He’d been looking forward to this the entire time he’d been here, and now that it was time…
He was still looking forward to it. The trip would be a good break, a good chance to find some perspective. He needed to get his head on straight and figure out what was happening with his life.
But no matter how excited about it he was, a nervous itching teased at the back of his mind. He’d finally gotten himself settled in here, and leaving, even if only for a little while, felt like abandoning something unfinished. Like pausing a movie when it was getting to the good part. He wanted to know what happened next.
Pushing his anxieties down, he started piling the stacks of clothes into his duffel bag. It fit with room to spare, and he stood there, considering for a minute. Without really thinking about it, he patted his pocket for his phone.
Before he could pull it out and check the icons for any alerts or missed calls, a knock sounded on his door. He looked up to find Jared leaning against it. He was fiddling with his own phone, tapping something on the screen.
“Yeah?” Adam asked.
Without looking up, Jared gestured toward the other house. “Kim says dinner’s almost done.”
Adam smirked. The two of them had been disappearing together a lot recently. It didn’t surprise him much that she’d been the one to message Jared that it was time to come over. “Is that all she had to say?”
“Shut up.” Jared hit another couple of keys, then palmed his phone and tucked it away. “You ready to go or not?”
Casting another glance at the shit he was taking to Baltimore with him, Adam nodded. “Ready as I’ll ever be.” With a nod, he zipped up his bag.
But instead of moving from the door, Jared grinned. “You didn’t forget about protection, did you?”
“Excuse me?”
“Just checking. Because I have extra if you need any.”
The back of Adam’s neck heated. “Don’t worry about me.”
“Dude.” Jared snorted. “I worry about you all the time.”
“Thanks. I think.” With that, he shouldered past Jared and out into the hall.
As it happened, he hadn’t forgotten about condoms. He’d had the safe-sex talk drilled into his skull about a million times; he basically didn’t leave home without one. He sure as hell didn’t leave town to see his maybe-girlfriend without a solid half dozen.
Even as he’d been packing them, he’d wondered if it was worth the bother, though. The lack of sex—the lack of contact—these past few weeks had been getting to him the way it would any red-blooded male. If he’d still been in the mind-set he’d had when he’d arrived, he probably already would’ve been imagining the things he and Shannon could do, how good it would be to touch her again, even if it wasn’t serious. But he wasn’t.
Shannon wasn’t the one he thought about any more on those hot, lonely nights when he took himself in hand.
With Jared trailing along behind him, he crossed the path to the other house, where he knocked twice before tugging open the door and striding through. And there, right in front of him, was the girl he did think about. The one he couldn’t stop thinking about.
“Wow,” he said, freezing in his tracks.
Jared narrowly missed slamming into him, but Adam didn’t move. He just stood there, soaking it in.
It was definitely Jo all right, all glinting metal and bright blue hair, but she was showing off her arms and her legs, and the lines of characters inked around her ankle. Pale, unpainted toes that never saw the sun.
“Hey.” She shifted her weight, leaning back against the arm of the couch.
Adam jerked his gaze up to her face. Even there she looked different somehow. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but he liked it. A lot.
“See?” Jared said in a mock-whisper, clapping a hand on Adam’s shoulder as he stepped around him. “This is why I worry about you.”
“Fuck off.” Adam moved to let him pass. It brought him farther into the living room, closer to Jo, and the fire that hadn’t lit in his belly thinking about Shannon and him together in a hotel room all weekend ignited. Turned his skin to ash, and he was still feet away, and Jo’s posture was tight. Closed.
There was a tilt to her head, though. An invitation, maybe.
He took another step closer and cleared his throat. Shoved his hands into his pockets. “You look, ah, nice. Tonight.”
She raised an eyebrow skeptically.
He wanted to shove his foot into his mouth. “I mean, you always look nice, but you look…”
“Extra nice?” she volunteered, a ghost of a smile playing across the corners of her mouth.
“Yeah.” He nodded.
Her grin widened. “You don’t look too bad yourself.”
He didn’t look any different from usual, but damn if it wasn’t nice to hear.
Behind them, the rest of the gang had gathered in the kitchen, and the sounds of plates and silverware clanging intruded on their bubble of space, but Adam could scarcely hear it.
Her neckline was open, the fabric soft, and that contrast alone was enough to make his breath go tight. Like he was watching himself from a distance, he saw his own hand rise, and then he was touching her skin, her collarbone, grazing a little silver chain that draped along the long, proud column of her neck.
“You don’t usually wear jewelry.” He let his fingertip trace down toward the pendant hanging from the necklace.
“No.” Her inhalation made her chest rise, her voice holding the barest hint of a tremor. “I don’t.”
Darting his gaze from the fall of silver to the open lights of her eyes, he licked his lips. “It doesn’t look like you.”
“It was my mother’s.”
And it felt like it took something from her to say that. She didn’t talk much about her life beyond this little island and this slice of time, except when she was using her own history to cut him down. This was different. This was new, and it made him crave so much more.
It made him want everything, and for a second, it felt like all he had to do was ask for it.
Then, just before he reached the metal locket, her hand closed around his, stilling his movements. Her skin was warm, but it sent a chill up his arm as she stopped him.
“Sorry,” he said, pulling back. Remembering himself and where and who they were.
“It’s okay.” She didn’t let him go, holding on as their hands fell away. She stroked her thumb across the point of his pulse.
He got the message. Some things he could touch. Others he wasn’t allowed to—yet.
“It’s pretty,” he said, gathering himself. Turning their hands so he could intertwine their fingers.
“Thank you.”
Out of nowhere, he blurted, “I’m glad you came.” And it sounded stupid. This was her house after all. They had dinner here as a group more often than not. But usually, Jo found reasons to avoid it, to stay at work until the stars had all come out and everyone else had left.
“Well, you’re about to go off on your big adventure, right?” She shrugged as if she didn’t care, but her eyes were pinched. “Won’t have a chance to give you a hard time for almost a week.”
“What ever will I do?”
“Whatever you want to.” It came out a little too serious. A little too real.
And it wasn’t true. If he was going to do whatever he wanted, he’d be swooping in, closing that last bit of distance. Changing this push and pull into the press of bodies and a conversation of tongues and teeth and lips.
Maybe he should. He grasped her hand more tightly.
But before he could make up his mind to take that last step—to try his luck with this girl who seemed so impossible and yet so close—the air was broken by a sound. One even more unlikely than a kiss.
Shannon’s ringtone.
Chapter Eight
Adam hadn’t even meant to do it. One minute he was holding Jo’s hand, leaning in to finally touch her, and the next he’d torn himself away. His palm felt cold where his skin had been pressed to hers, but that didn’t slow him down. He reached instinctively, immediately for his phone, his heart in his throat from just this one small sign of contact, this connection to home.