I was joking, but now even my jokes were coming out flirtatiously.
His head turned, just enough for me to see his expression. Not playful. Not mocking. Just that steady, scorching look that said,stop fucking with me unless you mean it.
I met his gaze, and for a second, it felt like we were teetering on the edge of something we couldn’t undo. I’d told him no sex because I was terrified of what it would do to us, of what it would do to me. But the string between us was burning with our barely controlled longing for each other, and I was about to be scorched.
What would he do if I climbed over the console into his lap? Would he fight me off, or let me take control?
What would we do if we passed the line, more than we already had? Would we survive it? He was my best friend in the whole world. If I lost him, I wouldn’t ever be the same.
Max shook his head in disbelief, pulling us back from the brink.
“I can’t believe you’re doing this. I can’t wait to see what you pick.”
“I can’t believe it either,” I whispered, though my chest buzzed with something dangerously close to joy. For once, I felt like I wasn’t chained to my past. I was reaching for something new.
His eyes softened when they slid over me, lingering at the scar on the back of my neck.
“It’s going to look so pretty on you.”
He had to stop saying things like that, things that made me fall harder for him. The rush of air through the open windows wasn’t enough to cool the heat crawling over my skin.
His fingers immediately laced with mine. I wanted to fight it, this feeling, but I couldn’t. Because it felt exactly like it was meant to.
Maybe I didn’t need to keep running. As long as I was with him.
11
MAX
We rode in silence. Not the easy kind we’d fallen into a hundred times before, but something wound tight. It was tense. She was holding something in. It hurt to watch. She looked like she was figuring something out, and it was scaring the shit out of her.
I risked a glance at her. Her jaw was set, her eyes locked on the window, but her hand was gripping mine so tight I could barely feel my fingers.
“What’s wrong?” I asked softly, keeping my eyes on the road.
I eased my hand from hers only to place it on her knee. She didn’t realize it, but she always clung to my touch when she was anxious. And I always gave it to her, as if I could transfer my strength to her and take her fear away.
She didn’t answer. My chest tightened. The longer she didn’t respond to me, the more I began to fidget. But then she turned, and fuck, her eyes.
Not just green. They were wild, storm-after-the-rain green, cutting through me, pulling me under. The kind of green that made you forget what you were about to say. They weren’t softand delicate. Sharp, always watching, always calculating, like she could see the parts of you that you kept hidden.
I loved her eyes because they were so expressive. When she was mad at me? They burned like glass, catching sunlight. But when she laughed or smiled? They turned into moss and clover and everything about summer that felt like home.
I could get lost in her eyes and never want to crawl back out.
“I’m good.” Her voice was too calm, the kind of calm that hides something sharp beneath it. Her gaze dragged down my body, stopping at my waist before flicking back to my face. But it was the flush in her cheeks that damn near undid me.
I had to look away. I was so wound up from our conversation at the diner, I wanted to pull the truck over and tell her to get in the backseat.
I forced myself to breathe, to keep it together, despite my hardening cock in my jeans. I seriously could not control myself around her. I tried so hard not to look at her again, but my eyes betrayed me, drifting back to her.
I was always drifting back to her.
She was beautiful in that messy, infuriating way; cutoff shorts, a braid falling loose, looking like trouble and freedom and home all at once. Every time I looked at her, my body reached for hers before my brain could stop it. We were tuned to the same frequency. Always riding the same wavelength.
Mackenzie wasn’t just perfect. She was everything. I craved intimacy with her because I just craved her. I wanted the connection. She was my fucking soul.
She laughed, breaking the silence. “Remember when we were fifteen, and you dared me to jump off the cliff into the lake? You thought you weresobrave going first to catch me, only to nearly drown.”
