I don’t answer right away. “Well…I don’t know what to say to all that. We didn’t talk about anything like that. It never went there. We talked a lot, but it was always…surface stuff, you know? Or it was about my motivation, my injury, my interests and what I’m going to do with myself now that football is off the table. We didn’t talk about you, or my past or hers, or anything except that initial conversation about her dance career.” It’s supremely awkward and difficult talking about this, for both of us. I bite the bullet and resign myself to being totally clear. “Look, it was…not something either of us were looking for. Certainly not me. I was here in San Antonio to play football, and that’s it. I wasn’t looking for anything. But then I got hurt and the only friends I had were guys from the football team. It became too hard to be around them, so I didn’t really have any friends.

“And Cheyenne understood that. So, yeah, there was a level of attraction on my part. I never said or did anything, and I never really knew what she thought about me in that sense. I mean, I knew she was older than me by a good bit, but I didn’t know how much until…until that day. And I mean…I was lonely, and I guess like you said, she was too. It makes sense, I guess, why a woman like her would even give the time of day to a guy like me. Because, like you said, she was twenty years older than me. But we were both lonely, and I invited her in, partly just to be polite and partly because, yeah, I wanted the company. I wasn’t…thinking about…trying anything. Like I said, it just…sort of happened. But it didn’t actually happen. You want the uncomfortable details? We were sitting on the couch, and in the process of watching the movie and then falling asleep, we’d gradually gotten closer and closer. And then we woke up, and there was just this strange moment of…what if…I guess. It was late, and we were both tired and just waking up, and…our lips touched for a fraction of second. Not even. And then she backed off and I guess she just realized all the different, very valid reasons why that couldn’t and shouldn’t happen. And it didn’t. It was just this one weird moment, and I guess it was probably mostly just me.”

Echo doesn’t answer right away, and when she does, it’s not what I expected her to say. “Why are you here, Ben? In San Antonio, I mean. You got hurt playing football. I know that. But…you’re obviously not from here, so…why stay?”

I sigh. “I don’t know. I honestly don’t. I just…I’m not ready to go home, yet. That means admitting defeat, I guess. I left home for…several reasons. And if I go back—I don’t know, I’ll have to face reality. I’ll have to actually start over. Figure out what the hell to do with my life. It’s like…I have to figure out who I am, now. Because, honestly, football was it for me. Sounds pathetic, now that I say that out loud. My whole life was just about being a fucking jock. And now what?”

“So you’re here avoiding reality?”

“Yeah, basically.” I shrug. “Also, I haven’t told my parents I got hurt. They’d be here in ten seconds flat, dragging me home and babying me and I just…I need to deal with this on my own for a bit first, I guess.”

“You’re lucky, then.” She says this quietly. “You have both parents, and obviously they’d drop everything to come get you, if they knew you were in trouble.”

I sigh. “They would. And I am lucky. I do know that. And I’ll go back eventually. I mean, I have to. But I can’t, yet. And not just because of the football injury thing. There are other reasons.”

She glances sideways at me. “Care to share?”

I blink and breathe and hesitate. “Just…running away from heartbreak, that’s all. I needed time and space, and it still feels too soon to go back and have to face everything I ran from.”

I feel her gaze on me, so I finally turn my head to meet her eyes with mine. The air feels thick between us, rife with a million unspoken things. The kiss. What it meant, and how deep it went. I don’t know what to say, suddenly, and clearly she doesn’t either. We’re close, physically, now. And we’re both dangerously close to being naked. All that separates us is my towel and the blanket over Echo, and suddenly that doesn’t feel like all that much. And despite the heaviness of what we’ve been talking about, all I can think about is how it felt to kiss Echo, and how badly I want to do it again.

“I want to kiss you again,” Echo says, somehow reading my mind. “But…it makes me feel like a skank for wanting you in the midst of all that’s going on. My mom hasn’t been in the ground a week and I’m tangled up with a guy? And then there’s everything that happened between you and her? It’s confusing, and I don’t know how to figure it out. I just know what I want. But I don’t know if it’s right or wrong. And I’m…not used to caring if it’s right or wrong.”

“I want to kiss you, too. I keep thinking about it. And the fact that it’s all I can think about right now makes me feel like an asshole. So I guess…I get what you’re saying.”

“So what do we do?” she asks.

I shrug. “I don’t know. Go with it, or don’t. Seems like these are the only two choices we have, right?”

She fidgets with the fabric of the blanket, breathing deeply, brows drawn down in thought. “Right.”

Her hair is loose and messy around her shoulders, tangled and knotted in places, her skin tan and delicate. I’m staring at her, because I can’t help it. I see her pulse thudding in her throat. The blanket has slipped, baring some of her cleavage. A single gentle tug and she’d be exposed. My heart is in my throat, my mind in turmoil. Fear, doubt, nerves…these war with the raging wildfire of need and desire.

She’s attracted to me, and me to her. We’re the same age, in similar places in life. We’ve been brought together by a tragedy, and we can’t seem to stay away from each other. She came back, and she didn’t have to. She could have gone anywhere, she could have dropped off my keys and left. But instead she’s here, in my bed, and now she’s glancing sideways at me, breathing deeply and pinching the blanket between her fingers, and it almost feels like she’s waiting for me.

Our gazes meet, and it’s impossible to break away from her stunning, vivid eyes.

It’s too easy, far, far too easy to let my doubts and fear and everything fall away. It’s far, far too easy to lean into her, feel her shoulder pinned against the wall by mine as I tilt toward her, barely breathing. And god, she makes it that much easier when her soft warm hand slides across my shoulder and pulls me toward her. So I twist toward her, feeling the towel around my hips loosen but not caring, because her lips are damp and silken and strong on mine, and her tongue is insistent. My eyes are closed, and all I know in this moment is her kiss, because it’s taking my breath and forming the entirety of my universe, and I don’t want it to end, and I know somehow that she doesn’t either. She kisses me desperately, hungrily, our lips scouring over each other’s. We gasp for oxygen and I taste her breath intimate on my mouth, feel her hand sliding from my shoulder to my back and down to my waist.




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