She chuckled and tried to grab the phone back. When she reached across me to retrieve it, I held it out of reach and turned toward her. When I did, we were face to face. Our lips were mere inches apart.
The energy shifted rapidly from comedic to intense. I lowered my arm and she followed suit but we didn’t move our heads. We stared into each other’s eyes. We were so close I could see the tiny specks of gold that swam in her emerald-green eyes.
Look away, my self-preservation spoke up.
I ignored that voice. The voice that I had always listened to. The voice that had kept me alive growing up in a system that could have easily chewed me up and spit me out and onto the streets. I could’ve easily ended up in jail or a grave.
I wasn’t the only one who was fighting what was transpiring between us. I could see the battle swimming in Peyton’s emerald gaze.
“There you are!” I heard behind me right before I felt a hand clasp on my shoulder.
The interruption burst the bubble of intimacy that we’d been floating in. My brain tried to process what had almost just happened.
Had we almost just kissed?
We had. I think.
I didn’t know for sure, but I was not about to let an interruption stop me from finding out.
8
PEYTON
“I’ve been lookingall over for you.” A woman who looked vaguely familiar pulled on Maddox’s shoulder.
Her presence served as a wedge between us. I leaned back into my own stool and told myself the past few seconds hadn’t just happened.
We hadnotbeen about to kiss.
That would be crazy.
Reckless.
Irresponsible.
Those were three words I never associated with myself. At least, I hadn’t in the past twenty years.
I was practical. I was cautious. I was responsible.
I paid off my credit card balances every month. I drank half my weight in water every day. I ate twice the daily recommended servings of vegetables. I used SPF 50 even during the winter. I was a teacher. Even my profession was responsible.
Every day for the past twenty years I’d had to actively keep my distance from Maddox to protect myself. To protect him. And in less than ten minutes in his presence I was about to blow all that up. This was just another reason why I wouldn’t have come if I’d known he was going to be here. Because I had no self-control around him.
It didn’t matter that anything happening between us would inevitably lead to more pain and heartache, nope. When I was with Maddox the past disappeared, the future was nonexistent, the only thing my mind could comprehend was the present. The here and now. And here and now, I’d wanted so badly for him to lean forward and press his lips to mine.
“You have to come back to the reunion!” the woman insisted. “They’re announcing king and queen.”
“No,” Maddox responded in a clipped tone.
It was the first time I’d heard him sound angry. That was an emotion I’d never seen him display during the time we’d shared together in our teens. I blinked up at him and saw that he was staring at me.
The look in his eyes stole the breath from my lungs. It was more intense and hotter than the Fuego Box Choco Challenge featuring the Black Reaper pepper Leo had forced me to do for one of his Instagram stories. The same challenge that had caused Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard to melt down into pools of tears and snot in a viral video when they tried it.
The woman must have noticed that I was there because she exclaimed, “Oh my god! Is that…Peyton Russo?!”
I looked at her again to try and place her. When I couldn’t my eyes dropped down to her name tag. Melinda Baxter. Oh, right. Melinda Baxtor. She’d been really involved in student government, from what I remembered. There’d been posters of her around the school asking people to vote for her for student body president.
“Melinda, hi! How are you?”
