“Two,” Lucy repeats. “There weretwokisses.”
“Yes.”
“Voluntary?”
“Yes, Lucy.”
“Just checking.”
I press my fingers to my temple. “It was the sexiest kiss I’ve had in a very long time.”
That gets everyone’s attention going again.
“Okay,” Juliette says slowly. “Explain that.”
“He asked me…” I say.
Lucy freezes. “He what?”
“He asked me how I’d want it,” I say, quieter now. “Like…how I’d want to be kissed.”
Juliette’s jaw goes slack, her hand stilling on her glass.
“Oh, no way,” Eva whispers, clutching her chest. “I’m dying.”
“And then?” Lucy says, already leaning forward again.
“And then I told him,” I say. “And he did exactly that.”
If we were keeping score with silence, I’d be the big winner here because you could hear a pin drop in this room right now. Actual pure silence.
Juliette lets out a whoosh of air. “Yeah,” she says. “That would do it.”
Lucy pretends to faint in her chair. “I cannot handle this.”
Eva shakes her head. “That’s not fair.”
I let out a breath, my pulse still not entirely steady just thinking about it. “It was…” I trail off.
“Romantic?” Juliette says gently.
I look at her and feel my head as it slowly nods in agreement. “It was one hundred percent romantic, and sexy, and it drove me crazy. It didn’t feel like a moment,” I admit. “It felt—real.”
The word sits there. Heavy in a way I wasn’t expecting.
“I don’t know what to do with that,” I add. “With someone like him who is…well, is Ty.”
Lucy’s expression softens as she tilts her head to the side, listening. Juliette leans back slightly, watching me.
“I keep waiting for it to change,” I say. “For it to stop feeling so easy, like life is flowing naturally for us. Because that’s how it worked last time.”
There it is. The unsaid thing that underlines the moment.
“It’s not the same,” Juliette says.
“How do you know?”
“Because you’re here now, and this story is about Ty,” she says. “Not Chris.”
