Page 96 of For Keeps. For Always.

Lake Geneva is where our friendship blossomed. It’s where our love story started and the very first place that caused us heartbreak.

“You’re single,” he tests, unsure of the words whispered along his tongue.

I nod. “You?”

A swift up and down movement of his head.

“You’re looking, though? The app,” I push.

An exaggerated sigh escapes. “I spoke to Mom. She thinks I’m out here sowing my wild oats, as she put it. It made me realize there’s been no one since . . .” He clears his throat. “No one since you.”

I frown. “Me? But Grace. The wedding.”

Placing his coffee on the table, he leans back in his chair, arms braced at the nape of his neck. “Grace wasn’t my girlfriend, Henley. She was supposed to be my assistant in Russia. I fucked her before the wedding, I’m not gonna deny that, but not after. I fired her. Took a middle-aged, overweight man with a terrible drinking problem.”

My heart feels tight in my chest.

He left with his redhead.

My chest heaves with the heavy breaths of panic.

“I thought—”

“Alex?” he cuts me off.

“He broke up with me before we . . . before the elevator.”

His eyes fire with lust. Darkening at the memories of a forbidden moment shared between two people who only find one another at inopportune junctures in time.

Do it. Come for me, Squirrel.

“It’s nice to be here with you.” I change the subject, needing the heat in my cheeks to subside and the throb between my thighs to fall away into nothing.

“Be nicer to be at our rock.”

I smirk. “My rock.”

He laughs, the sound echoing through the room and straight into my soul.

Leaning forward, he moves his hand to mine, bending his long fingers over mine. Without thought, I lift my hand, letting him thread our fingers together in a show of intimacy.

My gaze settles on our hands, twisted together in longing.

He jerks my hand forward softly, bowing down to brush his lips over the point our skin touches.

“I don’t know how to just be your friend anymore, Brooks.”

He kisses my hand again, holding his lips against my skin for a drawn-out second before meeting my eyes. “Me either. I don’t know if we have it in us to be anything more, though.”

I grind my teeth to stop my jaw from shaking.

“Love seems easier for others. Why not us?”

A gentle cough to stretch his throat. “Maybe love isn’t written in the stars as people say. Maybe some of the best love stories are the very eye of the storm. Together we’re calm and happy, the gentle waves of intimacy surrounded by a cyclone. But when we take a step back from one another, we’re caught in a spiraling cycle of feelings neither one of us can grab hold of.”

“I never knew love before you,” I confess unnecessarily. “So it shocks me that I’m not ready to compromise my life for your love.”

“It’s scary, Henley. Love is fucking terrifying.”

---