Page 25 of The Triangle

“No,” I say, so frustrated. “No, I’m not. We’re just friends.”

She pulls away a little so she can see my face. “Friends? Do friends come back to kill enemies for you?”

“Partners,” I say.

She smiles a little. Just the corners of her mouth lift up, which makes me look at her lips as she talks. “I don’t remember everything but I know… I know this is right. I have wanted to touch you since you first rescued me from that tin-foil apartment.”

I don’t know what to do.

I want to kiss her so bad right now. Not the kiss of a friend, either. Or a partner. I want to kiss her whole mouth like we’re lovers.

But I’m afraid. I could ruin everything if I kiss her. I could ruin us, and this, and everything I ever hoped for since she left. I want her to stick around. I don’t want to disappoint her again. I don’t want to fuck things up. I don’t think I could live through another breakup.

But I can’t tell her any of that, either. Because I know what she’ll do. She’ll lean up on her tiptoes, place her hands on my cheeks, and kiss my mouth like we’re something we’re not.

And I’ll forget that’s not what we are, and I’ll let her, and kiss her back, and then tomorrow—

“Christine,” I practically beg.

But she’s not listening. Her hands are pressed against my cheeks. Her eyes are only looking at mine. And then she does it.

She kisses me.

And I know. This is the moment that defines who we are. It’s the beginning of something we can’t have. And everything that comes after is just an ending.

CHAPTER TEN - CHRISTINE

He grips my wrists, still in the act of trying to remove himself from my embrace. But he loses the battle almost instantly. The moment our lips touch we close our eyes and sink into each other.

It’s everything I imagined. A sense of complete peace. The longing fades and satisfaction takes its place. My fingertips slip under his shirt and the heat of his body increases both my desire and the feeling that this is how things were meant to be.

It’s not an urgent kiss though. Not some prelude to us ripping each other’s clothes off. It’s just… nice.

And I might not remember everything that makes up Christine Keene, but I do know one thing: Nice isn’t something I’ve gotten a lot of in my short life. So I take it. I sigh into our kiss, my hands pressing against the hard muscles of his waist as I invite him in.

“Christine,” he says, pulling back in the very moment I’m opening up.

“What?” I ask, irritated that he’s still putting up this stupid pretense.

“We can’t—”

“We can do whatever the fuck we want.”

His grip on my wrists is real now. And a second later my hands are no longer touching his body.

“What?” I ask, pleading with him as I gaze into his blue eyes. “What?”

“This isn’t what we are. It’s gonna ruin everything if we…”

But he can’t even say it. “If we what? If we fuck? Jesus. I might not remember everything, but I seriously doubt you’ve never thought about this. You want to fuck me. I can tell.”

“Stop being so goddamned vulgar.”

I push him away, angry at… I don’t know. The rejection. The fact that this feels like who we are and he’s telling me it’s not. Which means my instincts are off. And that kinda scares me. And—

“Look,” he says. I glance up at him through my hanging hair and he stops. Sighs. “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t love you like that. I do. But we’re in a world of shit right now, Christine. And it’s not the time to start a brand new chapter in our lives. We gotta finish what we started and then maybe…”

But he never ends the thought. Just shakes his head, pushes me so I have to take a step back, and extricates himself from the situation.