Page 7 of Wait For Me

She’d said my name, and I’d responded. I’d been so lost in that fucking kiss, my caution drop-kicked to the wind, that I hadn’t registered it in my non-primal brain.

Fuck.

“I’m sorry, Cora, I should have said something. I just…” I just what? I knew what I was doing? I wanted to kiss her just once?

She looks panicked. My best friend’s little sister—ex best friend, and not little at all anymore—looks up at me, eyes wide. How many times did I picture her like that?

And then feel like a piece of shit for it?

“Take off your hat,” she says, her voice shaking.

I want to pull the cap lower, to hide myself completely,like I’m so good at doing. I’ve been hiding for fucking years. I should never have come home.

But Cora doesn’t wait. She grasps my shoulders and angles me so the light from the lamp shines on my face. I close my eyes, as much to avoid looking in hers as to keep mine from traveling down her front, where I can still see the soft shadows of her nipples. My dick jumps anyway, hard already from that fucking kiss.

Cora staggers back, away from me. “It’s really you,” she whispers.

I bend down and pick up my shirt, which I lost in my need to hold her, needing her to be real. I take her hand and drop the shirt in it, this time making her take it.

She doesn’t respond, but pulls my shirt over her head. It drapes across her like a sheet. She looks so beautiful my chest hurts.

I open my mouth to apologize again, to tell her I’m sorry I was a dick and let that happen. But she speaks before I can. “Have you moved back?”

“No.”

I watch her throat bob as she swallows. “Then why are you here?”

Right now, with her standing in front of me, perfect even with her hair still wet and makeup smudged, I wonder if it’s because of her. It’s not, is it? Right now it feels like she’s the only reason for me to even breathe.

“I wanted to get a drink, and I figured I’d see fewer people I know here than across the street.”

I’d have felt more comfortable at the sports bar on the other side of the street, but I really didn’t want to see anyone I might remotely know. My plan had been to slip in and out of town unseen.

So much for that.

“No, I mean why are you back in Quince Valley? You vanished the second you could.”

That stings. But it’s true. I ran away and I never looked back.

“I’m on assignment,” I manage.

Cora’s eyebrows bunch, making her look even prettier. “Assignment?”

“I’m a photographer. I’m taking pictures of the Rolling Hills.”

“George is okay with that?”

I’m surprised by that. “You know him?”

She nods.

Shit. I’m careful with what I say next, because George is an odd duck. “I talked him into it,” I say finally. I paid George Klister, the acting CEO, a bunch of money out of my own pocket is what I did.

“It’s about Eleanor Cleary, right?”

My stomach twists. Eleanor Cleary is a little-known local legend—a ghost who’s said to haunt the hotel that looms above the town of Quince Valley. She was the first thing Cora and I talked about when we were kids, beyond perfunctory hellos I gave her as my best friend’s little sister.

“Don’t you think it’s magical?” she’d asked at the dinner table.

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