Page 63 of Beg, Borrow, or Steal

“I did.”

“Why?” I ask, hopeful to be granted the answer my heart is secretly looking for.

His eyes drop to my mouth, and my skin warms. “That day when I flirted with you on my motorcycle, and you thought I was someone else…it gave me a taste.” His eyes lift. “And then that night when you needed someone, I realized it could give me a real shot at becoming more than just your nemesis, and I wanted to take it. I wanted to be your friend.”

“Myfriend.”

We are both well aware that friends don’t sizzle with this kind of tension. Friends don’t look into each other’s eyes like this while one friend is on the other friend’s lap.

He smiles. “Give or take.”

The back of his knuckles finds my jaw to brush the softest touch across it. Longing coils around my spine and tenses my thighs. His palm settles on the juncture of my jaw and neck, right over my hammering, traitorous pulse. It speaks to him loud and clear.

“Why didn’t you say goodbye to me?” I didn’t realize that question was still hovering so close to the surface until I ask it.

His brows pull together behind his glasses. “When?”

“When you left Rome, to move with Zoe to Nebraska.”

“Did you want me to?”

I’m not quite ready to answer that honestly. “You said goodbye to everyone in the school but me. Everyone. I even came outside to see you off. Just in case. But you didn’t even look in your rearview mirror at me.”

I hate how vulnerable that makes me sound. It conjures a memory of me standing in the parking lot with my chin held high, completely unnoticed by Jack as he drives away.

He looks devastated. “I didn’t know you were out there. I would have stopped.”

“But you didn’t even come find me for one last fight.”

He nods. “That’s because I purposely avoided you.”

“Oh.” I want to scramble off his lap and find distance now, but Jack’s seatbelt arm won’t let me yet.

“Because that’s the exact moment I started to realize I was a shit human who had gotten myself into a big mess.”

“What—”

“Emily…I didn’t want to say goodbye to you because the prospect of my last encounter with you being one where you looked apathetic to my leaving—I couldn’t bring myself to do it. And that startled me more than anything.” He shakes his head. “I was marrying someone else and avoiding saying goodbye toyoubecause it was going to hurt. The morality of that alone was bad. And Ithought—Ihopedthat if I just moved to Nebraska and went about my life it would be okay. I’d forget about you.”

“But you didn’t?” I ask with two scoops of hope in my voice.

“No. It felt wrong being so far from you.” I know what he means. It’s a sensation I felt but wasn’t able to explain. A wrongness. The feeling of he was there, and I was here, and it wasn’t supposed to be that way, even if we were enemies. We were always supposed to be near each other.

Jack stares at me and I stare at him, and we’re lost in this vortex ofwhat do we do now?

“Emily…” he whispers.

“Jack…” I respond, and twist around a little more to face him.

We hang like professional acrobats in this torture. There’s no escaping it tonight. I’m hiding in a closet with my (ex-)nemesis, and it’s time to face the facts: I want him, and he wants me.

His eyes are on my mouth, our pheromones are clogging up the air, and we only have seconds to hammer out the details. “I…I feel like we should think this through, but…”

I inch closer. “But it’s hard to think when you have a mouth and I have a mouth.”

“Exactly,” he breathes out, his thumb sweeping across the tender skin just outside the corner of my lips.

“Let’s think tomorrow.”

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