Chapter 5 #2
That earned me a small smile, wistful and knowing.
We both fell silent again, the kind that makes you aware of your own breathing. The headlights swept the familiar curve in the road, the one that hid the pull-off where I’d learned every inch of this woman’s body once upon a time.
“Do you ever get tired of being alone?” she asked, her voice breaking through the quiet.
“Yeah,” I said. “More than I let on.”
“Same.” Her voice cracked slightly. “It’s difficult letting myself trust again. Sometimes I think I forgot how.”
Something in her tone made me ease my foot off the gas.
“Jem?”
“Can you pull over, please?” she asked.
I slowed and turned the wheel, my tires crunching over the gravel that lined the side of the road until I hit dirt. The car idled at the edge of the trees, and my heart was pounding like it used to when we’d come out here.
She turned toward me in her seat, her expression determined. “I trust you, Charlie. I always have.”
The words set off a swooping motion in my gut, and for half a heartbeat, I couldn’t tell if it was relief or warning. I didn’t know what she was building to, and suddenly I didn’t know if I wanted to know.
“That goes both ways,” I said, my words coming out sounding rough.
She drew in a breath and lifted her chin. “And it’s precisely because I trust you, and because you know what this … this loneliness … feels like, that I need to ask if you’d … if you’d kiss me. Like you used to.”
For a second, I thought I’d misheard her. My brain stalled, trying to make sense of the words that had just come out of her mouth, but my body already understood. Heat unfurled low in my gut, sharp and sudden, that familiar pull snapping awake.
I blinked once, twice. Jemma was watching me, her gaze steady even though her chest was rising and falling fast.
Christ. I’d spent half the day trying not to think about the shape of her mouth, the way she used to taste. And now she was sitting three feet away, asking me to remember.
My pulse thrummed in my ears, loud enough to drown out the whir of the heater.
“Are you sure?” I finally managed, pushing the words out past the lump in my throat.
Her laugh was broken, almost a sob. “No. But I can’t stop thinking about it. Wondering if it was better in my head than it really was. Wondering if anyone will ever kiss me like that again.” She swallowed. “Is it so wrong to just … want some goddamn affection from someone you actually like?”
Like.
I’d been thinking in bigger terms all day—about the way I used to love this woman, about how much of her I still carried in my heart—but I couldn’t fault her for her honesty.
Because we did like each other. I respected the hell out of Jemma Price, and she respected me right back.
I admired everything about her.
Fuck. I adored her.
“No,” I said, the words barely carrying over the hum of the heater. “It’s not wrong.”
My hand twitched on my knee, instinct telling me to reach for her, but I stopped myself. If she really wanted this, Jemma had to be the one to close the distance between us. To take us from friends to … wherever this would take us.
She watched me for a long moment, her eyes searching mine in the glow from the dash. “But?” she said at last, sensing my hesitation.
I dragged a hand over my jaw, feeling the stubble I’d grown since morning scraping against my palm. “But I don’t want to do something we might regret,” I said finally, my voice rough with everything I wasn’t saying.
Her gaze flicked down to my mouth before lifting to meet my eyes again. It was such a small movement, but it nearly stripped every ounce of resolve I had left.
I’d spent years telling myself that what we had was enough, and here she was now, asking for something that felt like every wish I’d ever had.
“Jemma,” I warned in a low growl. “This will change everything.”
She looked away, tongue darting out to wet her lips. “What if I want it to change?”
“Look at me, honey.” The endearment slipped out before I could stop it, but I didn’t want to take it back.
Slowly, she dragged her gaze back to mine. I felt my hands shaking as I reached out and brushed my fingers over the soft skin on her cheek, then down her jaw. “I need to know what this could mean for us. What do you mean when you say you want things to change?”
She tilted her face into my touch, her eyes fluttering shut for half a second before opening again, clearer this time and filled with resolve. With want.
With the kind of quiet bravery that comes from deciding you’re done being afraid of what happens next.
I’d loved my ex-wife, but what Jemma and I had was different—raw and consuming in a way nothing since had ever come close to touching.
But her answer still didn’t tell me what I needed to know.
Was this about filling an empty, lonely night next to a warm body? Because if it was, I didn’t know if I’d be able to walk away afterward.
I wasn’t sure I could go back to being just her friend.
“You mean physically?” I asked, my thumb still tracing the curve of her jaw. “You want to see if the spark’s still there, that’s all?”
Her eyes softened, and I watched a dozen things flicker behind them—hesitation, fear, something that looked a hell of a lot like hope.
“I don’t know,” she whispered. “Maybe that’s how it starts. But I can’t pretend it’s only that, Charlie. Not with you. Not anymore.”
She unbuckled her seat belt and crossed the console, her movements deliberate and sure, until her knees framed my hips, she lowered herself onto my lap, and everything else fell away.