“That’s a lie, but appreciated,” I said. “I…everything you said, Noah. I wasn’t expecting it. You can’t drop ‘it’s always been you’ and then expect me to have normal control.”
He rubbed the back of his neck, gaze dropping for a second. “I know. I should’ve handled the situation better. I just—watching you walk out the door tonight, thinking about you with some guy who doesn’t know your coffee order or that you hate being on the inside seat in restaurant booths—it made me lose my mind a little.”
“Oh,” I said. My heart went all gooey and traitorous. “That’s…weirdly specific.”
“Yeah, well.” He huffed out a humorless laugh. “I’ve been paying attention for a long time.”
Silence settled over us. Not the comfortable kind we’d had before this week. This one crackled.
“I don’t know what to do with this,” I admitted, toes curling in the carpet. “With…us. With the kiss. With you saying all of that. I mean, I know what my body wants to do with it, but the rest of me is a little behind.”
His eyes dropped to my mouth for a beat, then came back to my eyes. “What do you want, Em? What do you actually want? I’ll give you anything I can.”
I opened my mouth. Closed it. Went searching through all the tangled feelings in my chest.
Want was easy. I’d trusted him for years. Loved him for years. I loved his attention and how he made me feel. I loved his stupid dimple, his steady presence, his laugh. Wanted mornings where he made coffee and I stole his hoodies and we didn’t dance around this line like it was barbed wire.
But fear threaded through it. Fear of messing up his relationship with Miles. Fear of moving too fast and blowing everything up. Fear of what happened when people saw Noah Abbott—single-dad quarterback—with some random Etsy girl from another town on his arm.
“I want…” I started slowly, “to not hurt you. Or Miles. I want to be careful. And I want…” My voice went small. “You. Obviously. But wanting and being smart about it aren’t the same thing.”
He stepped a little closer, like any mention of him being hurt physically pulled him forward. “You’re not going to hurt me.”
“That’s optimistic,” I said weakly.
He shrugged one shoulder. “I’ve been hurt before. Didn’t killme. This thing?” His eyes held mine, steady. “Feels a lot more like hope than fear.”
Something hot and prickly stung behind my eyes. Oh, absolutely not. We were not crying in the hallway after making out with our best friend.
I cleared my throat. “Okay, coach,” I said, trying for light. “What’s the game plan, then?”
His lips twitched. “Game plan is…we don’t decide everything tonight.”
“Yes, fine, but I need bullet points,” I insisted. “Do we pretend the kiss didn’t happen? Do we pretend it did but agree never to speak of it? Do we high-five about it? Do we sign a waiver?”
He actually laughed, the sound quiet but real. “I don’t want to pretend it didn’t happen,” he said. “I’ve been wanting that kiss for a long time, Em.”
My whole body went soft.
“Well,” I said, voice shaking, “I liked it too. In case that wasn’t obvious from the whole… climbing you incident.”
“Yeah,” he said, eyes darkening for a second. “I noticed.”
Heat rushed to my cheeks. “Okay, so we don’t pretend it didn’t happen,” I said quickly. “But we also don’t…I don’t know…dive into a full relationship by breakfast? I can’t do that. Not with everything going on.”
“I’m not asking you to,” he said. “We can take it slow. Talk. Figure out what this looks like. We have time, and I want to try.”
That word lodged in my throat.
Time.
We’d already wasted so much of it.
But the way he said it—quiet, certain—made something inside me unclench a little.
“Tomorrow,” I said. “Can we talk more tomorrow?”
His gaze dropped to my mouth, then lifted again. “Yeah,” he said softly. “Tomorrow.”
