Chapter 8
TALYA
Let’s play a game.
My eyes snapped back to his, my brows drawing together in confusion. “A game?”
There had been a flicker of panic in his gaze when he noticed how much time had been left to whatever this charade was. But my response seemed to have sparked a fire inside him; one he’d been staving away until now.
“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’s your 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 of this would 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.”
There were so many things I wanted to ask, and the most important one burned the tip of my tongue, but I needed time to brace myself for the answer.
Instead, I went with something easier.
“When did you really move back?”
Ezra had told me earlier that he’d only been back for a week, but he’d always been a terrible liar. Especially to me. He’d scrunched his nose right before he replied—his telltale sign.
He grimaced before saying, “I’ve been here since September 15.”
Even though I’d suspected he hadn’t told me the truth, the confirmation still stung because it meant he’d been in town this entire time and hadn’t reached out.
I guess I hadn’t been on his mind nearly as much as he’d been on mine. That realization only twisted the invisible knife that had embedded itself in my chest the second I saw him earlier tonight. Flaying open the wound from his absence that had never had a chance to heal.
I forced myself to pull away from the spiral before the pain I’d been carrying bled at my feet for him to see.
“Why didn’t you…” I whispered, the growing lump in my throat making it hard to get the words out. “Why didn’t you call?”
My chest ached as I waited for his answer. I’d spent months trying to come up with a valid reason, but I’d always come up blank. Because if the roles were reversed, I’d never be able to find a good reason to let go.
“Truth or dare, Talya?” he asked, ignoring my follow-up question and sticking to the rules. The smile still lingered on his face, but it was at odds with the way his jaw tightened or the way his body had gone stiff.
“Truth,” I replied, already bracing myself.
His question was immediate.
“Why did you never answer my letter? Why didn’t you come to Paris?”
I’d been so focused on anticipating what he might ask me that it took me a moment for his words to fully register.
“I’m sorry, what did you just say?” I asked, blinking at him in confusion because clearly, I’d misheard him.
Against my better judgment, I’d kept all of his letters.
All twenty-eight of them. I’d poured hours into memorizing them, reading them over and over again in the darkest hours of the night, searching for what I might have missed.
To see if there had been a sign somewhere that would explain how we got here.
Yet all I felt reading them was that maybe, maybe, I wasn’t imagining things.
Maybe the love I felt for him was reciprocated through all of the anecdotes and joy and…
love pouring out of his words. But that’s what happened when you loved someone fiercely.
You began mistaking your feelings for theirs and built something from reading in between the lines that didn’t exist.
Only to feel like you were being ripped apart from the inside out when reality crashed over your heart like a tidal wave.
A loud ringing cut through the growing silence, snapping me out of it. I fumbled for my phone, silencing it quickly before lifting my eyes back to Ezra.
“Why are you being like this? I asked, my voice tight.
His expression hardened. “Great, you’re just going to pretend like it never happened. Got it.” He muttered that last part under his breath as he pushed to his feet, putting space between us as he stalked to the far side of the room.
I flinched at the sudden dismissal. My confusion only deepened as I watched him pace, tearing off his gloves and tossing them aside.
Ezra rarely lost his composure, especially not with me.
Tonight had been the first time and sure, we’d had our fair share of disagreements in the past like any close friends would.
But we’d always talked to each other. That had always been one of the things I loved the most about us.
So none of this, from these past eight months to right now, made any sense.
I stood and made my way toward him. “Pretend what? I don’t even understand what you’re talking about.”
“What I’m talking about? Really, Talya?” His voice grew harder in disbelief as he spun around to face me.
I froze in place, unsure how to make sense of any of this.
He gripped the front of his suit, right over his heart, his chest rising and falling faster with each breath.
“I poured everything I felt in that letter and you shut me down.”
“Ezra, what letter? What do you mean you asked me to come to Paris?” My tone grew more frantic with each question and I was growing more irritated the longer I was staying in the dark.
We’d talked about me visiting, but between his insane schedule and how consuming building Roots had been, we hadn’t been able to make it work. Even our phone calls had become infrequent because of the time difference and life pulling us in different directions. That was why the letters had started.
Ezra had said, If people back then could do it, so could we.
I’d thought it was romantic, but I’d quickly buried that thought since our relationship was purely platonic. At least, outside of my head and my heart it was.
I hadn’t realized the distance between us had vanished and that he now stood right in front of me. Resting a hand on his arm, I searched his gaze and found it filled with an ache that seemed to build the longer I couldn’t grasp what he was saying.
“Talk to me,” I whispered.
“You broke my heart, Talya.” he said, his voice breaking on my name, the strangled sound shooting a lancing ache straight through me.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, bewildered. “I-I don’t…”
“I love you, Talya,” he confessed, his gaze never leaving mine. “I’ve always loved you. I loved you when we were kids, and I haven’t stopped ever since.”
I sucked in a sharp breath, the words fracturing the space between us.
My hand slipped from his arm and I stumbled back a few steps.
The oxygen around us thinned and something squeezed around my chest. I clutched it, desperate to anchor myself to something solid as my mind reeled from his words and the unfiltered agony swimming in his pupils.