Page 53 of The Interns

“It feels good having you back…having you here.” His breath tickled the skin on her forehead as his arms tightened around her, letting her know exactly where here was. “I missed you more than I thought I would.”

“So did I. And now I feel like I can’t get enough of you.”

“Yeah,” he breathed out.

She pulled away from him, keeping her hands on his hips while she looked into his eyes.

“When I put my mind to something, I do it. I wake up at five o’clock in the morning to run rain or shine. I pass up happy hours for studying all the time, but with you? It’s not working. I told myself we would just be co-workers, and then we would just be friends, and now? I’m just trying for anything but…”

She couldn’t bring herself to finish that thought, but she figured he knew what she meant. Anything short of everything. It was a heavy thing to admit that he had this sort of influence over her, because in the hands of a lesser person, it could be used against her. But not him. She trusted him with all her heart now.

“It doesn’t work that way, though,” he said softly as he motioned between them with his hand.

“Yeah.” She nodded. “That’s become clear to me.”

Matters of the head and heart were entirely different things and giving into feelings for someone like him wasn’t an act of weakness. And it wasn’t something that she could simply will herself not to do either.

23

Reed

“So what do we do?” he asked gently.

He wasn’t trying to put it all on her, but in a way it was. He knew what he wanted, but she seemed conflicted. Saying one thing and doing another.

“Does it even matter? We can’t go back now, so maybe we just let it happen.”

This loose approach to their undefined relationship seemed unlike her, but the way he saw it, it was either that or just walk away from each other right now which was the last thing he wanted to do.

“You really mean that?”

“I do. This is what it is,” she said with both certainty and resignation. “And it’s going to hurt at some point, so we may as well enjoy ourselves for now.”

“When you put it that way…”

“I’m serious.” She held his gaze, stepped in closer, and placed her palms on his chest. “We have a couple of weeks before I go back to school.”

She gazed at him with her big brown eyes and mischievous grin that were enough to give him pause. It was going to hurt like hell when she left, but she was so damn beautiful, and she felt so right in his arms, and he wanted to feel those lips against his again and again and again over the next two weeks. What the hell are we doing? He cupped her cheeks with his hands and pulled her toward him to pick up where they had stopped the night before. Their lips found one another’s right there in the middle of the sidewalk without a care in the world.

* * *

Over the past few days, they alternated spending time with their families and each other. With him in Clayville and her staying with her parents over an hour away in Atlanta, they had to be intentional about planning their time together which looked something like dating. Today, they strolled hand in hand along the Beltline, abandoned railroad tracks turned into a trail that ran along the eastside of the city. It was filled with runners, families, and couples like themselves taking advantage of the sunny, but cold day.

“Hold on a minute.”

She pulled them off to the side of the path, not even completing her sentence because she was already reading the small sign posted next to the metal sculpture on display.

He looked back at the four they had already stopped at, and up ahead at the few he could see down the way. The spontaneous post-lunch walk she had suggested wasn’t so spontaneous at all, and it definitely wasn’t for the sake of walking.

He had been duped into taking in a public art installation with her, and she probably thought he would never know any better. He wouldn’t have minded, of course, since he would do just about anything to spend time with her, but it was hard to keep warm when she kept stopping every few minutes. So he stepped behind her and wrapped his arms around her, warming her and getting her warmth in return as he looked over her shoulder at the rusted metal sculpture before them.

“Am I boring you?” she asked.

“Never,” he whispered in her ear, “but if you wanted to look at art, maybe a museum would have been a better idea on a day like this.”

Her mittened hands swatted at his cheek, then she turned in his arms to face him. “What are you doing tomorrow?”

He wanted to pinch himself. Having a standing appointment in Maya Hendricks’s planner still seemed surreal considering not just where they started, but how much he liked her. It was a rare and special thing to have your feelings returned by someone you really liked. And he knew this wasn’t permanent. He had to remind himself of that multiple times a day to keep his head and heart in check, but he treasured getting this unrestricted access to her likes and dislikes, stories from her past, and, of course, her affection.

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