Page 78 of Just Friends

She makes my chest ache.

I know I should be eloquent. I should ease into it and explain myself, but watching her like this, it just slips out. “I’m in love with you.”

Hazel’s gaze snaps to mine, her eyes wide and depthless, the exact color of the lake beyond. “What?” she asks, lips parting.

My heart rate ratchets up behind my sternum, my pulse pounding in my ears loud enough to drown out the wind rustling the trees. It’s not the response I wanted, but the vise around my chest eases when I see it there behind the shock clouding her eyes—the fear. It matches my own, and I feel such a visceral need to blot it away.

“I’m in love with you, Hazel.” My voice comes out in rasp, sounding as desperate as I feel. “I have been for so long.”

I shove a shaking hand through my hair, tugging it from the roots, and Hazel tracks the movement with wide eyes, clutching the blanket tighter around herself. The gears in her head are working so loudly I can practically hear them searching for a response.

“You don’t have to say anything,” I tell her before she can respond. “I just needed you to know, just once.”

“Alex,” she says, and I feel myself shattering like broken pottery at the pity I hear in her voice. Bits of my heart scatter so far I know I’ll never be able to piece it fully back together again.

My gaze rips from her, fixing back on the water out of self-preservation. Like maybe if I imprint the memory of the sunrise cresting over the lake on my mind, I won’t have any more room for that look of regret on her face.

Hazel’s cool fingers wrap around my forearm, squeezing. “Alex, please look at me.”

Her voice is sandpaper, heavy and rough. Tears are gathering in her eyes when I force myself to look at her, and this time when my heart breaks, it’s forher. For how scared and unsure she looks, wrapped in a thick white duvet on a peeling porch, the gathering storm tugging at stray wisps of her hair.

“I’m scared of what I feel for you,” she manages to get out, her voice cracking, and I slide my hand over hers, linking our fingers together. “You’re my best friend, and if something goes wrong, I don’t think I could handle losing you.”

My thumb makes a pass over her knuckles as I try to figure out what I want to say. “I can’t promise anything, Haze. I can’t promise it will work out, but I can tell you that I spent the first year of our friendship trying not to love you. You were happy with Sebastian, and I thought this piece of you was all I’d ever get. And then I spent another year trying to convince myself that risking what we have wasn’t worth it, but I could never quite manage it. You’re worth it to me, Hazel.”

Tears fall unchecked down her cheeks, and she sniffs, tugging her hand free to wipe her face. I ask, “Would it help to know I’m scared too?”

A wobbly laugh huffs out of her. “A little, yeah.” She’s quiet for another heartbeat. “I don’t want everything to change.”

My knee bumps against hers, or what I can feel of it under the heavy duvet. “Change can be good, Haze. Like butterflies.”

“Like butterflies,” she echoes, then says, “What if you decide you don’t want me?”

Everything inside me softens, and tenderness sweeps through me with the forcefulness of a tidal wave. “Nothing could make me not want you, Hazel. Trust me, I’ve tried.”

“I just need some time,” she says after a long moment. “To figure out what everything I’ve been feeling means.”

Her words make my breath hitch. Dangerous hope ignites in my chest, the single careless match that starts a wildfire. “What have you been feeling?” I ask.

Pink tinges her cheeks, and when she shifts, the wooden steps groan beneath her. “Well, there was the sunscreen,” she says, and a groan escapes me.

“The sunscreen,” I repeat on a huff of air, and her lips twist in a reluctant smile.

“I know you were trying to torture me.”

“Not even a little,” I tell her, completely serious. “I was barely keeping myself together.”

Hazel leans back against the railing, tucking the blanket more securely around her shoulders. “Well, you did.”

“Torture you or keep myself together?”

She shrugs. “Both, I guess.”

“I didn’t want to,” I say, stretching my legs out on the stairs in front of me, my knees popping from sitting in the cramped position for so long.

Her lips quirk, and I want to bottle up that smile and keep it in case she says this thing between us is too vast, too scary to consider. “Torture me or keep yourself together?”

“Keep myself together,” I say.

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