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He meets my eyes with equal determination. “Maybe there should have been.”

Why is he doing this to me? My head feels like it’s spinning out of control. He can’t be saying what I think he’s saying. He just can’t. That would go against every understanding I have formed about the world over the last decade. That can’t be what he means. I think back to all the nights before the New York trip, when I lay awake, so sure of what the future held for us. What we could be.

We.

Goddammit.

“You’ve had too much wine, Henry,” I say, because I can’t respond to the words that actually just came out of his perfect mouth.

“I haven’t,” he insists. He takes a few steps toward me.

“Then maybe the frostbite got to your brain or something…” I trail off as he closes the distance between us in two long strides. He smells like cilantro.

“You’re telling me,” he starts, his eyes falling to a curl that’s come loose from my bun, “you’re not even a little bit curious about how things could have been?”

I feel one firm hand on the small of my back. I don’t know when or how it made its way there, but suddenly it’s the only thing keeping me upright.

There’s no longer any meandering around what Henry means.

Friendship is not what he was missing.

And if I didn’t know it from the words, the look in his eyes, melting my flesh until I feel it pool between my thighs, makes it unmistakably clear.

Henry Cole is going to kiss me.

His lips part slightly, and his tongue slips out to wet them. Almost an involuntary action of need.

Henry. Cole. Is going. To kiss. Me.

I’ve spent so long feeling so much pain over this man, who was once the boy who ripped apart my entire life.

Is this really happening?

My whole body burns, feeling betrayed by my brain, as I slip away from him. I can barely breathe. I cross my arms over my chest, knowing my taut nipples are revealing a different story than the sudden distance I’ve placed between us.

Henry turns magenta immediately, from the tips of his ears, all the way down his neck, as far as I can see before all his dumb clothes get in the way. His eyes are huge, panicked saucers.

“Shit. Fuck. I’m so sorry. I—” He paces back to the bed, slumping down and burying his head in his hands. “Fuck.”

I can tell he’s completely mortified. There’s a piece of me, the part that still aches over everything that went down, that takes a small amount of pleasure in seeing him in this state. Over me.

And then it hits me.

Henry and I almost kissed.

In all this time, all that he meant to me, for all those years, we never came this close to kissing. I would steal glances at him, spend hours hoping, wishing on every 11:11 clock that Henry Cole would kiss me, but nothing ever happened. In fact, when given the chance, he actively chose not to kiss me.

It feels like a cosmic joke from some other dimension that this near-kiss happened now, nearly a decade later, when we are quite literally trapped in a hotel room with one bed.

I glance back at him—still on the bed, head in hands, elbows on thighs, hunched. His knee is bouncing as if it could pop right off his body.

“Of course I was curious,” I say quietly.

His whole body stills.

“Of course,” I continue. “Are you kidding me?”

He looks up, and it feels almost hopeful? It’s a fleeting look, a split second, and then it’s gone.