Just One Kiss - J. Saman Page 0,26

she picks up the completed piece, following after me and setting it where I show her. We close the doors and when I turn to face her, she’s all smiles. Her skin is slightly tacky with sweat, same as mine, from the heat of the fire and the glass, and I have the strongest urge to reach up and wipe some of it from her face.

Bring it to my lips and taste her saltiness on my tongue.

“When will it be ready?”

“Since the kiln is running on the generator, to be safe we’ll say about two days or so. If you’re already gone, I can ship it to you.”

She frowns slightly, nodding her head and turning away from me. I said that more for me than for her—an ugly reminder of our situation.

She looks around, taking in each piece of equipment with curiosity and interest.

“That was so much fun. Where did you learn how to do that?”

“I had taken a few classes in high school and loved it, but after I got out of the army—”

“You were in the army?” she interrupts, spinning around at light speed to face me, her voice shrill.

My eyebrows pinch and I nod slowly, tilting my head as I take her in. Confused by her response.

“Is that where you went? What happened to you?”

“What?”

She blows out a breath, looking up to the exposed beam ceiling as if she’s struggling with something before she rights herself and stalks over to me with angry determination. “I haven’t brought it up, Miles. I wasn’t sure how and I didn’t want to make this weird or awkward.” She wags her finger back and forth between us. “But you called me firefly. The same thing you called me right before you kissed me graduation night. You marched across that field, your eyes on me, and then you kissed the hell out of me only to walk off immediately after without so much as a word. Then you were gone.” She shoves at me and I’m so stunned, I take a step back. “I went looking for you. The next morning, I went to your house, but you weren’t there and the woman who answered the door…your mother?”

I shake my head and she throws her hands up.

“She said you were gone with all your stuff and that you weren’t coming back. That was it, Miles. You were gone and I never heard from or saw you again.”

“You came looking for me? Why?”

She lets out a sardonic laugh. “Because I couldn’t get that goddamn kiss out of my head. I was mad at you. Mad because you hadn’t done it before when I had always…” She trails off, whirling around and putting her back to me as her hands hit her hips.

I step to her, turning her back around to face me and staring into her eyes from inches away. “Always what?”

She swallows hard, losing some of her anger and fight as her eyes bounce back and forth between mine. “You left,” she whispers.

My hand comes up, cupping her jaw, my thumb skirting along her soft flesh and something inside of me stirs back to life.

“I had to.”

“You could have told me.” I shake my head and the frustration is back in her eyes and she shoves me away. “Why did you kiss me then if you were leaving and not coming back?”

Part of me wants to tell her. To lay my cards on the table.

But for what purpose?

If I give in to London the way she’s asking, there will be no coming back from that. She will own me, as she always has. I will be at her feet and I… I can’t let that happen.

Maybe that makes me a coward, but there is only so much loss a man can take in his life and London could easily be the worst of all if I let her.

“Please, Miles,” she whispers, her hand touching my chest, her eyes beseeching. “Please tell me.”

Shit…

I blow out a ragged breath. “She wasn’t my mother. The woman who answered the door. She was my foster mother and I was eighteen. She was no longer being paid by the state to keep me. I was working two jobs to make up for that so I wouldn’t be homeless and buy myself food and art supplies. I had enlisted in the army because I knew that was the best place for me to go if I wanted a real chance at life. I wasn’t going to New York