Twenty-two
TWENTY-TWO
Huck
Regret.
God, so much regret.
When I walked into Betty’s weeks ago and ran into Josie for the first time in years, I wound up having what I thought could easily be considered an unhealthy number of thoughts about her. She consumed nearly every waking thought, and I wasn’t too proud to admit I thought about all the things I wanted to do to and with her.
Kissing her had been close to the top of the list.
With what I’d learned was happening in her personal life and what did happen when she decided to accept my offer to help her get out, the thoughts I had about Josie had shifted. They were all about making sure I could see her through the worst of it and helping her to heal.
Sure, I’d had moments with her that made it impossible not to consider other possibilities, but for the most part, I was solely focused on her recovery.
Ever since I brought her home from the hospital, things had changed. With each day that passed, I saw new parts of her to admire and respect—her determination and tenacity, her softness and vulnerability, and her laughter and playfulness.
And once Josie started going to her therapy sessions and getting her rehab for her shoulder, I found myself unable to resist the urge I had to start steering us where I hoped to see us go. As her physical and emotional health improved—she’d been getting great progress reports from the doctor and physical therapist and had only had one nightmare not long after she started therapy—I felt better about taking baby steps toward finding something even more meaningful between us.
I didn’t want to push her before she was ready; I didn’t want to be blind to the fact she likely had a lot to work through with her therapist.
But I was struggling to hold myself back. I was finding it extremely difficult not to blur the line between friendship and attraction.
I wanted to do more than just touch her arm or squeeze her hand. I wanted more than the occasional hug and constant conversations.
I wanted to kiss her.
I wanted to taste her.
I wanted to touch her in places I’d never touched her before.
I wanted to make her mine.
So, I thought about all those things. I thought about them often—not only just doing them, but also about how it would feel. Would her lips be as soft as they seemed? How would she taste? When I touched her body, would it shudder beneath my fingertips? And how would she react when I called her mine?
Now, I was here in an arcade with the front of her body pressed against mine, and I’d finally gotten the opportunity to kiss her. No matter how many times I’d imagined it, no matter how many nights I’d fallen asleep fantasizing about it, none of it compared.
And all I could do now was feel regret.
Regret that I hadn’t done it sooner, that I hadn’t stuck around all those years ago and given into the feelings I had for her. Being so inexperienced, knowing I was leaving, I didn’t think I had the right to ask her to wait around for me.
But I should have.
Kissing her now, realizing I’d denied us both from having this for all these years, there was no question I felt regret.
No sooner had I honored her request to kiss her and captured her mouth with mine, Josie’s legs buckled. The hand I’d had resting at her hip slid around the back of her waist and held her tight to me.
One of Josie’s hands had drifted up my neck to the back of my skull to angle my head down to her. Her other hand was resting on my chest, her fingertips pressing firmly into the muscle there.
Simply having her in my arms like this, feeling her lips pressed against mine, had exceeded all my expectations. But when my tongue ran along the seam of her lips and she parted them, granting me access to her mouth, it elevated our kiss to another level.
Her mouth was wet and hot, and she tasted incredible.
Then Josie rewarded me with a soft moan, something I only knew had happened because I could feel the vibration of it against my tongue. The sounds of the arcade were all around us, but I wasn’t paying attention to any of them.
It was just us.
Huck and Josie, kissing in the middle of an arcade on a random Wednesday afternoon.
And it was everything I never knew I needed.
Unable to stop myself, I took the kiss deeper, my tongue driving in to explore the warmth of her mouth.
Josie’s fingernails dug in firmly against my chest as I took what I’d been craving for weeks.
I took and took, feeling like I’d never get enough. And then I gave. I gave her a mere fraction of what I thought she deserved to have.
Josie.
Fuck, Josie.
All these years, all this time.
My heart had been pounding in my chest from the second she brushed her lips against mine and ordered me to kiss her. Now, it was hammering wildly, feeling like it was in the middle of running a marathon.
And my oxygen supply seemed to be decreasing. My chest was constricting, the tightness an unfamiliar sensation. I’d never experienced it before, especially not when I kissed someone.
It was her.
Without having to give it a second thought, I knew it was her.
It always had been.
Completely consumed but worried I might pass out if I didn’t stop, I begrudgingly tore my mouth from hers.
There was so much to say, but I couldn’t seem to find any words. Maybe part of the reason for that was because I needed to find a way to catch my breath before attempting to speak. Josie’s breathing was just as labored as mine, her chest rising and falling rapidly.
With my forehead resting against hers and one hand curled around the side of her neck, I stroked my thumb around the front of her throat.
“Pac-Man is my new favorite game,” Josie declared.
“Yeah. Mine, too.”
“One day, when I have a house of my own and can afford it, I’m going to buy a Pac-Man arcade game,” she added.
Laughter spilled out of me, and it was a good thing it did, because if I allowed my thoughts to run wild, I wasn’t sure I would have been able to lighten the mood.
Josie seemed content to keep talking, to get answers to her questions. “What did we just do, Huck?”
There was no reason to hold back. We’d come this far, and I wasn’t about to turn back now. “We did what we should have done years ago.”
“What?” There was an edge of doubt in Josie’s tone, like she couldn’t understand why I would have said what I just said.
“After that kiss, tell me you feel differently,” I demanded, pulling my head back so I could look at her. “Because that kiss just made me realize that I made the biggest mistake of my life by not making you mine years ago.”
Her lips parted in shock, disbelief etched into her features. “Huck, I?—”
“Fuck, Josie, I never should have left you after high school,” I clipped, needing her to know precisely how I felt. “Where would we be right now if I had stayed?”
Josie bit the corner of her lip, likely taking a moment to consider precisely how different our lives would have been. Her hand that had been at the back of my head drifted down slightly to my neck, where she squeezed. “You had to go. That was your dream, and I never would have wanted to take that away from you.”
No, she wouldn’t have.
Because that’s just who she was.
But it still didn’t change the way I felt.
I shook my head, feeling so much guilt and regret consuming me. “Even if that’s the case, I should have looked you up when I came back. I should have tried anything I could to get you back in my life. It’s not like I haven’t had the resources in all the years I’ve been working at Harper Security Ops.”
“Don’t do this,” she pleaded with me, her voice a touch over a whisper. “Please, don’t do this.”
“I’m sorry. I just feel like I’ve wasted so much time.”
“And I feel like I’ve just experienced the best thing in my life, and the last thing I would ever want you to feel about it is regret.”
I brought both hands up to frame her face. “I don’t regret you. Not for one second. I just wish I had done something differently than I did.”
“But we can’t go back to change it, so dwelling on it or allowing ourselves to feel guilty about what we didn’t do then won’t make anything better for either one of us.”
“How can you not be sad about it? How can you not hate that we could have been with one another all these years? Don’t you feel like we missed out on so much that we can’t ever get back?”
I was bombarding her with so many questions, and part of me felt bad about it, but I was so consumed by disappointment with myself. I could have saved her from a world of hurt if I’d thought about her when I got back.
I didn’t, and I’d never be able to fix that.
In a surprising twist, the corners of Josie’s mouth tipped up slightly. “I don’t think it’s unreasonable to believe that if things had been different, we would have both been very happy. Of course, there’s a part of me that wonders what if. I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t the case. But like I said before, we can’t change the past. All we can do is move forward from here. And I’m not sad, because I know you, Huck. I know you’ll make whatever happens from here on out better than I could have ever dreamed of having. I don’t want to look back at what could have been. Now that we’re here, I know the best days of my life are ahead of me.”
I closed my eyes and exhaled.
She was right.
And gracious.
I didn’t think I deserved that, either. Not when Josie had every justifiable reason to be upset with me for leaving and never coming back for her.
Her hands had fallen to my waist, where she tightened her grip and asked, “Will you try?”
“Try what?”
“To forgive yourself. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in therapy, it’s that we’re all always going to make mistakes. Some are worse than others. But we need to find a way to forgive ourselves for those mistakes, Huck. And I want you to do that. Please, try to do that. For me.”
Even if I didn’t want to do that, even if I didn’t think I deserved it, I refused to deny her anything. So, I nodded slowly. “I’ll try, honey.”
“Good. Now, are we going to do that again?”
“Kiss?”
“Well, I wasn’t referring to that, but I guess now that you mention it, I should get some clarification on that as well,” she joked.
“What are you talking about?” I asked her.
The smile she wore lit up her face, her eyes just as expressive. “I was talking about Pac-Man.”
“You want to play again?”
She shrugged. “I thought it was fun. Plus, maybe if we advance to a higher level than last time, we can have another celebration.”
I wrapped my arms around her waist, pulled her closer than she already was, and promised, “Whether we do well at the game or not, I’m certain we’ll still be celebrating again multiple times before the day is over.”
“That works for me. But could we try to get to the next level?”
I tipped my head to the side and assessed her. “I thought you said you knew me. Do you think I’m not going to give this all I’ve got?”
“Fair point.”
“Kiss me one more time, Josie,” I urged her. “Then we’ll play another game.”
Josie didn’t hesitate.
She tipped her chin up, lifted slightly on her toes, and touched her lips to mine. It was soft and sweet. It was perfect, just like her.
And although I’d asked her to kiss me, it didn’t take long for me to take over the kiss and go deeper. I couldn’t help myself.
I was kissing Josie Day for the second time in my life. I wanted to make it count.
Once we managed to tear ourselves away from one another, we turned our attention back to the game and started another round.
The only downside was that we wound up losing all our lives two levels before we had the first time we played.
But I couldn’t say I was upset.
The truth was, we’d gotten easily distracted.
Because every time we completed a level, we didn’t celebrate with high-fives, smiles, or a hug. We celebrated with kisses. And if I was honest, it took me some time each round to get my head back in the game. I just wasn’t as focused as I’d been before, but on the bright side, Josie didn’t seem to mind. In fact, I was willing to bet that she was struggling for the very same reason as me.
Afterward, we decided to head home.
No sooner had we gotten into the truck and started making our way there, Josie broke the silence.
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Always. What’s up?”
I had expected her to respond immediately with whatever was on her mind. Since I was driving and not thinking much about it, I hadn’t anticipated a deep conversation. I assumed she was going to ask me about our plans for the rest of the night or what we were going to have for dinner.
She didn’t.
Instead, she remained silent for quite some time. I grew concerned and glanced over to see her looking at me with an intense look in her eyes.
“Josie, honey, what is it?” I asked, worried that something was wrong.
“Are we… I mean, are you… should I consider myself off the market?” she stammered.
I was glad I’d come to a stop behind another car at a light at that point, because I needed the time to look at her. “Do you want to be on the market?”
She shook her head. “No. Honestly, I don’t know that I could be like this with anyone else again. It’s only because it’s you that I feel safe enough to explore something like this so soon. I just don’t want to make assumptions about where you stand with this. Maybe you’re against labeling this, or perhaps you don’t want to make any statements about exclusivity since we’ve only really shared a handful of kisses in an arcade.”
If I didn’t think it would have the potential to freak her out completely, I might have told her exactly how I felt about her, about how I wanted to build a life with her. “First, I’m not the kind of guy who casually dates. If I’m going to be with someone, I’m only with them. Second, I’ve had feelings for you since high school. I screwed up immensely back then, but I’ve got the opportunity to make it right all these years later. I’m not going to screw it up again. And lastly, we might have only shared a handful of kisses, but they were the best of my life. I’d be devastated if you didn’t want to consider yourself off the market.”
She stared at me in silence for a second or two before she nodded and said, “So, this is us. We’re doing this.”
I reached out for her hand, linked my fingers with hers, and replied, “Yes, Josie, we’re doing this. Are you okay with that?”
A smile formed on her face. “Yes, Huck. I’m more than okay with that.”
I wanted to reach across the center console and kiss her again, but the sound of a horn from the car behind us alerted me to the fact the light had changed.
So, I returned my attention to the road and started driving again.
And I did it while feeling the best I had in ages.