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Instead, I went home, took a bath, read a book, and pretended nothing was wrong. That I didn’t still feel him with every step and movement. That I wasn’t sucker punched with flashbacks every time I closed my eyes.
His scent and his body inside mine. The flex of his arms, his hips. The strokes of his hands. The look in his eyes. His tongue in my mouth, on my breasts, between my legs. His sheer masculine power. His vulnerability.
“I’ve never not wanted you.”
“Hate me tomorrow, but give me tonight.”
“You feel like everything I’ve ever wanted all at once.”
And the words he whispered as he pulsed and filled me. Words I can’t escape, that have burrowed under my skin where they spark and smolder with every breath I take.
“I love you.”
He didn’t mean to say them. I know that much. But I have no idea what to do with the information. Was it real? Or just manufactured by the moment, by our intimacy and long history? Did it even mean anything? Why?
Why did he fucking say that to me?
He can’t be in love with me.
He just can’t.
I didn’t tell Zoey, just like I never told her the details of how Lucas and I parted after Jeremy’s funeral, what he said then in his rage and grief. It doesn’t feel important now. Nothing feels important but those three words.
Words I can’t fathom. Don’t understand. Words I can’t tell my best friend because I can’t even admit to myself what I’m feeling.
He didn’t mean to tell me he loved me. It was reflex. An accident.
“We both know that was a long time coming. It doesn’t have to be more than an itch we scratched.”
Which words do I believe?
“Hey.”
His voice comes from behind me, carefully void of emotion. It still hits me like a physical jolt, whipping my head around and shortening my breath. If he notices the heat I feel blazing in my face, he doesn’t say anything.
His eyes lift to the water. “I thought you were working from home today with all the construction going on?”
My tongue is stuck to the roof of my mouth. Pebbles shift as he moves nearer to me. Eddies of time swirl and tighten between us as he lowers to his heels a few feet away. He picks up a pebble and tosses it into the water.
I don’t want to look at him, but I make myself. Mussed hair. Unshaven jaw. Pinched mouth. Furrowed brow and shadows beneath his downcast eyes. They’re not seeing anything, though. Their blue is disturbingly flat.
And suddenly my inner freakout doesn’t matter. Every horrible, conflicting thought I’ve had in the last twenty-four hours doesn’t matter.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, shifting to face him. My fingers ache with the need to touch him, but I hold back. “Did something happen?”
His gaze spears me, one eyebrow cocked. The blue isn’t empty anymore but a thousand leagues deep. My face heats again. My whole body heats.
I stammer, “Besides… you know.”
Lucas huffs a soundless laugh and rocks back until he’s sitting, arms clasped over his raised, jean-clad knees.
“I’m not sure I want to tell you,” he says at last.
I bristle, dread firing up its engines in my stomach. “What? Why? Is it something about the camp?”
“No,” he says quickly, with a brief glance of apology. “Personal stuff.”
“Your mom?” I guess.
