pretty again.”
Her cheeks heat. “I don’t think pretty is the word that came to mind.”
“No?”
“Definitely thought you were the hottest guy I’d ever seen.” Her mouth quirks into the cutest little smile.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, but you were also my brother’s best friend.”
“True,” I agree. “But I’m not anymore. Hendrix has a new best friend. He has Zander and the band.”
I search her face, feeling like I’m standing on the edge of a cliff. I know I could fall for this woman—hell, I think I might be already there.
Maybe I always have been.
But what if it ends badly?
What if it doesn’t work out?
I cannot lose her again.
“Yeah, but you’re stillmybest friend,” she says.
I smile, an understanding settling between us. “And that is one thing that will never change.”
When we pull up to the address Pres punched into the GPS, I look around and then glance over at her, asking, “Is this it?”
She nods. “Yup, why?”
I scan the area again. It’s in an industrial park. The buildings are all very plain, with flat roofs and aluminum siding. There is no signage over the doors to identify one business from another, except for a small sign that readsCS.
“It’s so underwhelming,” I say, recalling my first tour of the Creed Agency when I was in high school. Everything in that building was impressive, from its high-rise location to the swanky furnishings and wall-to-wall windows overlooking downtown.
