Page 20 of Kellan & Emmett
The words were out before I could snatch them back.
Kellan stilled. Just breathed—slow, careful, like each inhale cost him. The way his head tipped, guarded, hit a nerve I’d thought was scarred over. And then the years slipped, and I was back in Cory’s yard.
Music thudded faint from inside, all bass and laughter; out where we were, the night felt wider.
Kellan talked fast—California, his dad, the scholarship, the kind of pressure that sits on your chest until even good news feels like a problem. I listened because that’s what I’d always done with him, because I knew I was losing him and I wanted every last word.
Silence slipped in. Not empty—charged. He looked at me like he was about to say something and couldn’t make his mouth do it. I remember the heat of his shoulder pressed against mine. I don’t know who moved first. Sometimes I swear it was me; sometimes I’m sure it was him. It felt like tipping—one small lean and gravity doing the rest.
Our mouths met soft, tentative, then sure. He tasted like mint gum and cheap beer. His breath hitched and I felt it in my own chest. My hand found the back of his neck—warm skin, the fine buzz of his hair at the nape—and he made this quiet sound that went straight through me. He didn’t rush; he pressed in and then eased back, like he was learning me, like we had time. I angled closer. He caught my lower lip, careful, and the world narrowed to the slide of his mouth and the heat uncurling low in my stomach.
I’d kissed girls before, because that was what everyone expected. Each time I went through the motions, hollow, unsatisfied, guilty for pretending. I never wanted them the way I was supposed to. I never wanted them at all.
But Kellan—God, Kellan—was different. That kiss was the first time I knew in my bones what it meant to want. Not obligation. Not pretense. Want. He made me feel like I was coming home and jumping off a cliff at the same time: safe and certain, yet terrified and alive in a way I’d never been before. One moment full of warmth and recognition, the next full of fear and exhilaration, and somehow both truths living in my body at once.
My first kiss with the boy I’d loved my whole damn life.
And then he ran
And I hated that even now—after twenty years, after everything—I still wanted him to say,Yeah. I did. And I meant it.
The scrape of his shoes against the gravel cut through the memory, dragging me back to the present.
He pushed to his feet, straightening one vertebra at a time, a shadow peeling loose from the bleachers. God. He was so fucking tall. His hands flexed once before falling to his sides, restless, like he didn’t know what to do with them. The tie I’d knotted for him earlier sat slightly askew now, tugged crooked as if he’d fought with it since. That stupid, simple detail hit harder than it should have—proof he still hadn’t learned, proof I’d stepped in without thinking, like I always used to.
“Fucking say something,” I bit out. The edge in my voice was the only thing keeping me from unraveling. “You kissed me,” I said again, louder this time, like the words could split the night open.
His eyes caught mine in the half-light. For a second, he didn’t look thirty-eight, didn’t look like the man who’d walked into my inn two nights ago. He looked eighteen again, wide-eyed, cornered.
“I was scared,” he said.
Something in me snapped. “You think that’s good enough?” My hands shook, not from rage but from everything I hadn’t said in twenty years. “Twenty years, Kellan. Twenty fucking years of silence, of me wondering if I meant a damn thing to you, and all you’ve got isI was scared?”
He flinched, then bristled. “What do you want me to say, Emmett? That I hated myself? That I’ve replayed that night in my head more times than I can count? You think I don’t know I hurt you?” His hands flew out, helpless, angry. “I was a kid! I didn’t know what the hell I was doing—”
“Neither did I!” The words tore free before I could stop them. My chest heaved, throat tight. “But I knew enough not to run. I knew enough to trash things out. And you—” My voice dropped, hoarse. “You left me standing there like it was nothing. LikeIwas nothing.”
“Give me a chance,” he said. “Not to fix everything overnight. Just…to fixsomething.To sit with you again, to remember who we were before I screwed it all up. Let me be your friend again, Emmett.”
The word scraped me raw.Friend. It landed between us like a cracked glass.
Somewhere in the middle of all that shouting, he’d closed the distance. I didn’t register it until my pulse kicked, until I realized how little air there was left between us.
Neither of us moved at first. Then we both did. One lean forward, half a breath. His knuckles brushed mine—tentative, trembling—the kind of touch that could set skin on fire. My pulse roared. His hand lifted, hesitating, fingers hovering just shy of my jaw. The ghost of contact, not quite there but enough to make my chest ache.
“Please,” he whispered, so close the word grazed my lips.
Everything in me screamed to take that last inch, to erase twenty years with one kiss.
Almost. God, almost.
I tore myself back, shattering the moment before it swallowed me whole. My hand found my pocket, keys biting my palm. I shoved them into his hand, the jangle loud in the dark.
“You want to be my friend?” My voice came hoarse, shaking. “You want back in my life? Prove it. Work for it.”
His fingers curled reflexively around the keys. His mouth opened like he might chase me into the space I’d just ripped away—but nothing came.
I stepped back, lungs burning. “Drive to the inn, Kellan. I’ll get there when I get there.”
