Page 74 of Friend Zone to End Zone

And then we were kissing again. He kissed my neck. Nipped at my shoulder gently with his teeth and trailed kisses back up to my lips.

When he leaned back on the couch and wrapped his arms around me to pull me somehow closer, I didn’t care that I could barely draw in a decent breath or even think in complete sentences—because who had time for breathing and thinking when all you wanted to do wasfeel?

And I wanted to feel everything. I wanted to know what it was like to get lost in Cole’s arms. To experience the ecstasy of having his lips take me to another time and place where only the give and take of our lips, the mingling of our heated breath, and the pressure of his hands on my back existed.

“This is amazing.” He sighed, like he couldn’t really believe we were kissing like this after so many years of keeping things mostly platonic.

“I know,” I gasped. And I knew I could kiss him for hours and still feel like it wasn’t enough.

Because he was right. This felt absolutely amazing. Everything about this moment felt incredible and so right, and I couldn’t believe that I’d waited this long to experience it.

In that moment, I couldn’t even remember why I’d stuck him in the friend zone. Because he was clearly end-zone material—the kind of guy you take home. The one you tell your friends you’re going to marry someday.

And suddenly, the image I’d been daydreaming about for years shifted. Instead of having a beach wedding where my mom walked me down the aisle toward another guy with Cole standing off to the side as my Man of Honor, I saw Cole standing front and center on the beach in a custom-made suit, his hair styled just the way it had been last night on our date, and his brown eyes reflecting the light of the setting sun as he gazed at me with so much love it made my heart burst.

Once that image was in my head, I couldn’t unsee it.

I didn’twantto unsee it.

Because it was perfect.

And I knew it was what I should have been seeing all along.

Cole was everything I’d always wanted but never thought I could have. And maybe I was crazy to think that anything could come from this when it was still technically a practice kiss, but I knew I would be nuts not to try to make things work out.

If he somehow wanted this to be real, we could surely find some sort of common ground where we could make things work with the different plans we had for our futures. Because going back to only ever being best friends after experiencing this would be impossible.

31

Cole

This was crazy.If anyone had told me a few days ago that I’d be making out with the most gorgeous girl in the world the morning after the best date of my life, I would have laughed in their face.

Yes, I would have done anything to make it true. Hoped with everything in me that it could somehow happen.

But actually believe it was possible?

Not a chance.

But it was happening. I was lying on my couch in my sunroom with Arianna in my arms and she was kissing me, touching me the way I’d dreamed she would since we first met.

She wasn’t pushing me away this time. She was pressing herself closer, sliding her hands along my shoulders and arms, squeezing my biceps in a way that made me glad I’d been doing those extra sets of curls during my training this week, and basically just making me feel like I was living on cloud nine for the first time in my life.

“How come we’ve never done this before?” she asked in a quiet voice, pulling her long hair over one shoulder and allowing me to see more of her face and long neck as she leaned over me.

“You were dating Chad and I was too good at being patient,” I mumbled.

I’d kissed her for those few seconds before, but if I’d known it could be like this with her—my whole body humming with electricity, my heart racing so fast I was at risk for a heart attack, my mind solely focused on getting more of this magic euphoria pulsing in my head—I’d have stopped being a gentleman a long, long time ago.

But instead of saying any of that, I just tangled my fingers into her hair and smoothed my other hand over the sides of her T-shirt along the ridges of her ribcage and said, “We should have practiced kissing a long time ago.”

“Agreed.” Her lips left mine for a moment as she nuzzled her face into my neck, kissing me there once, then twice.

Her hot breath sent shivers down my spine, and when her fingers grazed along the skin where the hem of my shirt had ridden up, a deep pulse throbbed in my belly because having her fingers smoothing along my abdomen felt incredible.

“I’ve always wondered if your abs would feel as good as they looked,” she whispered, an almost timid look in her heavily lidded brown eyes.

“Yeah?” I just stared at her in awe, unable to say much else since the way she was making me feel had overpowered any ability I had to speak.

---