“I don’t know.” Jake’s expression grew serious. “Is it possible to move on from a girl like you?”
I laughed softly. “Nice line.”
Jake smiled, running a hand through his messy dark hair. “I’m not sure that was a line.”
“Oh, it was a line. So was that. You’re very good at the flirting thing. Very confident for your age.”
“I don’t know about that. I’ve never really had to wor—”
“Work at it,” I finished for him, quirking my eyebrow at him. “Confident or arrogant …”
His laughing eyes narrowed on me. “You think you’re pretty smart.”
“No. I know I’m pretty smart.”
“Now who’s arrogant?”
I chuckled but shrugged. “Well, I have reason to be. I’m awesome.”
“Fuck.” Jake was grinning again and he placed a hand above my head on the post and leaned in. “I really want to kiss you right now.”
Heat suffused me, the butterflies in my stomach going absolutely crazy at the thought of it, but I somehow managed to control myself. “I don’t know you well enough for that.”
“I disagree,” he leaned closer, his intent clear. “Five minutes with you and I feel like I’ve known you forever.”
“Jake.”
He stopped, his expression changing at the sound of his name on my lips. I didn’t know what that expression meant, but it made me want to melt into him. I forced myself not to.
“I’m not going to kiss you.”
A spark of intensity lit up his gorgeous dark eyes. “Are you going to make me work for it?”
I nodded and straightened up from the post, bringing our bodies so close I could almost feel him against me. “If I don’t believe I’m worth the effort, why the hell would you?” With a small shrug, I slipped past him and headed toward my friends who were gaping at me, obviously eager to know what was going on. I didn’t get the chance to tell them because Jake fell quickly into step beside me.
We hung out with my friends for the rest of the night, exchanging barbs, enjoying the frisson of electricity that sparked and pulled between us. We enjoyed it, but we didn’t encourage it. Jake didn’t encourage it. There was no more talk of kissing me, but I knew as my dad arrived to bust up the party, dragging me and Lacey and Rose back to his car, that Jake Caplin was intending to make the effort.
I knew because as I walked away, he watched me the entire time. He watched me like he wanted to watch me forever.
I knew this because I was looking back at him thinking the exact same thing.
Chapter Three
My eyes felt swollen as I pried them open at the sound of the knock on my bedroom door. I felt crunchiness in the corners and on my lashes. Salt from my tears. Grounding them out, I tumbled from my bed, catching myself on the desk that was squished in close in the narrow space. My room was long but not wide, which gave me a slight space problem. It was also taking me a while to get used to sleeping in a twin again.
“Charley, it’s Maggie. You there?”
“Coming,” I mumbled, flinching at the sight of myself in my mirror.
I looked like hell.
After I cried in Claudia’s arms the night before, I told her that the guy chasing us out of the party was Jake. She knew all about Jake. She knew Jake was the reason I was a failure at relationships.
My body still ached with tension as I was reminded of the reality of the situation.
Jake was here. In Edinburgh. At college. In the same city as me.
It was too painful to contemplate this early in the morning.