Chapter 15
FIFTEEN
POWELL
The community center always smelled vaguely like floor wax, burnt coffee, and the ghosts of a hundred potlucks. It was a place where people argued about who was bringing deviled eggs instead of anything that really mattered. Under normal circumstances, that mix settled me.
Tonight, the scent made my stomach twist.
We’d spent an hour hashing out final assignments for the Twelve Stops, and I’d caught exactly none of it.
My body had been in the room; my mind was still in my kitchen two nights ago, standing in the patch of light between the stove and the island with Jess’s mouth soft against mine and her hand fisted in my shirt like she needed me to stay right there.
And then the moment her whole body had gone rigid. The shock in her eyes before she jerked away so fast, I might as well have been electrified.
Since then, she’d gone back to doing everything possible to avoid me.
I’d given her space, mostly because I didn’t know what to say.
But I’d been aware I’d see her tonight for this meeting with other local business owners.
And yeah, I’d seen her. But she’d barely looked at me.
Not during the meeting, not when she’d spoken up about booth spacing, not even when she’d passed me the volunteer list. Her focus never drifted my way. Not once.
If it had been anyone else, I might’ve assumed I imagined the whole damn thing.
But I hadn’t. Her warmth still vibrated against me.
Mayor Allen dismissed everyone with a clap that echoed, and chairs scraped across the linoleum in a disorganized chorus.
People shuffled their notes, bundled up, and drifted toward the exit in little herds, talking about weather patterns and generator placement and whether Mrs. Dillard’s gingerbread had a prayer of surviving humidity this high.
I kept my eyes on the mess of extension cords and maps in front of me, pretending to gather my things slower than normal. I didn’t want to crowd her. Didn’t want to seem like I was pouncing. But I needed to talk to her.
Except Jess didn’t bolt.
She stayed exactly where she was, standing beside the long folding table, her hands clasped together in front of her in a way that immediately warned me something was wrong.
Jess Donnegan didn’t clasp her hands. She talked with them.
Snapped with them. Directed entire spaces with them. This? This posture screamed nerves.
Nerves about me.
That realization sent a slow breath seeping out of my chest as the last of the committee filed out. The door clicked shut. The buzz of the fluorescent lights intensified in the sudden quiet.
I finally let myself turn toward her fully.
“You’re still here.” It came out softer than I intended, because I’d braced for empty space where she’d been standing.
She lifted her chin a fraction. “Yeah. I—” She swallowed. “We need to talk.”
Every inch of me stilled. I forced a careful nod, trying hard not to telegraph the tightness suddenly gripping my ribs. “If this is the part where you say you regret—”
“It’s not.”
I hadn’t realized I’d been holding my breath until something in my chest loosened enough that I took a new one. Her voice hadn’t wavered on that. She meant it.
But whatever she’d come to say still had her tied up in knots. That alarmed me more than if she’d stormed in and yelled.
“It’s about senior year.”
Somehow, that stillness magnified with dread. “What about senior year?”
She didn’t glance away. She didn’t soften the words. She went straight for the truth she’d been carrying like shrapnel. “It’s about Trent Mallory.”
A full-body jolt shot through me—memory, anger, dread, all firing at once. “Trent—?”
“You were talking to him,” she said, voice tight enough to vibrate. “By the gym doors the last week of school. I walked up behind you, and before I could say anything—” She swallowed hard. “You said I was nobody to you.”
My heart stopped dead.
She kept going, like she had to get it out or choke on it. “That was all I heard.” Her voice cracked. “I thought we were… something. Or on our way to something. And then you told him I was nobody.”
The floor under me shifted, as if an earthquake rocked the community center. It was sure as hell rocking my reality.
“Jess.” But her name came out hoarse, useless. “God—Jess.”
“I know it was ten years ago,” she said quickly, hugging her arms tighter around herself, “but it didn’t feel like that when I heard it. It felt like… I’d made the whole thing up. Every look. Every moment. All of it.”
A flicker of pain twisted her mouth. “And it was humiliating. I felt stupid. Small. So I just… walked away and refused to ever give you the chance to confirm it.”
The full horror of it landed in my chest like a sledgehammer.
Because I remembered Trent. I remembered how he’d been looking at her. I remembered the exact oily smile he’d had when he said her name. And I remembered my own voice throwing up a shield I never once imagined could hit her instead.
“Jess,” I whispered, “I didn’t know you were there. I didn’t know you heard me.”
Her laugh was bitter and small. “Yeah, well. I did.”
I stepped closer without meaning to. “You didn’t hear the first part.”
She blinked. “What first part?”
“The part where I told him to leave you alone.” My voice came out scraped raw. “The part where I was trying to get him to back off without giving him a reason to escalate.”
Her breath punched out of her. Confusion. Hurt. Something cracking open.
I kept going because she needed the whole truth, or none of it mattered.
“I said it because he was dangerous,” I said, my voice low and steady now, because this part needed to be true in every syllable. “If he thought I cared—if he thought I liked you—it would’ve made you a target. He was looking for pressure points. Leverage. Ways to screw with people.”
The tiniest tremor vibrated her mouth. “And you thought pretending not to care would… protect me?”
“It was the only thing I could think of.” The memory hit me in unearthed fragments: his smirk, his too-interested eyes tracking her down the hallway, my pulse hammering in my ears.
“I didn’t want him to know I’d been—hell, half the year I barely managed to look at you without forgetting how to breathe.
If he’d caught a whiff of that…” I shook my head. “I didn’t trust him with it.”
Silence stretched out long enough that my heartbeat started doing erratic things in the hollow beneath my ribs. She didn’t move. She didn’t yell. But she also didn’t relax and open the way I needed her to.
“Jess,” I said softly, “if I had known you heard me—if I had known that’s what you took away from it—I would’ve run after you. I would’ve explained. I would’ve done literally anything to make sure you never felt like you were nothing to me.”
She let out a shaky exhale that made something twist painfully inside me. “I didn’t want to ask,” she admitted. “I was embarrassed. I thought you’d just confirm it. And it was easier to be angry than look pathetic.”
“You were never pathetic.” I said it with conviction because there was no universe where that word and Jess Donnegan belonged anywhere near each other.
“You were… you.” I scrubbed a hand through my hair.
“Smart and driven and intimidating as hell in the best way. I didn’t think I had a chance. Not really.”
Her breath hitched. “You did.”
Regret is a strange thing—sharp and dull at once. It hit me in a wave. Ten years of missed chances landed in my chest with the weight of everything we could’ve been.
“I’m sorry. For the line. For being a coward. For not giving you the truth when you deserved it.”
Her eyes softened—barely, but enough that I saw the crack forming in that wall she carried like armor. “I’m sorry too,” she whispered. “For not asking. For holding onto it like gospel.”
We stood like that for a moment—two people in a too-bright room with too many ghosts hovering between us, and something new trying to breathe in the space that remained.
Then she stepped closer. Not much. But enough.
“Powell.” Her voice trembled in a way that shot straight to the center of me. “That kiss…”
Every molecule in my body seemed to align toward her. “Yeah?” I barely managed the word.
“It wasn’t a mistake,” she whispered.
The relief that flooded me was so fierce it nearly buckled my knees. I let the words settle like they were stitched straight into my skin.
It wasn’t a mistake.
Christ.
“Jess…” Her name came out low, like my voice had dropped into some deeper register that only existed for her.
She looked up at me, and something in her expression flickered open. Scared, yeah. But hopeful too.
I closed the distance slowly, giving her every opportunity to change her mind. Her breath brushed my chin. Her lashes trembled. She didn’t back away, and that was the biggest victory.
I lifted a hand, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear. My fingertips skimmed the warm edge of her jaw, and she released a quiet, shaky breath, like she was done fighting. Like maybe she hadn’t ever wanted to fight in the first place.
That tiny sound undid every last bit of restraint I had left.
I angled closer, and she rose the slightest bit onto her toes—a small, unconscious lean that said more than any speech she could’ve given.
I needed no further invitation.
The first press of her mouth to mine was soft, a testing, tender touch that made my lungs stall out completely.
She kissed me like someone rediscovering something she wasn’t sure she was allowed to want.
But when I slid my other hand to the small of her back, guiding her a breath closer, she let out a quiet noise against my mouth—half gasp, half surrender—and the kiss deepened without either of us deciding to make it happen.
Her fingers curled into my shirt, pulling me closer. She tipped her head enough to change the angle, and suddenly her lips opened under mine, warm and sweet and yielding in a way that sent heat surging straight through me.
I hadn’t touched her for years—not really—and somehow my body remembered every version of wanting her. The way she leaned into me. The way she tasted faintly of the coffee she always clung to. The soft catch of her breath when I let my thumb sweep beneath her cheekbone.
I kissed her deeper—slow, hungry in a way I couldn’t hide anymore—and she answered with a soft, helpless sound that landed like a spark in the center of my chest.
When we finally broke for air, she didn’t move far. She stayed close, forehead brushing mine, breath mingling with mine, fingers still caught in the fabric of my shirt like she didn’t trust her knees yet.
Her voice came out barely a whisper. “So… what now?”
I cupped her cheek lightly, letting my thumb trace the warm line of her skin. “Now we finish this festival. Now we fix your truck. Now we stop letting things we never talked about decide our lives.”
A breathless little laugh escaped her. “That sounds dangerously mature.”
My lips quirked. “I have my moments.”
Her eyes softened in a way I’d never seen, even in high school. “Yeah, I’m starting to see that.”
And standing there in the middle of an empty, fluorescent-lit room, with December breathing cold against the windows and her warmth pressed close to me, I realized something simple and astonishingly clear:
This wasn’t the end of anything.
It was the beginning.