“We needed to focus.” I recall the text message I sent him, the reasoning I gave. “I had classes and an internship. You had college, your friends—your life. I didn’t want to give you any reason to feel you shouldn’t have listened to your calling.”
“Don’t act like you did that for me. You were a part of my life. You always have been.”
“The last thing either of us needed was to be coordinating FaceTime calls with someone in another country.”
“What I needed wasyou.”
I did too, I think. But I knew I couldn’t have him and also encourage him to chase his dreams thousands of miles away.
“It was shitty,” he goes on. “There are always imbalances in relationships—a person who cares more. But it sucks to know for certain you’ve been this secondary character in someone else’s life. When you realize they don’t think about you as much as you think about them.”
I shake my head because he couldn’t be more wrong. “I thought about you a lot.” My voice breaks, my vision blurs, and I blink up at the sky to prevent frustrated, hot tears from falling. He’s always been the one that matters the most, and that terrifies me.
“Not the way I thought about you,” he says. “I don’t believe in the friend zone or dumb shit like that, but how I felt about you and going from…from what we had to not even getting a text back, it was awful. I was barely myself freshman year.”
“I’m sorry. I really didn’t know what to do with all the things I felt for you. When I got that first voicemail from you, I didn’t realize how much I needed to hear your voice until I actually heard it.”
“But you didn’t really want to talk? You never called when I was awake.” The anguish in his tone grips me. “And I’d call on Mondays or Tuesdays when you’d be less busy. I tested different times of day. You never picked up.”
“I don’t know, they just…the voicemails felt safe.” Like I could keep my feelings buried and not impede on Max’s life, but we could still talk in our own way. “Hearing you, like really hearing you on the phone would only make me wish you were here. And you going to Dublin was always the right thing, but being apart was…I never stopped thinking about you.” I sniffle, then wipe my nose with the back of my hand. “Did you stop thinking about me? Wait, that’s stupid,” I say, backpedaling from my question. “You had your life and friends and everything there.”
“Daisy, I thought about you an annoying amount. For someone who made it clear they didn’t want to hear from mefor months—then years—you were always around. When your favorite sunset colors splashed across the Dublin sky. Burnt orange and pastel pink. Whenever someone said they wanted coffee, black. Anytime I ate Thai food.” He stands at the passenger door, his hair windswept and wild. “I thought about you all the time.”
“And now?”
He shifts his weight and slips his hands into his pockets. “Why does it matter?”
“It just does.”
“What makes you think anything’s changed?”
I’m tired of pretending we can ignore how we feel about each other, because we can’t. At least I can’t. I don’t want to.
So I reach out, grab his jacket, and pull his mouth to mine.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Max, Now
Daisy’s lips land on mine, fervent and needy. Every luscious curve of her presses against me, but I want us closer.Needus closer.
That’s not what we agreed to, though.
“What are you—” I’m cut off by her mouth, and I have to press a hand to her stomach to give us both space. If I were a smart man, I’d shut up. But we promised each other this wouldn’t happen again, and I have to understand where her head’s at. “What happened to ‘professional’?”
“Fuck professional.”
She crashes her lips into mine once more, and the desire in my brain eclipses my ability to reason. I don’t want to say no. I don’t want to stop her. I don’t want to talk this out and ruin themoment and miss this chance. But I also can’t do this without knowing what my heart’s up against.
“Just once more?” I ask as I trail kisses across her jaw. “Is that what this is?”
“No.”
“Then what is it?”
“I need you.”
“You said that before.” Forcing us both to slow down, I cup her head in both hands, my thumbs stroking either side of her face. If we do this again, I’ll be welcoming heaps of complication into both of our lives. “I don’t want this if all you plan to do is push me aside after. I’ve been fighting my feelings for you since the moment I evenknewI was coming back to Harlow. We’d have a good time,” I say, running the pad of my thumb across her plump bottom lip, “but help me out here. You got a little jealous tonight, is that it?”
