“I’ve started chasing the top-rated courses through the world. I finished one in Germany a few months ago. Rome a few months before that.”
“And now New York.”
“And now New York,” I confirm. “It starts in a few weeks. Just exploring the city beforehand.”
He shifts closer, elbows resting on the table. “What’s the game plan with the courses?”
Lifting my shoulders to my earlobes, I tip my bottom lip in dismissiveness, not willing to divulge my dreams. “I have a few ideas, but I’m just doing my research, perfecting my signature before I consider taking a leap. What about you?”
“I haven’t seen Mom or Dad in years,” he admits. “I told them I’d visit. I started in Colorado and couldn’t bring myself to keep on to Lake Geneva, so I took a job in New York.”
“I get that,” I whisper.
Lake Geneva is where our friendship blossomed. It’s where our love story started and the very first place that caused us heartbreak.
“You’re single,” he tests, unsure of the words whispered along his tongue.
I nod. “You?”
A swift up and down movement of his head.
“You’re looking, though? The app,” I push.
An exaggerated sigh escapes. “I spoke to Mom. She thinks I’m out here sowing my wild oats, as she put it. It made me realize there’s been no one since . . .” He clears his throat. “No one since you.”
I frown. “Me? But Grace. The wedding.”
Placing his coffee on the table, he leans back in his chair, arms braced at the nape of his neck. “Grace wasn’t my girlfriend, Henley. She was supposed to be my assistant in Russia. I fucked her before the wedding, I’m not gonna deny that, but not after. I fired her. Took a middle-aged, overweight man with a terrible drinking problem.”
My heart feels tight in my chest.
He left with his redhead.
My chest heaves with the heavy breaths of panic.
“I thought—”
“Alex?” he cuts me off.
“He broke up with me before we . . . before the elevator.”
His eyes fire with lust. Darkening at the memories of a forbidden moment shared between two people who only find one another at inopportune junctures in time.
Do it. Come for me, Squirrel.
“It’s nice to be here with you.” I change the subject, needing the heat in my cheeks to subside and the throb between my thighs to fall away into nothing.
“Be nicer to be at our rock.”
I smirk. “My rock.”
He laughs, the sound echoing through the room and straight into my soul.
Leaning forward, he moves his hand to mine, bending his long fingers over mine. Without thought, I lift my hand, letting him thread our fingers together in a show of intimacy.
My gaze settles on our hands, twisted together in longing.
He jerks my hand forward softly, bowing down to brush his lips over the point our skin touches.
“I don’t know how to just be your friend anymore, Brooks.”
He kisses my hand again, holding his lips against my skin for a drawn-out second before meeting my eyes. “Me either. I don’t know if we have it in us to be anything more, though.”
I grind my teeth to stop my jaw from shaking.
“Love seems easier for others. Why not us?”
A gentle cough to stretch his throat. “Maybe love isn’t written in the stars as people say. Maybe some of the best love stories are the very eye of the storm. Together we’re calm and happy, the gentle waves of intimacy surrounded by a cyclone. But when we take a step back from one another, we’re caught in a spiraling cycle of feelings neither one of us can grab hold of.”
“I never knew love before you,” I confess unnecessarily. “So it shocks me that I’m not ready to compromise my life for your love.”
“It’s scary, Henley. Love is fucking terrifying.”
“The thought of gambling everything I have inside my heart makes me feel physically unwell. But living without you is a life of misery worse than my life with Jacinta and Derrick.”
Fingers dragging across the line of his mustache, he cups his jaw, scratching the dark shadow of hair.
“What do we do?” he murmurs. “Tell me, Henley. Tell me what you want.”
There is no animosity in his tone. Just the same desperation I feel coursing through my veins.
“I’d rather be with you at a distance than not have you at all. There’s no one else for me, Brooks.” My voice cracks and I place a hand over my lips to hide the quiver in my breath. “There has been no one else since you. I know it’s not much and I know it’ll be hard, but . . .”
“I’d do it. Long-distance. I’d do it for you. You’re scared of love and throwing yourself into it without caution isn’t who you are, Squirrel. It’s taken me a long time to realize that. We’ve hurt one another a fucking truckload discovering it, but we’ll only cause ourselves more pain by denying what we want.”
“Each other,” I whisper.
“Each other,” he echoes. “I won’t go years without seeing you, though, Henley. If you’re my girl, really my girl, we do this. We’re fucking committed. Six months apart max. You get me?”
I nod vigorously.
“Now come the fuck here so I can kiss you.”
29
BROOKS
We decided to go out to celebrate our new relationship status.
A mixture of it’s complicated and in a relationship.
But it’s progress and a major fucking step forward for us both.
In truth, I could never give Henley up. I’d hold on for as long as it took for her to realize she was mine. No matter how dark the road to our ending seemed, there was always light.
Henley.
While she’s alive and breathing, my light is her.
She spins from my embrace, arms thrown above her head, hips twisting with the beat of the music.
Her dress, nothing but a slip of silk, clings to the curves of her slender frame. The sides cut close to her nipples, teasing at the perky fullness of her tits.
Outside, the temperatures dip below zero, but in here, surrounded by other partygoers, Henley’s body is slick with
