My voice is timid and soft, barely audible, as I murmur, “I missed you too.”
It hasn’t been decades or years since we saw one another. Not even months, weeks, or days. It’s been merely six hours since I passed him in the halls at school, yet here he is, confessing his longing anyway.
Gravity pulls us toward one another, our hearts calling out to the other like they were always meant to. Tipping my head back, I meet his eyes, finding his pupils dilated and a fire burning deep inside.
“Jensen, you’dbetternot be making a move on my sister.” Luca’s words cut through the tension, and I stumble a step back, feeling completely off-kilter.
A cold laughter rumbles out of Jensen to convey how humorous of a possibility making a move on me could be, and my eyes water automatically, embarrassingly.
“Relax. I was helping her get something out of her eye.”
At least I’m selling the part.
I know he’s just covering our moment up, lying to Luca so he doesn’t suspect anything between us. But I won’t deny that his laugh is echoing around my mind, haunting me like a ghost in a creaky old house.
We can’t have a moment like that again; it can’t ever go further than that. The three of us are best friends, and it needs to stay that way. If not for me, then for Jensen. He doesn’t need anything messy in his life right now, and I won’t be guilty for playing a part in the wreckage.
Wincing and blinking rapidly, I play up the act of having something in my eye. “Jensen sucks and couldn’t find anything. Luca, can you look?”
I step around Jensen and walk over to him, practically feeling Jensen’s smile and pride radiating at the back of my head for going the extra mile.
Luca tosses a box of candy to Jensen and drops the rest of the snacks onto my bed before turning back to me and grabbing my head like it’s not attached to the rest of my body, yanking me forward and opening my eye up with his thumb and pointer finger.
Well, I’m probably going to get something in my eyenowfrom how rough and far he’s opening it. A damn car could park in there.
“Luca,Jesus. I’ll get it myself. You’re going to give me wrinkles,” I snap, pulling away from him and walking toward the door to head to the bathroom.
“You’re sixteen years old. You don’thavewrinkles,” he retorts.
“Yet,” I correct him. “But I will with the way you were ripping at my skin. And it’ll be one-sided, my right eye bag drooping lower than the left.”
“Come back. Let me do it again. That sounds hilarious!” Luca chuckles.
I flip him off as I step into the hallway and walk down to the first door on my left. I have to pee, too, so at least this won’t be a completely wasteful trip.
After using the bathroom, I wash my hands before resting them on the counter and staring into the mirror.
Get ahold of yourself, Lain.
My blue eyes are dilated, cheeks flushed, and my long blonde hair is tousled from the little stumble between Jensen and me. Grabbing my brush, I fix my hair and smooth it out while failing at pushing Jensen from my mind.
It doesn’t matter that I like him; I know it’s not the right time. I can feel reservations in the pit of my stomach, telling me to stop. But I don’twantto; rather, Ineedto be there for him right now in a platonic way. Maybe someday, things between us can change.
I head back to the room, finding Luca and Jensen have made themselves right at home. Jensen and Luca are on opposite sides of the bed with a Lainey-sized space between them.
This is going to be so much harder than I thought.
I crawl up into my spot from the bottom of the bed, lying on top of the covers while they both lie beneath them. But it’s doing little to give me a feeling of space from the brown-eyed, dark-haired six-foot heater of a human to my left.
The same one whose stare is digging into the side of my face while Luca starts the movie on my TV, positioned on the dresser across the room from us.
I swear … during the next hour and fifty-one minutes, Jensen’s gaze doesn’t leave me once. He doesn’t even blink.
CHAPTER 4
LAINEY
THREE YEARS AFTER THE CRASH
