“You remembered,” she says softly, her fingers tracing the tiny dog charm delicately.
“Of course I remembered.” My voice comes out quieter than I expected. “I went back for it the next day.”
She turns the bracelet in her hands, examining it from all angles, and I can see the moment she notices the engraving on the collar.
“J,” she reads aloud, looking up at me. “For Jhett?”
I nod. “They said they could engrave it. Seemed like the right thing to do.”
“Wow...” She shakes her head slightly, as if she can’t quite believe it. “Thank you. It’s perfect.”
She holds out her wrist and the bracelet, a silent request for help. I scoot closer on the couch, taking the delicate silver chain from her fingers. Our hands brush again, and this time the contact lingers. I fumble with the clasp—me, the guy who can handle a hockey stick with precision in a high-intensity game, suddenly all thumbs.
“Sorry,” I mutter, focusing on the tiny mechanism. “These things are tricky.”
“No rush,”she says softly.
I finally manage to secure the bracelet around her wrist, but I don’t immediately pull away. My fingers rest lightly against her pulse point, and I can feel her heartbeat, quick and steady. When I look up, her face is much closer than I expected, those eyes watching me with an expression I can’t quite read.
“There. Looks good on you.”
She turns her wrist. “It’s beautiful. Thank you.”
I open my mouth to tell hershe’sbeautiful, but my throat closes around the words like a fist. The compliment is one I’ve tossed at countless women across dimly lit bars. And now, when I actually mean it, it sits heavy on my tongue.
“You’re welcome,” I say instead and sit back slightly, but not all the way to my end of the couch. “Consider it my way of saying sorry for you becoming gossip column fodder.”
A small smile plays on her lips. “It has been a weird week.”
“Yeah.” I run a hand through my hair. “Though, you gotta admit, we look kind of good together. In that photo, I mean.”
She laughs. “Is that what you tell all the ‘mystery brunettes’ you get paired with in tabloids?”
“No,” I say seriously. “Just you.”
She looks down at the bracelet again and fiddles with the charm. The Christmas lights reflect in her eyes, making them shimmer with flecks of gold and green.
This is my opening. The perfect moment to tell her how I feel. How I can’t stop thinking about her. How the idea of her with someone else makes me crazy with jealousy. How I wantto be worthy of her, even though I have no idea how to be the kind of man who deserves someone like her.
Every cell in my body is screaming to say something—something real that would crack open my chest and let her see inside. It’s what I came here to do, isn’t it? To finally admit what I’ve been denying for months?
But the words won’t come. They’re stuck somewhere between my heart and my mouth, trapped by years of keeping my feelings surface-level, by the armor I’ve built around myself since high school, since I was fifteen and learned how much loving someone could hurt.
Suddenly, all the things I came here to tell Cheyenne feel like jumping off a cliff without knowing how deep the water is below.
“I played like garbage in the game after that article came out...” I say instead, hoping that, somehow, she can read between the lines. That she figures out the reason I played so terribly is because I couldn’t stop thinking about her ... about us.
Her eyes dart up to meet mine. “I know.” She smirks. “I watched your game.”
“You watched?” It shouldn’t make me happy that she saw how terrible I played, but it does. I wipe my sweaty palms on my jeans.
She nods. “I always do.”
“Always?”
“Well, when I can. It’s not like I have my TV set to the Dylan Williamston channel or anything.”
I laugh, genuinely laugh, and some of the tension eases from my shoulders. “That would be pretty weird.”
