Page 109 of Never You

“I’m not,” Jensen scoffs. “I don’t do romance.”

Charlotte huffs, amused. “I’ll talk to you in a few months.” Then she glances from me to him. “Or days.” Her eyes widen with suggestion, then she walks to the fridge to make my cocktail.

“Come on, let’s get outside,” Hunter offers, and Jensen follows him to the porch while I stay back, taking a seat at the breakfast bar.

Charlotte makes us two cocktails, and I glance around the kitchen, until she turns around, tucking a loose strand of her dark blonde hair behind her ear.

“Hunter told me you and Jensen have been all over TMZ for the last week. That must suck.” Holding two glasses in her hand, she takes the stool next to mine, placing one of them in front of me.

“Yeah.” I blow out a breath, keeping my eyes trained on my glass while bringing it to my lips.

A little confused, I stare at her glass before looking back up to her.

I mean, I’m not one to judge…But in this case I’m definitely judging.

“Mine is a virgin.” She cackles.

Oh, yeah that makes more sense.

Relieved, I join her in laughter while the tension leaves my shoulders, the nervous feeling that was still lingering in my stomach now completely gone.

“You’d think that low of me?” She keeps tittering with a silly smile.

“I don’t know?” I screech as we both shriek in joy, echoing through the entire kitchen. If there was any ice left between us, it’s now completely broken, and after a minute, we both manage to stifle our giggles and take a sip of our drinks.

“It’s not always fun, right? Dating a celebrity.” She stirs a finger through her drink.

My gaze finds hers in understanding. “How long have you and Hunter been together?”

She snickers, wrinkling her nose, then takes a big sip of her mocktail as if there’s a bigger answer to that simple question.

“Officially?”

I nod.

“Ten months.” She raises her eyebrows with a knowing look, looking at me over the rim of her glass.

Ten months? That’s not long at all, yet somehow they are already living together, married and have a baby on the way. Charlotte doesn’t seem like the girl who jumps into things.

I keep my eyes locked with her, waiting as she takes a sip and rolls her lips. “But we have a long history. We were best friends in high school.”

“Really?”

“Oh, yeah. The not-spending-a-day-apart kind. When I look back at it, we’ve been in love since the first day we met, but we agreed on friends. After that, life happened, and the timing was never right.”

“Then what happened?” I ask, hanging on her lip.

“It took him a while and a lot of heartbreak before he turned his shit around, but basically, he finally pulled his head out of his ass.” She chortles, though I don't miss the gravity in her eyes when she mentions it. “He might be fearless in some ways, but he’s always been terrified when it comes to admitting his feelings. He fucked up. And he fucked upbig time.”

I avert my gaze. Her words left their mark on me. I know how Jensen makes me feel, and what I want. But I’m terrified to voice it, scared as hell that it might be the one thing that will make me lose what I have now. Even if that’s not much anyway.

“Have you always been in love with him?” I ask, twisting my head.

“Yes.” She pushes out a pained breath as if it still hurts to love him. “I tried to deny it, but it was useless. Whatever I did, he carved himself into my heart, and I couldn’t get him out.”

“How did you hold on?”

“I didn’t,” she admits. “At some point, I had to move on. I told him it was over, said my goodbye’s and started dating a guy from a few towns over a couple months later. But like the asshole that he is, he strolled himself back into my life one day and refused to leave.”

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