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As much as he understood her need to get away from Pine Valley and find herself somewhere new, he’d still been burned by her before. They needed to finish the conversation Paxton had interrupted back in the restaurant before he could wrap his mind around something brewing between them. He may have dreamed of holding her one more time, but he couldn’t dive in until he fully understood why she’d shut him out.
Tonight could be the night the subject was broached, so he dressed with more care than usual. A pair of low-slung dark wash jeans and a heather gray t-shirt with two buttons at the top he left undone. He ran a quick hand through his hair, tossed his dirty clothes in a hamper in the corner, and hurried back to the living area.
Izzy stood, slightly stooped over a hutch his mom had given him that he used as a desk. Framed photographs and weird knickknacks he’d collected or been given littered the oak furniture.
“You’ve always been nosy,” he said, liking the way she looked inside his home.
She spun toward him, an old photo he’d forgotten he’d placed on the top shelf in her hands. “I can’t believe you kept this.” She traced a finger over the glossy paper.
His heart twisted, and he erased the distance between them. He scratched the back of his neck, searching for the right thing to say. “It’s all I had left of you.” His admission sucked the air from his lungs. Maybe he should have played it cool, kept his feelings a little closer to the vest. But that just wasn’t who he was.
Needing to move, he plucked the picture from her hands and stared down at a photo of them from senior prom. Neither had gone with a date, opting instead to attend the dance with a group of friends. So instead of the typical prom picture with wide smiles and his arms looped around her waist, they’d stuck out their tongues, Beau swinging Izzy off her feet.
She sidled against him, the heat of her body engulfing him. “We were so young.”
“Hmm,” he said in agreement. “Sometimes it still feels like yesterday. Other times I swear this photo was taken decades ago. So much has happened since then.”
“I’m sorry I left the way I did.”
He stared down at her, words and questions he’d held in for so long dying to burst free. “You hurt me, Izzy. You were my best friend. All you had to do was answer a call, a text. Just explain what was going on inside your mind and I would have understood.”
She let her head fall forward and strands of her long blond hair slipped from her hair tie and spilled around her face. “I know you would have. That was the problem.”
Confusion wrinkled his forehead. “What do you mean?”
She finally met his eyes. “Leaving you behind was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. If I talked to you, heard your voice, I wouldn’t have had the strength to go. And I needed to go. Needed to see what all was out there and stand on my own two feet.”
Even though a part of him understood, her words still hurt. “I wouldn’t have tried to hold you back. But after that night…” He lifted his shoulders. “I thought things had changed between us. I thought I could be part of you finding yourself.”
A tortured expression crumpled the lines of her face. “After that night, all I wanted was to be yours. To stay here and be with you. To love you. So if I would have let you in, even just a little bit, the decisions I made would have centered around you. Not me. And for once in my life, I had to take that risk—that step—put aside everyone else’s expectations and just live my life my own way.”
A heaviness sat in his gut. He’d waited so long for this conversation, but now he wasn’t sure what it meant. But did it matter? His feelings for her had never changed, and he’d have told her to go back then. Told her to take those risks and the time she needed to find herself apart from the kid she’d been in Pine Valley. “What’s next? What do you wantnow?”
She lifted a palm and flattened it over his chest. “I want the same thing I’ve always wanted, Beau. I want you.”
Not needing any more time to think or analyze or discuss, he gathered her into his arms and pressed his mouth to hers. Stars exploded against his eyelids and anticipation tightened his stomach. The past was behind them, the future unclear, but in this moment, he had everything he’d ever wanted.
He had Izzy.
5
Izzy melted against Beau. She slid her arms around his neck and deepened the kiss. Excitement beat a steady rhythm against her chest. The kisses she’d shared with Beau before had been tentative and sweet and filled with slow exploration. But this was something different.
This was insistent and passionate and full of the kind of raw desire she thought she’d never experience.
Breaking away, Beau framed her face with his hands. “Are you sure this is what you want?”
She nodded. “I want my best friend back, and I want to see where this could go. I’ve thought of you every single day since I’ve left. Missed you every day.”
He slid one palm over her jawline and around to the back of her neck. “But what about school? Finding yourself away from here? I don’t want to be your back up plan. Something to pass the time until you go back to your other life—away from here.”
The questions hit her like well-placed missiles, chipping away at the flush of joy blooming inside her. She’d put her entire life on hold since Christmas with no clue when she’d be ready to dip her toe back in, but that didn’t mean Beau was a backup plan.
She took a step in retreat, putting space between them that felt like miles instead of inches. “I was gone for three and a half years and bounced from one major at school to the next. I joined a sorority and went to parties and never missed a home football game. For what? To come home and have my life flipped upside down? The only things I found away from home were fake friends and one too many hangovers. I don’t want to be that girl anymore. I couldn’t be if I tried.”
Hysteria hitched high in her throat as the reality of her words slammed against her chest. She’d spent the last few months surviving—figuring out how to put one foot in front of the other. Her mom and sister might have tiptoed around the subject of returning to college, but she hadn’t been forced to really examine her thoughts until now.
Beau frowned and stuffed his hands in the front pockets of his jeans. “Then what kind of girl do you want to be? Because regardless of you and I, you can’t just throw away all the momentum you’ve put toward your future. You still need to find yourself.”
