forty-one #4
His hand was still warm against my arm when I pulled back. My breath caught, lips tingling from the kiss I swore I wasn't going to let happen.
"I can't—" I shook my head, standing too fast. The box slipped in my hands, the corner crumpling. "I can't do this again."
He rose, slower, steady, like he had all the time in the world. "Amira—"
"No." My voice cracked. "I spent the last two years getting you out of my system. I can't just undo that because you showed up at a bakery."
"I don't care how much you tried to get me out of your system," he said, softer now, "you never left mine."
The words burned, a truth I didn't want. I turned away, heart hammering, feet carrying me toward the curb.
Behind me, I heard his steps follow. Not rushed, not desperate. Just steady.
"At least let me get you home," he said. "It's late. You don't have to say anything. Just... let me do that much."
I swallowed hard, staring at the empty street, the way the lamplight stretched across the pavement. Every part of me wanted to keep walking. To leave him standing there like a ghost from another life.
But my body betrayed me. I stopped.
When I finally turned, his car wasn't here, no Monte in sight. Just him. Just Brooks, waiting like he'd wait all night if I made him.
I exhaled, long and shaky. "Fine."
We didn't speak as he walked me toward the corner, flagged a cab, and opened the door like nothing had changed. Like it was still two years ago.
I slid inside first, clutching the pastry box like a shield. He followed, the cab pulling away with the kind of silence that hummed louder than words.
The city blurred past the windows. My reflection stared back at me, lips still swollen from a kiss I couldn't name.
When the driver asked for the address, Brooks didn't answer first. He looked at me, waiting.
"Twenty-third and Court," I said finally, voice flat. My apartment. My real life. I lived two blocks over but If Brooks was anything like the Brooks I knew two years ago he would be at my door everyday."
The driver nodded and pulled away from the curb.
The ride was quiet except for the city bleeding past the windows—neon, late-night stragglers, a streetlight flickering like it couldn't make up its mind. I kept my gaze on my hands.
When we slowed in front of my building, my stomach knotted. The driver eased up to the curb. The car went still.
But I didn't move.
Neither did Brooks.
His eyes found mine in the glass, our reflections staring back like strangers who still knew too much. The silence stretched, hot and unbearable. My chest burned with everything I couldn't say, every reason I should've opened the door and walked away.
Instead, I sat there.
He shifted then, leaning forward just enough for his voice to cut through. "We're not done here."
Before I could react, he leaned closer to the driver. "Change of address. Azalea and Seventeenth."
The driver glanced back, uncertain, but Brooks's tone left no room for questions.
The car pulled back into traffic.
I should've told him to stop. Should've made him let me out right there on the corner.
But I didn't.
I just sat, pulse racing, as the city carried us farther from everything safe.
The car rolled to a stop in front of his building, and the sight of it made something twist in my chest.
Nothing had changed. The same black glass doors, polished so clean they caught the streetlights. The same uniformed doorman straightening at the sight of Brooks like the air itself shifted when he walked in.
I froze, half in the car, half out of it, suddenly twenty years old again with no business standing in this world.
But Brooks didn't give me time to second-guess. His hand brushed lightly at my back—not pushing, just there. Steady. Familiar.
Inside, the lobby was too clean, too precise. I hated how easily my body remembered the rhythm of it—my heels echoing against marble, the way heads turned when he walked past, the quiet dip of respect in the staff's voices when they greeted him.
The elevator ride was worse. Silent, except for the soft hum of gears pulling us higher. I pressed myself against the wall, staring at the numbers as they climbed, willing my heart to slow.
Brooks didn't look at me. Not directly. But his hand brushed mine once on the railing, and I hated how the smallest contact sent my pulse skittering.
When the doors opened, it felt like a threshold I shouldn't cross.
But I did.
The penthouse was exactly as I remembered—tall glass windows swallowing the city, the faint warmth of whatever cologne clung to him still in the air.
I turned to him, throat dry. "This is a mistake."
He stepped closer, close enough that the word mistake sounded thin and breakable between us. "Not to me."
The room felt too small then, the city too far away, every ounce of space collapsing into the inch between us.
And when I didn't move—when I didn't say no—he closed the distance.
You guys may think you know where this is going but I doubt it.
ten bands for anyone who guesses correctly