The word rips through me, a bullet aimed right at my resolve. My hand drops from the door, and I curl both arms around my stomach. I still haven’t turned to face him.
“Why?” I hate how close my voice is to cracking. “What’s there to say?”
“I don’t know.” I hear him take a couple steps closer. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe there’s nothing to say, but can’t we find out?”
The part of me that wants to run out the door wars against the part of me that’s craving the warmth of his arms wrapping around me from behind.
It’s been a long time since anyone’s held me. It’s been a long time since I’vewantedanyone to.
“Paige, just...I don’t know. Get a drink with me?”
It’s a caustic question, thrown out with the bitter desperation of someone who already thinks the answer is no.
The answershouldbe no. I don’t need distractions or ghosts or things to keep me up late at night, and he’s all of those combined.
He’s also not going away, even if I ask him to. Even if he listens. It doesn’t matter whether we walk away forever right here in this club; the past six years have proved I’d have to find a way to carve him out of my brain if I really wanted him gone.
I don’t know if that’s possible. I’d try it if it was. I’ve tried a lot of ways to forget him that all involvednotbeing around him.
It can’t be that crazy to think the opposite might work.
I push the door open and look back as the sunlight streams in to fill the hallway’s shadows.
“Okay. Let’s go get a drink.”
