He wove his fingers together and rested them on his chest, the incongruous numbers tattooed across his knuckles meshed. He sat very still, and seemed to drift away in his thoughts.

I kept my attention on my page, until I felt the gravity of his stare burning into my forehead, like I could sense a pull. Drawn to him. I always had been.

When I turned to him, the grin on his face was something I almost didn’t recognize because it’d been so long since I’d seen it. But I had, so many times before. I’d witnessed it in the carefree boy who had meant everything to me.

His blue eyes danced as they flitted from my sketch pad to my face. “It used to drive me fucking crazy that you wouldn’t let me see what you kept hidden inside those books.”

I gasped when he suddenly moved. He twisted onto his knees in almost a crouch, his chin tucked and his gaze peeking at me from just above the top margin of my book. Predatory. As if at any second he was going to pounce and wrestle it from me. My breath caught. Tingles sped under the surface of my skin, and he hadn’t even touched me.

My hands tightened around the edges of my sketch pad like a vise.

“And you know what, Aly?” His eyes darted everywhere, absorbing, taking in the lines of my face, my mouth, my hands, the pad I clutched to my chest, before they fixed firmly on my own. “It still drives me fucking crazy.”

Strength bunched in the muscles rippling along his shoulders, but in his movements there was this playfulness, so much like I remembered. An echo of our childhood sounded in my ear, the way he’d pestered and begged me to let him see, but never forced me into anything I didn’t want to do.

At that time it was because I was embarrassed and afraid he might make fun of me. I didn’t want him to see the inexperience in my drawings. Now it was because it’d be like slicing my heart open and exposing everything I wasn’t ready for him to see.

It’d scare him as much as it scared me.

Shock stunned me when he abruptly grabbed me by the ankles and dragged me down, forcing me flat on the bed. The sketch pad slid off my lap, facedown on the sheets.

Suddenly I was staring up at Jared’s gorgeous face as he hovered over me. He straddled my waist, and I couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, could only feel the blood coursing through my veins and pounding in my ears.

His nose was an inch from mine, his hands resting on both sides of my head, but he was everywhere – everywhere – sinking into my consciousness and my spirit.

Then he smirked, all cute and smug, and my eyes went wide when the realization hit me. “Oh my God, Jared Holt, don’t you even think about it. Don’t you dare,” I begged in a whisper, my voice strained with need and a little bit of old childhood fear.

He knew exactly how to get me.

“What?” he asked with feigned innocence, before his fingers began to tap at the center of my chest on my breastbone with his index fingers. His legs cinched around my sides to keep my arms pinned to the bed. This had been Christopher and Jared’s favorite form of torture.

I bucked up, trying to throw him from my body, or maybe I was trying to bring him closer; I couldn’t tell. “Jared… stop… Oh my God, you’re such an ass.”

I made an attempt at flailing my arms. His thighs held them down. Held me down.

Oh my God.

He laughed, quiet and low. “You’ve tortured me for years. Don’t you think it’s only fair I pay you back a little?”

The taps came harder, faster, his touch no longer that of a boy’s fingers, but now heavy and strong. But somehow it felt the same.

How intensely had I missed this?

The push and pull. The tease and the taunt.

I’d missed my friend.

Furiously, I squirmed. Tears gathered, streaking down the sides of my face, and dripping into my hair before I knew it. A low whine rose from deep within my throat and mixed with the quiet laughter I couldn’t hold back.

A hushed chuckle tumbled from Jared’s mouth, so thick it was almost a pant, his expression so soft, like just maybe he was seeing the exact same thing as I was.

And I could feel this change in the air. As if every cell in his body shifted, Jared slowed, then stilled. Mesmerized, I watched as his tongue flicked out to wet his full lips. I was hyperaware of every inch of his body that touched mine, the fire that lit under my skin, how our chests rose and fell in sync. He raised a cautious hand, his attention pitching between my eyes and his intent. A dense hesitation weighted his movements before he seemed to give in and gently ran the back of his fingers along the trail of tears that had slipped down my temple.

A fragmented sigh stuttered from my lips as they parted. Never had I felt anything better than what I found in Jared’s touch.

His gaze captured mine before his fingertips traced down my cheek, swept along my jaw, and barely glanced over my lips. “You grew up on me, Aly,” he murmured, the words rough, almost in awe.

“You were gone for a long time,” I whispered against the fingers he fluttered along my bottom lip.

“For too long.” He seemed to blink away the thought, as if he didn’t want to believe the truth that had just fallen from his mouth. He rolled to his side. Intuition made me follow, and I turned to lie face-to-face with him. In silence, I stared at the boy who had held me hostage in my heart and mind for so long. My secret.

Could anything be more surreal than the fact that he now lay in my bed?

Thankfulness swept through me in a torrent of joy.

Smiling softly, he reached out and pressed the pad of his thumb to my chin. The notion was sweet, but it did things to me that I didn’t quite understand. I mean, I did. I understood desire, the overwhelming need that built in the pit of my stomach and longed for more. But this was so much greater than that.

“I bet whatever you keep hidden in the pages of those books is absolutely beautiful, Aly.” He swallowed, diverting his gaze to the far wall before he dropped it to meet mine. A tender palm came to rest on the side of my face. He caressed his thumb over the apple of my cheek. “How could it not be? Look at you… you have to be the most beautiful creature I’ve ever seen.”

Pain reverberated in his words. Still they wrapped around me like the warmest embrace.

My fingers ventured to his chest, twisting in his shirt. The strong throb of his pulse thundered under them. “Everything I love is in the pages of those books, Jared.”

The admission sounded like a confession of my heart. I realized that was exactly what it was. On some level I wanted him to know what he wasn’t ready to hear.

Stark sunlight blinded my eyes. I squinted and adjusted my sunglasses as I settled back in my chair and lifted my face to the intensity of the summer sun. Stretching my legs out in front of me, I bathed in the comfort seeping into my skin.

Megan slurped from her iced coffee beside me. “I’m sweating like a dog over here, Aly.”

I tossed her a grin. Her blond hair was all mussed and piled in a mess on the top of her head as she fanned at the back of her neck. “You are such a wimp.” I lifted my face back to the sky. “Are you ever going to get used to the heat or am I destined to hear you complain about it for the rest of our lives?”

“Um, yeah, you’re probably going to hear me complain about it for the rest of our lives. There will be no shaking Rhode Island from my bones just like there’s no shaking Phoenix from yours.”

“Touché.” I smirked, and she laughed before she leaned her elbows on the small bistro table between us.

“I feel like I haven’t hung out with you in forever. I miss you,” she said. She took another sip from her straw, and I went for mine. We sat outside a little coffee shop on Mill, watching people as they ambled down the busy street. This was the first day we’d had to ourselves since the night when my life had been tilted on its axis.