Likereallyin love?
I couldn’t be.
Could I?
I wasn’t some sap who instantly fell in love with people. I know I had said it during the game, but really, it was to get under Jackson’s skin more than anything. But my pulse was too loud in my ears as I thought about all the years Mackenzie and I had shared together.
Maybe I was losing my mind, then. This was definitely not love.
She looked back at me, smiling with her tongue in between her teeth. Her hair fell into her face, and I watched her wrap it upon top of her head with a ponytail holder. She reached out her pointer finger and lightly gripped my pinky.
My God. My heart sprinted yards ahead as I gripped her finger. I was falling for her.Hard.
The lines blurred, and I was finally letting out a part of me that had been caged for years.
I stared at her, and this feeling of absolute terror and bliss crashed inside my chest. I could feel my love for her clawing up my throat. My brain was short-circuiting just looking at her.
Oh, shit. I was in trouble.
This was fast, way too fast. But I had known her for seven years. We talked every day, sometimes multiple times a day. Sometimes for hours. She was the first call in the morning and the last one before bed.
Maybe it wasn’t fast at all. Or maybe I was just trying to rationalize that this was okay, that I was normal. A normal guy falling in love with his best friend. A normal guy who would do absolutely psychotic and insane things for his best friend. Thoughts that were totally fucking scaring me. A normal guy who wanted to pin his best friend to the bed and fuck her unconscious. I was normal.
Totally normal.
But I wanted Jackson to know she wasmine.I wanted him to feel the loss in his chest every time he looked at her and saw her with me. I wanted to erase every memory she had of him, and I would be the first everything for her. I hated him for touching her. For having parts of her I couldn’t get back. The thought of it was enough to make my hands itch to break something.
“You want to get the kayaks?” she asked, smiling playfully.
“Yeah,” I said, too eager.
She walked to the docks to talk to Graham. The sun bled orange across the lake. She stood there with her arms wrapped around herself. Her hair was in a messy bun now, strands curling in the breeze, and she looked so goddamn unattainable it mademy teeth ache. She wasn’t just my best friend anymore. She wasn’t just the girl who knew my coffee order or hummed off-key when she was nervous. She wasn’t just the one who stayed up talking to me over the phone when I was sick.
She wasmine.
I almost felt guilty thinking of her that way. But the nerves didn’t stop me from wanting it. I wanted it so badly.
She didn’t know it yet. My claim on her. I’d decided somewhere between the woods and right now. There was no coming back from it. I wasn’t planning on pretending.
I wanted her.All of her.I wanted to possess her soul. I didn’t know what that made me, only that I couldn’t stop wanting her. Every part of her. Even the parts she hid from me.
My chest ached, not a shallow burn of lust, but a slow, consuming kind you can’t shake. It kind of fluttered, like a moth trying to escape a jar. Every time I looked at her, it swelled.
It was the kind of feeling that makes you protective in ways that aren’t entirely healthy. The kind that says you’d do whatever it takes to keep her.
Was I wrong to feel this way? To feel so protective and territorial and downright psychotic around her?
We knew each other so well. She had to feel it too, right?
If she tried to run, I’d follow. Always.
She turned then, like she could feel my eyes on her, and I didn’t look away. Her silhouette was gold in the dying light, and for one dangerous second, I thought about kissing her.
But I was nervous. Nervous about the way I was feeling. Nervous because this was Mackenzie. I didn’t want to fuck this up.
“You okay over there? You’re staring pretty hard,” she laughed as she walked back towards me.
God, she had no idea.
