Page 70 of Lucky Strike

I smile faintly, an old memory unearthing itself: Bria, outside with the other Edenbrook graduates, and a tall, good-looking Sterling boy at her side. He’d looked as infatuated with her as I’d felt. “I remember him.”

“Do you?” She gives me a wary look. “That was a weird night.”

A weird, drunken, confusing night. “Yeah.”

“You’d only been gone a few years, but you were so different. Youdidn’t look the same or even talk the same. You flirted with me for half the night and ignored me for the rest.”

“Yeah, that was kinda fucked up. Sorry.” I shake my head. “I was in my feelings that night. I might have been a little jealous.”

“But you had a girlfriend back in in Belfast, didn’t you?” She breathes a short, incredulous laugh. “Was it Liam’s mom?”

“I was seeing someone, but it wasn’t Rachel. We didn’t get together until later.” As much of an impact as she had on my life, I actually hadn’t been with Rachel all that long.

“Well, you have no idea how much that night messed with me,” she says. “I’d finally moved on from you, and then you came back for like, a night, and confused the hell out of me. I went off to college and all I could think about was you. What you were doing, who you were with.”

My heart sinks. Back then I’d had no idea what kind of power I had over her. What a careless asshole. “I’m sorry. I should’ve just left you alone. I knew it, too.”

“Yeah, you should have. You lived in my brain rent-free way longer than necessary and I hated you for it and nobody knows all of this except my therapist.” She glances over at me, wrinkling her nose. “And now you.”

My stomach flip-flops. “You talk to your therapist about me?”

“I used to. I talk to her about all the messed-up stuff in my life.” She bends to pick up a shell, brushing away the sand. “When Maeve told me you’d had a baby, I cried. Not because I was heartbroken, but because I was relieved. I felt like I could finally move on for real. And I did. Until the morning I showed up at your house for an interview.”

Shame washes over me as I remember the look on her face when I told Nola that Bria wouldn’t be a good fit. How she fled out the door, leaving me sick to my stomach. I went back to my office the second the door closed, ignoring Nola’s horrified expression, and obsessed about her for the rest of the day.

The beach house looms just ahead. I’m not ready to go back inside just yet, so I sit on the sand, pulling Bria down with me. “You know why I never called you or texted after I went to Belfast?”

She shrugs. “I figured you were busy.”

“I thought it was better to just cut all ties. I’ve always known I would step into this role, and it wasn’t something I wanted you to be apart of,” I explain. “That’s why I acted like an idiot the day of the interview. I never expected you to just show up out of the blue like that. I knew you and Maeve had stayed in touch over the years, but …”

“You acted like you couldn’t stand me.”

“I was just shocked.” I bump her shoulder with mine. “Maeve should’ve told me you were coming.”

Bria nods. “She should’ve.”

“And I should have just talked to you, too.”

“I don’t think you realize how much I cared about you at one point.” She looks down at her shell, touching its surface. “You were a lot of things to me, but you were an especially good friend.”

Leaning over, I kiss her cheek. “We were a lot more than just good friends.”

“Yeah, but friendship is important.” She looks up at me with a watery smile, the wind blowing her curls across her face. “And you’ve been so cold lately. I was starting to think the guy I knew was gone for good.”

“He’s not.” This is only partly true. The version of me Bria knew in high school, the one talking to her now, is one few people get to see these days. It’s been a very deliberate choice to be this way with her again. “He’s here.I’mhere.”

I tug her sloppily onto my lap. Laughing, she lets me, bracing her hands on my shoulders as her knees hug my thighs. I kiss everything I can reach—her throat, her chin, her mouth—as my hands graze the skin beneath the hem of her hoodie.

She half-gasps, half-laughs. “Your hands are cold!”

“Sorry,” I whisper, but I can’t stop touching her. She squirms, shifting against my erection, and I suck in a sharp breath, stilling her hips.

“Sorry,” she says, not looking very sorry at all.

Oh, so it is like that. Flipping her onto the sand, I trail needy, hungry kisses down her neck and across her collarbone. When I slide my hand under her hoodie this time, all the way up her shirt, I find her braless, her nipples hard beneath my cold fingers.

Her hands, knotted in my hair, tighten. “Conlan.”

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