chest as he carried me out the door and down the driveway, and when he put me in the passenger seat, he pressed a kiss that seemed to last a day to my forehead. Then he rounded the car to drive me home.
The ride was a blur.
When the car pulled up into my drive instead of his, my instincts screamed that this was far worse than I ever could have expected. Yet I couldn’t move. Couldn’t get out, and neither did he.
“I can’t compete with a ghost for your heart, Lex. Do you still love him?”
My neck twisted his direction and I saw his white knuckles gripping the wheel. “Hudson, you can’t love a ghost. They never love you back.”
He finally looked my way, his brow pinched. “That’s not an answer, babe.”
My lip trembled and I blew out a stream of air to ground myself. “I love you.”
“You can’t have one foot in the future and one in the past.”
“I don’t want the past anymore.”
“Then you have to let it go, but I can’t help you, and it’s going to slay me every single day. But I’ll never be able to hold on to you if you’re still holding on to him. And as your friend…”
Oh, God. He’d said it.
We were back to friends, and fire raged inside me, scorching the new path I’d been on with Hudson. My eyes screwed shut, and a silent sob racked my body.
“Listen to me. Please.” He grabbed my shoulders and squared them with his. “I will always be here for you. There isn’t a world that exists where I’m not gonna be around for you. Where we go one, we go all. Remember?” He swallowed, and the anguish in his voice was like a firing range. With each word, he peppered my soul with holes, and I prepared for the kill shot.
I readied myself for the but.
Then it came.
Trying to smile and failing, he continued, “But, Kid, I’m in love with you. Right now. You hear me? Right now, I’m so Goddamned in love with you I can hardly fucking breathe. I never knew feeling like this was possible, but I’d bet everything I have that I’ve loved you for years. Only something wasn’t right and now I know what it is. I can’t help you let him go. Not now. Not as your man. Because I have to know it’s your choice. Even if everything in my body is screaming for me to take care of this—to take care of you. It’s all I know. But not this time, babe. It has to be you. Otherwise, I’ll never be sure you’re really mine.”
Then, lightning fast, his lips were on me. My mouth, my neck, my collarbone. He marked and devoured me as if it would be ages before he tasted me again—if ever.
And I let him because I was in love with him too.
His kiss told me everything would be okay, but then I learned you can’t really read the meaning in a kiss. Sometimes two mouths connecting is just that.
Because when he broke it, breathless and unsatisfied, he said, “Time out.”
The first week almost killed me.
I didn’t want a time-out. I just didn’t know what else to do.
I wanted to hover over her every day, keeping my fingers on the pulse of the situation.
I wanted to kiss her and swear to her that everything was going to be okay.
I wanted to fall asleep with her in my arms so she’d never forget I’d always have her back.
I wanted to sit on her couch and force her to talk about Brenden so I could really figure out how deep this truly ran.
I wanted to drag her to Huey’s and share a pitcher of beer just because I needed something—anything—to feel normal again.
Most of all, I just wanted her back.
A week of space for two people who hadn’t gone more than a few days without speaking in almost a decade felt like a lifetime. My nerves were shot, but I fell into a monotonous routine without her. It felt a lot like watching my favorite movie in black and white. I went to work, came home, ate dinner, played with Jesse, and then I’d lie in my bed, wishing I could rewind to the days when she’d been lying there with me.
By Friday, I had Jack back, so at least my life was in color again, but he asked about her incessantly. I had no idea what to tell him. We hadn’t broken