Page 43 of Hold on Tight

Tell him that’s sweet of him but tomorrow’s a school day and it would be irresponsible of you.

She didn’t want the day to end. She didn’t want him to walk away, didn’t want to feel their chemistry stretch and break like a child’s bubble as he stepped out of the force field. She didn’t want to admire his retreating back, gauge the width of his shoulders, or distantly note the aesthetics of his butt as he retreated.

She wanted him beside her, with them, for as long as she could finagle it, and she wanted a chance to measure his shoulders and drag him against her with her own itchy palms.

They were both watching her, waiting for her answer, two pairs of identical eyes.

She answered Sam, “Sure,” but she was talking to Jake, and she didn’t know whether to hope, or not, that she wasn’t agreeing to just dinner.

Chapter 12

“Sam’s asleep,” Jake said. Sam’s head was canted at an awkward angle, his mouth open, his face slack.

She peeked in the rearview mirror. “That was fast. We wore him out.”

Jake was worn out, too, from craving. From watching her smile at Sam, at the waiter, at random people passing their table, then look at him and turn serious. Dark brown eyes on him like a touch. Like she was drinking him in, memorizing him.

She had high, strong cheekbones, pink from too much sun today. Just about the fairest skin you could have. A pixie face, a pointy chin, a slightly upturned nose.

All those things were like unconnected pieces of information his brain took in, but it was her smile that put them together. Made her beautiful. Made it impossible for him to stop staring, except when she looked back and he couldn’t hold the intensity of her gaze.

This was, in a word, impossible. He couldn’t be around her and not want her, couldn’t be in their lives, near her, and not have her.

She’d asked him, point blank, at the playground to help her keep this simple. For Sam. But he understood better than anyone that the kinds of emotions that Mira brought to the surface would not let him be sane or rational, not let him anywhere nearsimple.

On top of that, the path he was on with his new trainer led back to the army, and the last thing he wanted was a perfect repeat of eight years ago: longing, falling, and then—like hitting bottom—being right back where they started, in too deep with him headed off to the ends of the earth.

No. He had to do his level best to be what she’d asked him to be. Sam’s father, her friend, a guy who could put their needs above his irrational, gut-twisting craving for her.

“Do you want me to drop you at your place?” she asked.

The car got so quiet he could hear the rough in-and-out of Sam’s breath. They were both waiting. Each for the other.

“Probably for the best,” he said, at the same time she said, “I should, shouldn’t I?”

They both laughed. Awkwardly.

“Keeping it simple, right?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

It was silent again for a moment. “Go left here. And then right at the light,” he instructed her.

She maneuvered through the downtown streets toward his apartment.

“I signed on with a trainer,” he said.

“Yeah?”

“A guy whose specialty is helping soldiers with amputations get back up to speed.”

“Like—back in the army?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“Like, you’d fight again?”

“Well, maybe. Or a noncombat role, but active duty.”

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