Nodding, I stepped aside, a little caught off guard by his presence. It had been years since he’d been inside my house. Shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans, he walked toward the living room but stopped, turning to me.
Our gazes locked, and the moment stretched out to what felt like forever. An awareness cloaked my skin like a warm blanket. Several feet separated us, but as the intensity in his stare rooted me in place, it felt like he was right in front of me. Why was he here? Had he just wanted to see me? Many years ago he would just randomly show up, and I always looked forward to his impromptu visits, but that was then. We weren’t the same people anymore.
I really needed to say something. “Would you, um, like to sit down?”
He tilted his head to the side. “Sure.”
Feeling the back of my neck heat, I led Jensen into the living room. He went straight to the couch, picked up my history text and carefully closed it, keeping the highlighter in so I didn’t lose my place.
He dropped on the couch, leaning back and extending his left arm along the back. “We didn’t get a chance to talk about when you wanted to do the lessons.”
“Oh!” I wanted to smack myself. Of course he had a valid reason to be here that didn’t involve his sudden inability to stay away from me. Forcing myself to act like I had some common sense, I sat beside him. “Yeah, the whole… bird thing kind of distracted everyone.”
“Yeah, wasn’t expecting to see that during lunch.” He paused and his jaw tightened as his gaze dipped beyond my face. He cursed under his breath.
I stiffened, not understanding at first, and then I became aware of what he was staring at. With my hair pulled back, my neck was visible. I hadn’t expected anyone to stop by. Conscious of the ugly bruises that were mostly hidden when my hair was down, I reached up to pull my hair down, but like a snake striking, he moved before I saw him.
Jensen caught my wrist and lowered my hand. “You don’t have to do that.”
Heat rushed across my cheeks and then zinged through my veins as his hand slid up my arm, his long fingers reaching the sensitive skin on the inside of my elbow. My mouth dried as a shiver of responsiveness danced over my skin.
“Does it hurt at all?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Not really.” The truth was my throat, like my cheek and ribs, ached every so often. Nothing major. Could be worse kind of thing.
“It looks like it does.” His thumb moved in a slow, small circle along the inside of my elbow. “You came…” He trailed off as he let go of my arm, his fingers trailing down my arm as he leaned back. “You know what I was thinking today?”
Swallowing a breath, I shook my head again. The contact had left me a bit frazzled. “What?”
“When I saw the bird on the table at lunch?” He looked away, a muscle thrumming along his jaw. “I thought about… I thought about Penn.”
I jerked back as if I’d been slapped. I didn’t know what to say. My tongue tied into a knot, like the ones forming in my stomach.
His gaze slid back to mine. “Remember how he loved birds?”
My pulse kicked up and it took a few moments to speak. “Yeah, I do.”
“Cardinals were his favorite,” he said quietly, watching me intently. “So were bluebirds, but the cardinals…”
An ache pierced my chest, like it always did whenever I thought about Penn, which was something I tried not to do often. But I missed him something fierce. “He liked their mohawks and the black mask. Thought they looked badass.”
“Yeah.” His lips curved up slightly. “Anyway, it was a weird thing to think, right?”
“I don’t think so. I thought it, too,” I admitted, nervously toying with the hem of my shirt. If anything, that had haunted me more.
“He used to—”
“I don’t want to talk about him,” I interrupted, unable to help myself. “I’m sorry, but I just don’t want to.”
Jensen was quiet for a moment as he studied me. “Okay. So what about lessons? You still down for them?”
“Are you?”
He lowered his hand, tapping his fingers off my arm. “I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t.”
“Why?” I blurted out before I could stop myself.
He cocked his head to the side. “Why what?”
“Why do you want to help me?” The moment the question came out, an entire butt load of things I shouldn’t say spilled forth. “I mean, I don’t get it. I know you said yesterday that you didn’t hate me, but we haven’t talked in years and neither of us have taken the opportunity to do so, but you’re here now and I… I just don’t understand why now, after all this time, you’re here again.”
He rubbed his palm along his smooth jaw. “You want to know the truth?”
“What? Ms. Reed is paying you to help me?”
Jensen gave me a long look. “Uh. No. That’s not the truth.”
“Well, that’s good,” I murmured, leaning back against the cushions.
“Okay. I’m going to be real with you.” Jensen sat forward and the distance between us evaporated like water on a hot summer day. He was right there, eye level with me, and my heart did a little cartwheel. “There have been many times I’ve wanted to talk to you. That I thought about picking up the phone and calling you. Or seeing if your email address was still the same. And when I came back? Every time when I drove past your house, I wanted to stop and talk to you. Every. Single. Time.”
Now my heart did a backflip—a perfect one.
“But I never did. I don’t know why.” His eyes deepened to that darker blue, almost cobalt. “Maybe it’s because I never knew what to really say. Or maybe it had to do with the fact I knew you were Gavin, because yeah, I looked at your Facebook.”
My eyes widened. I’d totally Facebook stalked him. Or at least tried. His profile was private, his tweets on Twitter protected.
“And you were with him when I came back. Didn’t mean we couldn’t be friends. I get that. I just don’t know. I wish I could tell you why, but I can’t. And I’m sorry, and I know that doesn’t change anything, but after Saturday…”
Jensen closed his eyes briefly, and I stilled until the only thing moving was my pounding heart. “After what happened Saturday, it seemed stupid to continue the way we were, because what if those headlights didn’t turn on? What if I wasn’t walking to my truck that very moment?”
I shivered, knowing the answer.
“And when Ms. Reed called me into her office, she practically handed me a way of weaseling back into your life on a silver platter. I took it and that’s why I’m here. Because we were… God,” he laughed sadly. “We were best friends, Ella, and I screwed that up. I know I did, but we were friends and I want to be friends again.”
Jensen dipped his chin, staring up at me through impossibly long lashes. “And after being with you for an hour yesterday, I realized just how much I’ve missed you.”
Friends—he wanted to be friends again, and while I wasn’t sure how I could really be just a friend to him, my breath caught. And since he put it out there, I would put it out there, too. It was only fair. “I’ve… I’ve missed you, too. A lot.”
He was still for a moment and I wasn’t even sure he breathed, but then he smiled—a real smile, and it reached his eyes, transforming his coolly handsome face into something breathtaking. “That’s good,” he said in a low voice. “That’s a start.”
A start to what?
But the question floated away as he leaned in, pressing his forehead against mine, and it was so not-a-friend move, that I was speechless. My eyes drifted shut as his warm breath danced over my lips, and even though I knew he wouldn’t kiss me, because who kissed a girl after asking to be friends, my imagination went there. I could almost feel his lips, and I could almost taste the mint on his breath. Muscles throughout my body clenched.
“So,” he murmured. “Friends?”
I sucked in a breath as he tilted his head just the slightest. “Friends.”
“G
ood.” There was a pause. “About self-defense lessons…?”
“What about them?” I wanted him to touch me—to put his arms around me. Friends did that, right? I mean, really close friends did. Totally.
As if he knew what I was thinking, what I wanted, he shifted his body, drawing his leg up until it was pressed against mine. He still hadn’t pulled back. “I can do whenever.”
“Me too.”
The very tips of his fingers brushed the curve of my jaw, and that was decidedly not friendly, but I didn’t care. “Then tomorrow?”
“After school?”
“Yeah,” he said, and our mouths were so close we were sharing the same breath. “Cool for you?”
I nodded, causing our noses to brush, and Jensen was next to suck in a deep breath. Those fingers trailed up my jaw, reaching the tiny pieces of hair that had escaped my ponytail. Something was about to happen. I could feel the shift in him, the deep change, and a spark of nervousness rose inside me, but there was more. A yearning—a sweet, fiery anticipation that overshadowed common sense and even our past. I wanted nothing—
The doorbell rang, thrusting us apart. Breathing heavily, my eyes popped open, and Jensen was watching me, the pupils of his eyes dilated.
Had we been seconds away from kissing?
The doorbell rang again, jarring in the silence.
One side of his lips tipped. “You gonna get that?”
“Yeah. Yeah,” I repeated, pushing to my feet. I moved through the living room in a daze, thinking that it better be Santa Claus on the other side of the damn door.
It wasn’t Santa.
Or his elves.
Or reindeer.
It was Gavin.
“Hey,” I said, proving I was the Queen of Greetings.
He smiled. “Can I come in?” Before I could say a word, he strolled on in. “I thought I’d keep you company until your mom got home. I figured you probably didn’t want to be sitting around…”
Gavin trailed off as he entered the living room and realized that I wasn’t alone. He stopped right in front of me, and I bounced off his back.
From the couch, Jensen tipped his head up in greeting. “What’s up?”
The atmosphere shifted the very second Gavin walked into the living room and saw Jensen, whose lazy, arrogant sprawl on the couch suddenly felt misleading, as if he could pop to his feet at any given second and without warning.
“Hey,” Gavin said slowly, and then glanced back at me. Confusion flickered across his face. “I didn’t know he was here.”
“Yeah.” I stepped around him, looking back and forth between the two guys. “He stopped by not too long ago.”
“Oh,” Gavin said.
And that was all that he said.
I shifted my weight, turning my attention to Jensen, expecting him to do or say something, but he just raised his brows.
God, it was so weird, the three of us being in my living room. It was like jumping back in time, except… well, Gavin and Jensen wouldn’t have been eyeballing each other like they were now.
Which made this all kinds of awkward.
But when we were younger… well, we teased each other mercilessly and we laughed all the time. The three of us—Jensen, Gavin, and me—had been inseparable from elementary to eighth grade. Jensen had been the one to bring the box for the turtle with the cracked shell we’d rescued. He’d dressed up as the hill, using cardboard boxes, grass clippings and a ton of superglue, when Gavin and I went as Jack and Jill. And Jensen and I had shared the shameful guilt from the weekend the whole landscape of our town changed. So yeah, the three of us.
No.
Not the three of us.
The four of us.
The half smile was back on Jensen’s face, but there was no humor to the smug quirk of the lips. “So, what’ve you been up to, Gav?”
Gav. I winced, remembering how much Gavin hated that nickname. Hell, when he’d tick me off, I’d call him that.
Gavin’s shoulders tensed. “Nothing much. Just going to school and helping out with Mom and Dad.”
“Ah, yeah, the cleaning business thing.” There wasn’t any arrogance in the way he said that, but Gavin’s cheeks flushed.
“Do you want anything to drink?” I asked, hoping to diffuse the situation.
Gavin’s lips were thin as he nodded. “Sure.”
“How about you?” I asked Jensen.
Sliding his arm off the back of the couch, he dropped his hands on his knees as he turned pale eyes on me. “Thanks, but I’m going to go ahead and get out of here.”
“You don’t have to leave,” I said quickly.
Gavin crossed his arms. “Yeah, you don’t have to leave.”
His tone was so not welcoming, and I shot him a look he largely ignored. Jensen chuckled under his breath as he rose. Brushing past the shorter guy, he didn’t pay him any attention.
“I’ll be right back,” I said, trailing after Jensen. “You really don’t have to leave, you know.”
“No. I think I kind of do.” Jensen stopped at the door, not even looking at Gavin. “Tomorrow after school? Same place.”
I nodded. “I’ll be there.”
“Good.” Only then did his gaze flick behind me. “I’m looking forward to it.”
Gavin was standing in the center of the living room when I returned, arms still crossed across his chest. “What was he doing here?”
“Um, like he said, he was just stopping by.” I walked past him, determined not to be too irritated. The boys hadn’t been friends for a long time either, but I had to think they missed that friendship too. “And I told you he was helping with the whole self-defense thing.”
He followed me into the kitchen. “Is he teaching you at home?”
“No,” I sighed, reaching into the fridge. I handed him a Coke. “But we were just setting up a time to meet again.”
Taking the drink, he was silent as I hopped up on the kitchen counter, letting my legs dangle off the edge. “You know what I don’t get?”
“No.”
His forehead crinkled. “Where did Jensen learn self-defense?”
I opened my mouth, but I really didn’t have an answer for that. Good question.
“I mean, that’s not something you just know how to do, so shouldn’t you be learning from someone who knows what they’re doing?” he asked, popping the tab on his soda. The liquid fizzed. “Instead of someone who just says he knows what he’s doing?”
“He knows what he’s doing.”
“Really?” He took a long drink.
“Yes. Really.”
“Uh-huh.”
Forget trying not to be irritated. My scalp started to tingle. “What’s your deal?”
“Okay.” He placed the soda down on the table and walked over to where I sat. Placing his hands on either side of my legs, he leaned in. “You just went through some pretty traumatic shit.”
I folded my arms across my chest, narrowing my eyes at him. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“I’m just saying that you’re in a… vulnerable spot. Hey—” He held up his hands. “Don’t give me that look. You are. And that’s totally normal, but do you really think this is a good time to entertain the idea of anything with Jensen?”
My stomach soured as I felt heat spread across my cheeks. “Having him teach me self-defense and talking to him isn’t entertaining anything,” I said, and oh crap, that was a lie, because I’d so been entertaining an idea of kissing him.
Gavin raised his brows. “Don’t you remember what happened last time?”
I drew in a ragged breath as my fingers curled around the edge of the counter.
“Look, I’m just pointing that out. He has a history of making