I gasp.
I felt it too. That night, I felt the spark. My body came alive and not just because I was eighteen and hormonal.
It was because of Dax.
“I wanted more, but I didn’t know how to tell you. I didn’t want to scare you, but I’d made up my mind before I got home that I would take you to breakfast the next day and tell you I wanted to be with you. But I never got the chance.” He shakes his head, his eyes tormented. “One call and everything was taken away from me.”
The breath is knocked out of me.
Immediately, I’m thrown back to the day I found Dax in the waiting room of the ER, hunched over, defeated.
“They did everything they could to save them…” he whispers. The words are automatic. Robotic. Like he’s just repeating what he heard. Like he doesn’t even realize he’s talking. “My family was in a car accident with a semi-truck. Willow is in surgery now. But my parents… They, uh…”
Tears stream down my face as I wait for him to continue.
He remains silent.
“What happened to your parents?” I hiccup.
He’s not answering me. He’s not moving. His face is growing redder as a sob makes its way up.
I gently shake him as my own pain for my best friend wracks my body. Terror seizes me as I struggle to find my voice. “Dax? Where’s your mom? Your dad?”
He finally exhales, burying his head in his hands, and lets out a howling cry that I’ll never forget.
Even now, the ghost of his pain haunts me.
“My mom died on the way to the hospital,” he manages, his voice strained. “And my dad… he died in surgery. They died, Clara. They’re gone.”
I wrap my arms around him and squeeze as hard as my limp arms can.
Dax clears his throat, bringing me back to the present. “I drowned in the aftermath of their deaths. Even though I pushed you away, you made sure I still had someone to lean on. Someone I could unload my burdens on. You were there.”
Without another thought, I step toward him and wrap my arms around him. I breathe him in, holding him.
When I lift my gaze, there’s devastation in his eyes.
Pain. Strength. Love. All the things that remind me of Dax.
He’s grown. Matured. The tragedy shaped him.
So many others might’ve crumbled, but losing his parents so suddenly didn’t completely break Dax. He struggled, but he came out stronger.
“So many what ifs,” he whispers absently, like he says it more to himself than to me. He wipes my hair from my forehead, his fingertips sweeping across my forehead, then studies my lips.
The hairs on my neck stand as I suck in a sharp breath.
He’s all I can see. The world outside these walls disappears. I’m in a daze, barely recognizing this man in front of me.
My brain is fuzzy and confused.
“Do you know of all the things I regret in my life, which one is at the top?”
“No,” I answer warily. I’m frozen in place, in his arms, captivated by these new truths of our teen years.
For the first time, I can’t predict him. I can’t finish his sentence or thought, because we’re in uncharted territories. I’m part of this story he’s telling, but at the same time, I don’t feel like I was there at all.
“I regret not kissing you again. Not grabbing you and pulling you against me while I tasted those lips of yours.” He cups my face with both his hands and searches my face like he too is seeing me for the first time. “I want to kiss you every day. To be more than just Dax, your friend.”
I lick my lips as the air crackles around us like two rogue wires coming together with a spark.
This thing between us is crazy, but it doesn’t have to be a bad thing, does it?
Our night together, breakfast with Jacob, our afternoon in the vineyard—they were right. We were right.
I gaze into his eyes. They put me in a trance. I get lost in them like I would the sea, swimming in an ocean of what ifs.
The what ifs of us get the best of me.
“So, kiss me,” I say to him, my voice trembling.
It’s unfamiliar, saying the words to Dax—my longest and best friend—but I don’t mean them any less.
His body snaps, jolting into me.
He’s intense and unyielding, like this is what he knows to be truer than human anatomy.
Heat courses through my body like lava through a volcano ready to erupt.
Because he was right before. I am scared of his feelings for me after all this time of being friends. But more than that, I’m scared of my feelings for him.
Of the feelings I suspect always lingered in my heart below the surface. The feelings that faded to the background as life threw us off the path to our happily ever after.
Our night together proved it. I’m the one who closed the door behind me. I kissed him back as fiercely as he kissed me.
I wanted him.
I want him. His lips on mine. His body against mine. Right now, there’s no room for thinking of who we once were. It’s only who we are now.
“Kiss me,” I repeat.
I raise onto my tiptoes, and when his lips are on mine, his tongue delving in and exploring my mouth, everything else disappears.
With his hands moving from my hair to grip the back of my neck, our past fades.
Seventeen
Dax
She moans as I slowly—sensually—explore her mouth, massaging her tongue with mine, memorizing every movement and sound she makes.
I’m taking my time with her, savoring every pant. Every sigh. Every sweep of her tongue
