Page 13 of Maybe This Time
“Yeah,” he said, a hint of nostalgia creeping into his voice. “Remember when we used to play Truth or Dare?”
Unbidden, my mind drifted back to the last time we’d played. Back then, I’d thought that night would be the start of a new chapter for us.
I yanked myself out of the memory before it dragged me down a rabbit hole of what-ifs.
I rolled my eyes. “Of course I do.”
Ezra leaned back in his seat, legs spreading slightly while one arm stretched casually over the back of the banquette. My eyes snagged on the way the fabric of his suit stretched across his arms and shoulders, and…
I quickly looked away.
Talya, not now.
I searched for anything else to focus on. If there were any service in here, I’d be pretending to scroll through my phone, trying to act unaffected. But who was I kidding?
Ezra’s stupid presence had always lit a fire of awareness over every inch of my skin.
I was seriously regretting saying yes to whatever this was. I’d been firmly set on leaving and forgetting I’d seen him, but when his desperate plea filtered through the fog of my anger, I couldn’t bring myself to walk away.
Ezra James had always had a way of getting what he wanted, and saying no to him hadn’t been woven in my DNA. The smile he gave when you went along with him was so radiant, it made you feel like the center of his world.
We’d spent the last forty minutes either trapped in suffocating silence or drowning in a nostalgia so thick it stole the air from my lungs. Being around him was much harder than I’d expected and I didn’t know how to process any of it.
I wanted to punch him while simultaneously wanting to pretend that the last eight months had never happened.
Why had my heart chosen him over anyone else?
Life would be so much fucking easier if I hadn’t fallen hopelessly in love with my best friend.
“So,” he said, pulling me back to the present, “are you in, or are you scared you’ll lose?”
There was a teasing challenge in his tone, but layered underneath it all, there was also a hint of something I’d only ever noticed once before. Something that settled deep in my core and made my breath hitch.
“I’m not scared,” I lied. “I just think we’re a little old for that, don’t you?”
He quirked a brow. “That’syour excuse?”
“It’s not an excuse,” I shot back, and I hated how the sudden high pitch of my voice completely betrayed me.
Ezra smirked. “So let’s play. We’ve got”—he tilted his head, his eyes flickering to the timer still running on my phone—“fifteen minutes left. One night. Tomorrow, you can forget all about it and go back to hating me.”
His words and the flicker of hurt in his gaze caught me off guard. Hate him? Was that how he thought I felt? If hating him were even possible, all ofthiswould be so much easier.
I was angry. Sad. Disappointed that my best friend of almost twenty years suddenly started acting like I’d never existed.
But hate him? How could I when my heart had always belonged to him?
“For old times’ sake,” he added softly when I didn’t answer right away.
I watched his expression closely, and despite the lightheadedness he tried to convey in his tone, I could tell he was nervous. And it only confused me even more.
I hesitated, the urge to run fighting against the overwhelming desire to finally tell him I didn’t hate him. My brain screamed at me that this was a bad idea, but it was only fifteen minutes… What was the worst that could happen?
I let out a sigh. “Fine. Truth or dare?”
His whole body seemed to relax at my answer, and that stupid grin lit up his face again, sending an unwelcome rush of warmth across my skin.
“Truth.”
