Page 37 of It's Complicated

To Lori:

Yes

My fingers tap against the screen, my heart pounding as I wait for her response. It only takes a few seconds.

From Lori:

No, I just wanted to thank you for being such a good friend, I know I’ve put you in an impossible situation. I’m sorry

My eyes widen and my stomach drops.

Such. A. Good. Friend.

The words haunt me from the screen. That’s all I’ll ever be to her. An effing friend.

I drop the phone on my couch and don’t respond. These last few days I let my guard down and acted like an idiot. I can’t flirt with her, I can’t touch her, and I sure as hell can’t kiss her. Not ifI want to keep my sanity, my heart whole. Not if she keeps telling me what a good effing friend I am.

The madness stops tonight. From tomorrow on, I’ll go back to my old ways of keeping a healthy distance between Lori and myself. We only have a couple more wedding-related events to push through before Aiden is off on his honeymoon and we can call this whole farce off.

I only have to survive another month before the wedding and then I’ll be free to go back to my old life of solitude and evasion.

14

LORI

Jace’s not going to reply. If he didn’t in the last five minutes or so, he’s not going to. I know him too well, I’m too used to his disappearing acts. He pulls them on me every once in a while. Ghosts me for no apparent reason.

Only maybe tonight he has a reason.

I shouldn’t have told him thanks for the kissing, telling him what a great friend he is. That was a cop-out.

But what was I supposed to say? Thanks for sweeping me off my feet? Thanks for kissing me like I’m the most desirable woman on the planet? Thanks for frying all my brain cells with your deft lips?

Gosh, his mouth. I can’t stop thinking about the feel of his pillow lips pressed on mine, the graze of his teeth over my lower lip, the way he gently bit down on it before deepening the kiss.

It was pure fire, pure electricity, pure Jace.

But now he’s gone radio silent. He’s mad at me. I know it, even if he won’t say it. He’s probably mad that I forced him to kiss me and is sitting in his apartment, brooding and counting off the days until we can end this whole fake-dating sham.

I stare at my phone, willing him to respond, to say something, anything. But the silence is deafening.

After another five minutes of silent treatment, I drop the phone on my nightstand and go back to staring at the ceiling. I’m laying starfish-style in bed silhouetted in cats—two under my arms and two alongside my legs—and while I usually enjoy the companionship of my feline friends, tonight I’m feeling claustrophobic. Like I need to move.

I’m itching all over, except for my lips, which are still tingling from Jace’s kiss.

I close my eyes and try to relax, try to will the memories away. But they’re burning through my skin and mind as if they were seared onto both by a raging wildfire.

All I can think about is the kiss.

Kissing Jace was… uh… kind of earth-shattering. Sexy, hot, tingly, a bit of a punch in the gut?

I get it, he’s a really hot guy. Objectively gorgeous. But he’s my best friend, he’s like my brother.

Well, that’s not how kissing your brother should feel like. Not unless you’re Cersei Lannister, which I’m most definitely not.

It’s weird. I’ve never seen him this way, like us potentially being more than just friends. It’s always been Aiden.

But now… now Aiden is getting married and Jace has gone from being a block of ice with barbed wire wrapped all around himself and warning signs plastered all over with “I do not cuddle” written upfront, to being a flaming inferno of a guy who set ablaze every nerve ending in my body with his sexy mouth.

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