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“But—” Years of memories come flooding back: of our group of friends always hanging out together, the way Jax would slip his hand into mine and squeeze it, or give me piggyback rides or a strong hug when I needed it.
Always touching me.
Wanting to.
Always calling to make sure I made it home okay after one of our bonfires.
Constantly watching me from across the room, only to offer a shy smile when I would catch him.
I never thought anything of it. I believed we were all just friends looking out for each other. “Wow, I feel really stupid for never realizing that.”
He smirks. “Don’t. I intentionally hid it. I didn’t want you to reject me. If I had lost you, if you had stopped being my friend because of how I felt, I don’t think I could have lived with that.”
Tears start to well up in my eyes, despite trying to fight them back. A thousand what-ifs I haven’t let myself consider in a very long time flood my head. “I wish you had said something.”
He reaches out and grabs my hand, pulling it between his. Harsh, rough calluses glide over my skin, and goosebumps break out on my arm. “You were always meant for something greater than Hayes Creek, Rae, and I was never going to be enough for you to stay. It just would have hurt both of us, even if I had known you were interested.”
“Interested? I was a hell of a lot more than interested, Jax.” I release a sardonic laugh, shaking my head and staring up at the beams on the ceiling. “God, Betty would have a field day with this.”
“What do you mean?”
I lock my gaze with his again and smile, thinking about my childhood best friend. “All senior year, she kept telling me to go for it, that I should tell you how I feel. But?—”
“But what?” He squeezes my hand between his. “Why didn’t you?”
That same question has swirled through my head for so many years, and I’ve come up with dozens of answers—but none of them have ever seemed right.
Now that I’m sitting here with Jax, his hands on me, only one truth seems real. “I thought you would reject me. I thought you only saw me as a friend. Plus, I was leaving…”
“And you didn’t want to start something you couldn’t finish?”
“No.” I lean forward slightly, closer to him, needing and wanting to take all of him in before I scare him away for good. “I didn’t want it to finish at all, and that was the problem.”
“Fuck.” The word comes out on a low growl, and he squeezes my hand between his tightly. “So, we fucked it up, huh?”
I nod slowly, lowering my forehead to his. “I guess you could see it that way.”
He pulls his head back and lifts his palm to my cheek, cradling it gently. “And look where we are. I’m still here in Hayes Creek, and you’re off doing big things. HR, right? For the Brewers?”
“One of their many HR people.” I grin. “Don’t make it sound more glamorous than it is.”
Pride fills his gaze, and he looks at me the way no one else ever has—full of so much devotion, even after all this time. “I bet you’re great at that job, though. Everybody always loved you. I always did.”
“Did?”
Maybe it’s a stupid question, but I can’t stop myself from asking it. The boy I always wanted, the one I thought I could never have, is now a man, sitting in front of me, telling me I could have had all of that back then.
I could have had him.
He could have been my first everything, but instead, it was some bumbling frat bro I met freshman year in college, whose name I can barely remember. And no one since has lived up to the feeling I had pressing my lips against Jax’s that night.
“I’ll always love you, Rae, but nothing has changed, right? I’m still here. You are still there.”
I slip from his hold, unable to think clearly with his gentle touch and the scrape of his calluses along my skin, and I push up from the couch to pace. He watches me move back and forth through his living room, heat burning across his normally cool-blue gaze.
“I don’t know what to say, Jax.” I release a humorless laugh. “This is absolutely not the conversation I expected to be having when my mother insisted I come to the competition today.”
His brow furrows. “That’s why you came? Your mom told you to?”
