AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You shoved me on the ground!” I protested.
“You shoved my brother first. I had to defend him.”
“Well, he did call me a liar for claiming Brandi and I were twins.”
“We were just dumb kids,” Jack said. It felt like an admission and an apology all at once.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Just dumb kids who didn’t know any better.”
“Now we’re older and wiser.”
I snorted. “Older, yes. Wiser… not so sure about that.”
“We came to our senses eventually, didn’t we?” Jack argued. “And it only took two weeks. Alyssa… I think I’m in love with you.”
I gave a start.
“I’ve been in love with you since the day we met,” he admitted. “I stayed in love with you, to some degree, after the pool party. All those years apart. I didn’t realize it until you came back into town, back into our lives.”
The way he said our lives instead of my life stuck out like a sore thumb. “Jack, I feel the same way. I’ve always felt something for you, and I’ve never been able to shake that feeling. I care about you so much. I don’t want to spend the next eight years of my life wondering what the two of us could have been.”
“Me neither,” he said firmly.
“But… Liam and Mateo…”
“They’re my best friends,” Jack interrupted. “I love them like brothers. Nothing will come between us. I don’t care if you have feelings for them, or them for you. That doesn’t change the way I feel. It doesn’t change the fact that I think… I think I need you in my life.”
Relief washed over me. “I don’t know what we’re all going to do…”
“We can worry about that later. For now, just stay with me.”
I stroked his hair. “I wouldn’t think of leaving. Not until they kick me out.” I chuckled.
“What’s so funny?”
“I wish I had told you how I felt when I was a teenager. My mother was such a toxic influence in my life. She made it difficult for me to trust people. It was easier to withdraw into myself rather than tell someone how I felt. I was scared of getting hurt.”
“I know exactly how you feel,” Jack said.
“I should have had this conversation with you years ago.”
“I should’ve done this years ago. Before that pool party.” Holding the back of my neck with surprising strength, he pulled me in for a kiss.
There were no barriers between us now—only a deep affection, one that had somehow strengthened over the years as we grew individually. We may not have been a perfect match a decade ago, but we were both in a better place, now. We were where we needed to be in order to fit together.
Jack’s hold on my head remained strong as he deepened the kiss. His tongue swam in my mouth, hungrier and more desperate than I expected. It was a kiss that was eight years in the making. A kiss that was too powerful to stand alone.
I pulled away from him and went to the window. Nobody was out in the hallway; Liam and Mateo must have gone to get coffee or something. I locked the deadbolt on the door, then pulled the curtains until we had privacy.
“What are you doing?” Jack asked.
“Something I wanted to do at the pool party,” I replied, crawling into bed with Jack and straddling him. The paper hospital gown smoothed out all of his defined features, but he felt hard and sturdy underneath me.
“But the nurse…”
I bent down and gave him a rough, hard kiss. “You’re not going to find an excuse this time, Jack Franco.”
He grinned up at me. “Is that so?”
