Page 74 of Something Spontaneous

“Sly.” She pants against my chest. “Hold on.”

“What’s wrong?” Alarm bells sound in my head. I look down into her eyes, searching for an answer while my chest heaves with each waiting breath.

“What are we doing?”

“I don’t know?” I lift one shoulder in a half-hearted shrug. “Making the most of the time we have? Isn’t that what you said earlier?”

The intense lust in her eyes simmers to a dull flicker, even though our bodies are still locked in a heated embrace that I want to soak in.

Her brows knit into a playful glare, and she huffs. “I know I said that before—I just—I don’t know.”

I already see the question in her eyes before she says the words. It’s the same question I’ve been asking myself—the one whose answer I’m not sure I want, nor care about. “I’m leaving in less than a week for the festival. Are we setting ourselves up for more heartbreak?”

I sigh and sit down on the log beside us. I hold out my hand, and she takes it, plopping down into my lap, prompting me to grunt.

“Oh, shit. I’m sorry. Is that okay or…” she asks, glancing at my prosthetic for the first time today—or at least the first time I’ve noticed.

I chuckle. “Sit wherever you want, as long as it’s on me. My thigh, my face, my co⁠—”

She rolls her eyes and snorts a laugh. “Those all sound great, but you’re not answering my question.” She cups my cheek in her soft palm, tracing her thumb over my dimple. It does feel weird having my face this exposed for the first time in years, but it’s worth it for her to touch me like this.

“Should we cut our losses now?”

What she’s saying might be the smart, sensible—even right—thing to do. Bile rises in my throat, and my heart threatens to snap at the thought of saying goodbye to her again. My body’s reaction tells me there is zero chance that I’m giving in without trying.

More importantly, the look in her eyes tells me that I’m right—she might be saying one thing, but she wants something else. I can see the plea in her amber-flecked gaze that says her heart might not be ready for this to end either.

I place my palm over her hand, holding it to my stubbled cheek. “Please, give me a chance to make things right.”

“How, Sly? I still care about you. I still want you, but you hurt me once, and too many things are still the same. Maybe we should cut our losses now and part ways again, this time on better terms. Wouldn’t that be a win?”

Honesty wins. My sister’s words echo in my head.

Even with her curled into me on this old log, in the spot we’ve been to so many times, I can feel her starting to pull away from me. I wrap my arm around her and hold her tight to me, determined to not let her slip away and say the one number I’ve never stopped counting.

“Three-thousand-seven-hundred-sixty-nine.”

CHAPTER 31

JOSIE

All Of The Above

“I know we were pretty horny and feral for each other when we were young, and we’ve been busy lately, but that sounds awfull⁠—”

He snorts a laugh, but there’s no humor in his expression. His eyes harden like that night, weeks ago, when I got dropped off in the lot. This time though, without his beard, I can see his throat bob and read him. This is a different kind of tension, one that makes the hair on my neck stand and my pulse quicken.

“No, Bunny. That’s the number of days I’ve spent regretting the worst mistake of my life. That’s the number of days I’ve spent lying to myself—trying to tell myself that I don’t still love you—that I never stopped loving you.”

The entire world around me disappears. I don’t see the mountains above us or the lake in front of us. I don’t hear the birds chirping or feel the cool mountain breeze against my back.

Every fiber of my being focuses on the blue eyes that have stared back at me in every quiet moment of my life. I never dared to think of looking into those eyes again while hearing that word on his lips. It wasn’t even something I let myself dream about because I knew it was an impossibility.

Hearing him now, saying that he’s felt the same way that I have all these years, feels so healing, yet hurts so much all at the same time. I never pictured this—sitting in his lap, soaking in his warmth. I want to cry because it hurts so much. Hearing that I wasn’t alone, that he’s been harboring that regret for so long, reopens those old, shared wounds. While knowing that he never stopped loving me—and that some of what happened was a cruel twist of fate and neither of our fault—sutures those wounds shut, but the pain is still there, right at the surface of those new scars.

“You love me? You still love me? Are you serious right now? You think you can drop that on me like it’s nothing and expect me to fall right back into your lap?” I hear the indignation rising within me, but that doesn’t stop either of us from looking down and noting that I am indeed sitting back in his lap. “Ugh, you know what I meant.”

“Josie, I⁠—”