I’ve kissed Lizzie before.
Jesus Christ, I kissed Lizzie. I’ve had her beautiful lips on mine, and I was too drunk or tired or whatever to realize it.
That’s going to haunt me for a damn long time.
“Aiden…” Emily slowly walks across the room. She stops in front of me, her hands tucked in the pockets of her jeans. “She’ll come back.”
“I don’t want her to come back,” I lie, hurt, anger, and embarrassment fueling my emotions.
“You don’t mean that. You’re just hurting. You’re both hurting. But I know my sister. She might be a little stubborn and, okay, a lot stubborn,” she adds when I give her a look, “but she loves you. I don’t know if she’s in love with you because she’s always been tight-lipped when it comes to anything Aiden, but I know she loves you.”
“Just not the way I want her to love me.”
“Don’t be so quick to write her off.”
What am I supposed to do, sit here and wait? I walk to the window, needing to move to keep from chasing after her, but when I see Lizzie stop at his car and look up, I turn away. I can’t watch her leave with him.
Emily’s eyes follow me across the room. I grab a broom and dustpan. “I’m sorry if I scared you when I threw the vase.”
It wasn’t my finest moment.
“You didn’t,” she says.
I clean up the glass and toss it into the trashcan, and when I turn around, Emily is looking at me with those big, brown doe eyes. Lizzie’s eyes, only not as round.
“I feel like you need a hug,” she says. “But that’s never been our thing.”
“Please don’t.” I shake my head and step back. “You look too much like her, it’s—”
“I get it.” Emily pats my arm when she walks by. “Plus, Jonathan might lose his shit, and if you two are going to be in-laws one day, I’ll need you to get along.”
That’ll never happen. “Bye, Em.”
I hear her open the front door, but I don’t watch her leave. Instead, I reach behind my head and pull my shirt off.
Five or ten miles on the treadmill is what I need. Maybe after that, and a long, hot shower, I’ll be able to clear my head.
“Aiden?”
“Yeah.” I toss my shirt on the floor and turn to find Lizzie standing in my doorway, dripping wet, white cotton shirt clinging to her body, her dark hair plastered to the side of her head, her glossy eyes wide—yet everything is muted by the look on her face.
Reluctance.
Hope.
Love.
My heart slams inside my chest at the sight of her. My hands and fingers itch to reach for her.
“I’m going to go,” Emily whispers before slipping out.
Lizzie’s eyes stay on mine. I realize, in this moment, that I’m unprepared for whatever she has to say. Lizzie is the most important person in my life, and I’ll always love her even if she doesn’t feel the same way, but I’m pretty sure it’ll kill me.
“What are you doing here?”
She shrugs. Water drips from her hair, and when she shifts on her feet, her shoes slosh against the floor. How long did she stand out in the rain?
I look behind her. “Where’s Ethan?”
“Probably almost home. Or maybe at the coffee shop. I don’t know.”
She steps over the threshold, close enough that I can’t take in a breath without breathing her in. Lizzie offers me a small smile, but I can’t bring myself to return it because I still don’t know why she’s here. Does she want to be with me? Or did she come back to wreak more havoc on my heart? Because if that’s the case, she can leave.
“Why are you here, Lizzie?” I ask again.
She takes a shuddery breath and replies. “Do you really have to ask?”
“Yeah, I think in this case, I do. Because I don’t want to screw anything else up between us. I don’t want any more misunderstandings.”
A tear falls down her cheek, disappearing between her parted lips. “I’m here because I love you, too.”
Air whooshes from my lungs. I close my eyes and take a trembling breath, opening them to find her another step closer. “Say it again.”
“I love you.” She barely has time to push the words out before I have her wrapped in my arms.
“Lizzie,” I breathe, holding her tight, not caring that she’s soaking wet. My girl buries her face in my neck and wraps her arms around me. One hand grips the back of my neck, the other rests on my back. Her fingers are cold against my bare skin, but nothing has ever felt as good as having Lizzie in my arms. “I love you. I’ve always loved you.”
“Please don’t say that unless you mean it,” she whispers.
I pull back to look her in the eyes. The pain from before has been replaced with love—for me. I press my forehead to hers. “I don’t lie to you. That’s not our thing.”
She nods, her warm breath fanning my face. It’s pure instinct to smooth the pad of my thumb over the tear lingering on the corner of her top lip. Her eyes flash with heat, and the need to kiss her, to find out just how sweet she tastes, becomes unbearable.
“Can I kiss you now?”
She presses her lips together to keep from smiling.
“Lizzie…” My eyes drop to her mouth.
“Please,” she says softly.
I push the door shut and back her up against it until her body is flush with mine. Her face is radiant as she tilts it up to look at me, and somehow, I just know that this kiss is going to change my life.
Cupping her face in my hands, I dip my head and press my mouth to hers. Her lips are soft, so sweet against mine. In this moment, my life clicks into place, and I know that I’ve found my forever.
I tilt her head to get a better angle on her mouth, and when her lips part on a gasp, my tongue desperately goes in search of hers. I groan and slide one hand from her face to her hip so that I can pull her closer to me. Her hands tangle in my hair as we make out like horny teenagers.
Why did I wait so long to do this? And how did I pull away from this that night all those years ago?
Her hands slide up my chest, curve around my jaw, and push to the back of my neck. She holds on, her lips moving in sync with mine.
It isn’t until the sound of her cellphone blaring in her pocket interrupts us that we slowly break away. We’re both breathing heavily, and I kiss her forehead to take a second to catch my breath.
“You okay?”
She nods and smiles up at me, letting the call go to voicemail. “Yes.”
Well, that makes one of us, because I’m not even close to okay after that kiss. I want to haul her into my arms and continue where we left off.
“I’m so glad you came back.”
“Me, too.”
“My God, sweetheart, it about killed me when you left.”
“I’m sorry,” she starts. “I was just confused and scared and—”
“Can we talk about it?”
“Really, you want to talk? I thought we were going to do more of—” Lizzie’s eyes drop to my mouth.
“This?” I capture her lips in a quick, searing kiss.
She nods dopily. “That.”
“We will.” I take her hand, walk to the couch, and settle her on my lap. “But first, I want to talk about what happened.”
“Okay.” She curls up against me. “If I would’ve known you were this comfortable, I might’ve crawled onto your lap a long time ago.”
I smile and brush the hair from her face so that I have a clear view of her when we talk. “I’m so sorry about that night.” I shake my head, still baffled that I thought she was Emily. “I swear to you that I thought you were Emily.”
“I know. You don’t have to explain yourself.”
“I want to.”
She glides her fingers down my arm and entwines our fingers. “Okay. Go ahead.”
“Do you remember the first guy you dated in college? Brian? Ben?”
“Brendon.”
“That’s it. Do you remember the first date he took you on?”
Lizzie laughs and gives me a look. “You want to rehash my previous dates? Because if so, we might be here for a while.”
“No, just bear with me.”
“Sorry, go ahead.”
“I’d never been so jealous in my life.”
“What?”
I nod. “I couldn’t believe it myself. You and I were best friends, we’d watched each other date various people, and it was never an issue until I saw him pull you into his arms. You tilted your head back and laughed at something he said, and all I can remember thinking is, that’s my laugh. That’s the laugh you give me when I say something funny. I wanted to rip him away from you and kiss you until you couldn’t remember your own name. I didn’t want his hands on you, and I sure as hell didn’t want him making you laugh.”
“Aiden—”
“Let me finish.” She gives me a slight nod, and I continue. “I blew it off, convinced myself that I was having a bad day because you and I were never supposed to be anything but friends. I wasn’t supposed to want more from you. Time passed, and I ignored the pangs of jealousy I got every time I saw you with someone else. When Emily—or you—showed up at my apartment, I didn’t know what to think. And then she”—I shake my head—“you, kissed me, and all I remember thinking is that I was kissing the wrong sister. She looked like you and smelled like you, but she wasn’t you. She would never be you. I pushed her away, and I wanted to talk to you about it. I didn’t want you to think that I had a thing for her, but you wouldn’t talk to me, and I was confused. I thought she’d already told you. I didn’t know if you were mad or simply didn’t care.”
“Okay, but if it was me you liked, why didn’t you ever say anything?”
“Because I wasn’t good enough for you.”
She frowns. “Aiden.”
“It’s true. We both know it. I liked you, but I wasn’t ready for a girlfriend, let alone a relationship. You were looking for Mr. Right, and I was Mr. Right Now. Plus, I didn’t want to lose my best friend.”
“And now?”
“Now, I know that our friendship is the perfect foundation and will only strengthen whatever else we build.”
“I was talking about the Mr. Right and Mr. Right Now part. Which are you now?”
I smile, push my fingers into her hair, and cup the back of her head. “Definitely, Mr. Right.”
Lifting onto her knees, Lizzie slings a leg over my hip so that she’s straddling me. She presses her forehead to mine, her hair falling around us like our own private curtain.
I trace a finger along her cheek. “You’re so beautiful.”
Her eyelids flutter closed, her heart pounding in her chest against mine. She melts against me. “Is this real?”
I nod, tracing the lines of her face, committing every detail to memory.
“So, what do we do now?”
Unable to resist, I kiss her. “Now, I take you on a proper date.”