I feel like I’m having an out-of-body experience in this conversation with him. Like it’s veering so close to something impossibly risky. But I won’t step away. I’m walking into this, eyes wide open. “What are you glad of?”
“That I’m here, right now, in this moment. That I met you. That we’re . . .” He stops, his lips hooking up in the hint of a grin, like the grin itself contains a secret. “And that we’re friends.” His tone is all vulnerability and true emotion as he whispers, “I think you might be my favorite friend ever.”
My God, it feels like he’s saying he’s falling for me.
My heart thunders mercilessly. It’s unforgiving in my chest, pounding away in a crazy rhythm of hope, and impossibility, and wishes.
Is now the moment to take a chance?
Is tonight for risks?
I don’t know.
“You’re mine,” I say softly.
For a second, maybe more, his eyes float closed. He’s so unbearably handsome like this—in the evening, here in his city, with the scar on his chin, and his heart on his sleeve. He opens his eyes but says nothing.
It’s my move.
If I asked him to kiss me, I’m certain he would. If I asked him to make love to me, he’d sweep me in his arms and take me upstairs to his home, mere blocks away. And he would absolutely make love to me.
Passionately.
Again and again.
I swallow roughly past the tight knot in my throat. “I should go soon, or I might throw myself at you.”
“And you know what I would do if that happened,” he says, confirming that, yes, the ball is in my court.
“I do.”
Too soon, I say good night and set off for my flat, fighting every urge to return to him, press my hands to his face, and kiss him so deeply we don’t let go.
I don’t even look back.
17
HEATH
I’m a smart man.
I know what’s happening here, and the way to end it is simple. Stop seeing her. Stop pretending that we’re just friends.
Because there’s nothing friendly about the way I feel for Jo Brennan.
But then I’d be denying myself the thing that’s made me happy again.
The person.
Her.
When I’m with her, all the loneliness goes away. It simply vanishes. Poof. The ache for connection no longer pounds at me because it’s fulfilled by her.
The days roll by as we work together, as I catch little moments with her in the office, as we collaborate more closely on the collection, and as I show her the nooks and crannies of the city.
On a Saturday, I take her to closing night of Jude’s play and we all grab a drink afterward. They get on like old mates, with Jo asking Jude about his return to New York next week.
“I’ve got some work there. I have to stop in Los Angeles first, then I go to New York again to start work on a TV show that shoots in the city. And word on the street is my apartment in the Village misses me terribly,” my brother says.
“Awww. Your apartment is all alone with only New York for company,” Jo says playfully.
“Jo loves New York,” I offer.
She holds both hands over her heart. “I do. It’s so wonderful. I’m jealous you’ll be back there, Jude. Say hello to Central Park for me,” she says. “And thank you for the tickets. I swear, when you were there on stage, asking your friend if she was the one on the dating app after all, I was dying laughing. That’s a gift. To make someone laugh like that.”
Jude dips his head, his smile radiant. When he looks up, he nods at me. “It’s a gift to make someone smile like you’ve done for my brother.”
I groan quietly, but she sets a hand on my arm and rubs my biceps a little possessively. “He gives me a lot too,” she says, then excuses herself for the ladies’ room.
When she’s out of earshot, I give him a look. “Do you want a knife so you can serve up my heart on a platter to her?”
One brow lifted, he locks eyes with me like a cat who won’t lose a staring contest. “No. But I think you should, Heath.”
My stomach twists. “Should I? I feel like she already knows.”
Elbow on the bar, Jude parks his chin in his hand. “Have you said the words? The actual words.”
It’s like he bangs a gong. The clang vibrates my whole body, shakes my very bones. “No.”
“Think about it. You’re like . . . a whole new man with her.”
Am I? I wonder.
Am I truly new?
I certainly feel like I can be hurt again, I can lose again, I can ache again with her.
She doesn’t just fill an emptiness, though. She’s not simply a solution to a problem. She’s so much bigger, so much brighter than an answer to the pain.