She absently stacked clean glasses. “The band was really great tonight. I wish I’d had the chance to dance.”
The broom stilled in my hands. Something about her casual admission, the tiny glimpse of desire for something simple had me setting the broom aside and crossing to the vintage jukebox in the corner that was Doc’s pride and joy.
“What are you doing?” She turned, cloth still in hand.
I fed a dollar into the slot and scrolled through the selections. “Fixing an oversight.”
The opening notes of “Can’t Help Falling in Love” filled the empty bar—the Elvis version, slow and rich with promise. I walked back to where she stood, watching me with wide eyes.
“Dance with me.” I held out my hand, not a question.
She hesitated, her fingers tightening on the bar rag. “Diego...”
“One dance. The floor’s empty, and the night’s almost over. When was the last time you danced just because you wanted to?”
Something flickered across her face—consideration, temptation, and finally surrender. She set down the cloth and placed her hand in mine.
The moment her palm met mine, electricity raced up my arm like wildfire through dry timber. The calluses on my fingers caught slightly against her smooth skin as I led her to the middle of the empty floor, weaving between tables with their upturnedchairs like silent spectators watching from the shadows. The overhead lights had been dimmed to their lowest setting, casting everything in a warm amber glow that made the space feel intimate.
When I drew her into my arms, she came willingly, her body finding its place against mine as if we’d been designed as complementary pieces of some cosmic puzzle. Her hand rested lightly on my shoulder, fingers barely grazing the fabric of my T-shirt, and I kept what I thought was a respectable distance between us as we began to sway to Elvis’s honeyed voice.
But three notes in, she sighed—a sound so soft I sensed it more than heard it—and moved closer, closing that careful gap I’d maintained. Her cheek came to rest against my chest, right over my heart, and I wondered if she felt it stutter at her touch.
The scent of her hair filled my senses completely—floral again and something warm and spicy that reminded me of summer evenings and promises we’d once made under starlight. I closed my eyes, drinking in every detail, committing this stolen moment to memory like a photograph I could pull out later when the loneliness got too heavy. The warmth of her against me, solid and real. The slight curve of her waist beneath my palm, exactly as I remembered but somehow more precious now. The barely audible hum she made along with the music, unconscious and utterly endearing.
We moved in slow, lazy circles across the empty floor, our feet finding an easy rhythm on the worn hardwood. With each turn, each gentle sway, she relaxed more fully against me until I could feel her heartbeat matching rhythm with mine through the thin cotton of my shirt. My fingers spread wider across her lower back, drawing her incrementally closer until there was barely a breath of space between us.
“I’ve missed this,” she whispered, her breath warm through my shirt.
“Dancing?” But I knew that wasn’t what she meant.
She tilted her face up to mine, eyes reflecting the dim lights above. “You.”
One word, but it unraveled something tightly coiled inside me. I’d been so careful since she returned—keeping my distance, respecting boundaries, pretending I could handle being “just friends.” But with her looking up at me like that, warm and soft in my arms, I no longer remembered why I’d been fighting this.
My hand moved from her back to her face, thumb tracing the delicate line of her cheekbone. She didn’t pull away. Instead, her fingers curled into the fabric of my shirt, anchoring herself to me.
“Gill...” Her name came out rough, a question and warning both.
Her eyes dropped to my mouth, then back up, dark with unmistakable want. The music swelled around us, but we’d stopped moving, suspended in this fragile moment between past and present.
We were standing on the edge of something dangerous, something I’d spent years trying to forget. The rational part of my mind—the part that had learned to compartmentalize, to stay calm in crisis situations—was screaming warnings. But with her breathing my air, her body swaying in perfect rhythm with mine like she belonged there, like she’d never left, I couldn’t remember a single reason not to fall.
The space between us had become electric, charged with all the unspoken words and buried feelings we’d been dancing around since her return. I watched her eyes darken as they dropped to my mouth again, lingering there with an intensity that made my breath catch. The want in her gaze was unmistakable, mirroring what I knew she saw in mine. Time suspended between us—one heartbeat, two, the worldnarrowing to just this moment, this choice—before I gave in to what we both wanted.
My hand slid from her cheek to the back of her neck, fingers threading through the silky strands of her hair as I lowered my head to hers. The last coherent thought I had was that I was about to cross a line I’d drawn for both our sakes.
When our lips met, the years vanished like smoke. She tasted exactly as I remembered—sweet with a hint of whiskey from her drink—but there was something new too, an edge of desperation that matched my own, a hunger that spoke of all the nights we’d both spent wondering what if. Her hands tightened in my shirt, the fabric bunching under her grip as she pulled me closer, rising on tiptoe to deepen the kiss with a boldness that made my heart race.
I backed her against the edge of the bar, the solid wood providing support as my free hand found the curve of her waist, fingers splaying across the soft denim of her jeans. She made a soft sound against my mouth—half sigh, half moan—that shot straight through me like lightning, and I angled her head to kiss her more thoroughly. All the careful distance I’d maintained disappeared the moment her lips parted under mine. My thumb traced the delicate line of her jaw as our tongues met, and the small shiver that ran through her body was almost my undoing.
The jukebox had gone quiet, but I heard the pounding of my heart, the small gasps she made when I briefly pulled away only to come back for more. I couldn’t get enough. Each brust of her mouth made me hungrier for the next, and when her fingers slid up to tangle in my hair, I groaned against her lips.
We were tangled together like we’d never been apart, like our bodies still remembered every way we fit together. Her curves pressed against me, soft and warm, and I wrapped my arm more firmly around her waist, needing her closer.
Reality slowly seeped back in, and I reluctantly broke the kiss, though I didn’t let her go. I rested my forehead against hers, both of us breathing hard. Her eyes remained closed, lips slightly parted and swollen from my kisses.
Should I apologize? I hadn’t meant for this to happen, not really. We’d been dancing around this since she came back, but I’d promised myself I wouldn’t push because she was stretched so thin and vulnerable.
