But what she doesn’t know is that I’ve always loved a chance to break the rules, and I’m so, so tired of following this one. The most important rule I’ve ever made for myself.
I’ve missed her for so long.
So I do it.
I press my mouth to hers.
Chapter Two
KRISTEN
December 15
It had felt like Christmas morning, kissing Jasper.
Like the thing you’ve been waiting and waiting for, lying in bed at night with wishes stacked up in your head. Like waking up extra early when it finally comes, the house dark and quiet and your ears straining to hear for someone else to stir, to give you permission to burst from your room and start the day’s celebration. Like holding in your hand a perfectly wrapped present, your hands fairly trembling with excitement.Is this the one?you’re thinking, holding it there.Is this the one I really, really wanted?
Like opening that present and finding—with a burst of irrepressible joy—that it absolutely is.
At my desk I let my eyes slide closed, blinking out the light from my computer screen, where I’ve been staring at the Nhung contract since I got here an hour ago. Going over it again like this—it’s the kind of thing I might’ve done last night, once I’d heard the “yes” I’ve been working to get for months. Six weeks from now Dr. Nhung will be starting a five-year stint with Möller Metals, a job I’m certain will make him happy, and an agreement that will bring Jasper and me one of the biggest recruiting commissions we’ve gotten since we started up fourteen months ago. A good salary bump for Carol in the next quarter, enough money to make some improvements to the office we’ve been waiting on. I could’ve heard that yes and gone back to my office, e-mailed my contact at Möller, opened this document, and let myself feel proud of what I’d done.
Instead I’d asked Jasper to kiss me. I’d practicallydaredhim to.
Andoh. Kiss me he did. One hand in my hair, one arm wrapped around my waist, a rough sound in his throat—
The sharp ring of my phone stops me from reliving it—again—and even before I look down at the screen I know it’s my older sister, and I know the lecture I’m about to get.
“Kris, you absolute hag,” Kelly says, her voice strained, her breathing shallow. I can hear the thud of her feet on her treadmill. She’s probably on mile four at least, her Bluetooth in her ear and her tablet in front of her face. Likely she’s been answering e-mails since mile one. “I have been waiting forhours. Did you get him?”
I have a flash of my thumb on the curve of Jasper’s lip. I cross my legs under my desk.
“I did.”
“What thehell,” she says, and I can hear her slap the stop button. “You said you’d call! I figured it went bad and you were off somewhere with Jasper drowning your sorrows.”
“It didn’t go bad,” I lie.
Because itdid. It did go bad, once the kiss had stopped. One pause to catch my breath—who knows how long we’d stood there like that, arms around each other, lips and tongues tangling—and in that pause while I’d stared at him, taken him in and what we’d done, it’d been like a light had switched on in Jasper’s head, the glazed, hungry look in his eyes before the kiss suddenly gone. He’d stepped away from me and said, “I shouldn’t have.”
He’d looked at me like he didn’t know me at all.
I stand from the desk and walk to my door, peeking out before I close it to the small, dimly lit lobby outside. Carol won’t be in for another hour, and Jasper—who is always here before me—still isn’t in his office across the way.
I take a deep breath. “Kel, I messed up.”
I try giving her an abbreviated version: a long day, a jolt of adrenaline, a huge achievement, a kiss I shouldn’t have initiated, an awkward parting.
But I should’ve known that wouldn’t work on my sister.
“Oh myGooooooooooooood,” she shouts, and I wince on her behalf. It’s barely six a.m. in LA right now, and no way are Malik and their two kids out of bed yet. I shush her on instinct, but this doesn’t work either.
“Freakingfinally! What was it like?”
I can’t say Christmas morning, obviously, unless I want Kelly to know how far gone I am, how far gone I’vebeen. “What do you mean,finally?”
“Please. ‘Jasper this, Jasper that.’ He’s all you ever talk about.”
“Weworktogether. We’re business partners. Of course I talk about him.”
