My breath catches, but I continue. “It smelled like you. After a while it went away, but for a few weeks it was like you were there with me.”
His fingers flex on my cheek and he withdraws his hand. The bed shifts beneath me as he moves, but I don’t look up from my study of the sheets. When his hands come to my waist, my eyes shoot to his face.
“Sit up,” he says. “You let me know if you’re okay.”
My brows furrow, then realization hits as his fingers slowly draw the tank-top I’m wearing up by the hem. He does it slowly, probably more so to gauge my reaction than to tantalize, but it has the same effect. By the time he has the shirt up over my shoulders and tosses it on the ground, I forget how to breathe.
He keeps his eyes on mine, only flashing down to my bare chest for the slightest of moments, then he tugs a T-shirt over my head. It’s still warm from his body and I automatically ball the hem in my hands and bring it to my nose.
Olfactory memories are incredibly intense. For years after Damian, I couldn’t walk into a gym or a sportsplex without becoming violently nauseous. Even now, I’m not sure how I’d handle Jack’s gym from the scent alone.
His shirt, on the other hand, brings to mind much more pleasant memories. Like the night of our first kiss. I’d been sixteen and were watching a movie at his and Livvie’s house. She’d passed out on the floor with us on the couch. As the movie played the space between us diminished until our shoulders and knees brushed. Our hands lay next to each other on the cushion, pinkies touching, until our fingers knotted. Loving him felt inevitable. As sure as gravity and as unrelenting.
I’d looked up from our hands, my heart racing, and found him watching me with those green eyes. Then we were kissing, Livvie and movie forgotten. I don’t even remember how it started, just that I never wanted it to end.
Whenever I wore his shirt to sleep that first year, the smell reminded me of that kiss—how beautiful and innocent, okay, well maybe not that innocent, but how real intimacy is shared, not taken.
“What were you just thinking about?” he asks, his eyes on my face.
My cheeks heat and I drop the hem of his shirt. “Our first kiss,” I say.
His gaze heats just like it did in my memories. “You’re killing me here,” he says.
“What’d I do?” I ask.
“I’m trying to be a gentleman,” he says, nudging my shoulder until I’m laying next to him.
“What do you mean?”
“Seeing you in my shirt, being here in this room, having a taste of you. It’s like no time has passed. I like all those things too fucking much.” He turns over and flicks off the light.
In the darkness, surrounded by him, it’s easier for me to let the truth out. “I like it too,” I say.
“What do you want from me?” he asks finally. “Whatever you want, you’ve got it. I can be your friend. If that’s all you need, I can do it. I just want to have you in my life again. And not like it’s been these past few years where we act like strangers. I want my best friend back. Even if that means that’s all we’ll ever be.”
I bite my lip as I consider. “I don’t, I mean, I’m not sure if I can do more than that.”
I try to keep a bit of distance between us, but his hands wrap around my waist and tug me into his arms. Even though his shirt is like heaven, being snuggled up to him is a million times better. I wish, not for the first time, I’d had him those first years in college instead of just his shirt.
“We can take it easy,” he says. “If that’s what you need. I just missed you, Sofie. So fucking much.”
“I missed you, too,” I say against his chest, my breath shuddering in my own. “I’m so sorry for leaving like I did.”
“Shhh,” he says. “That part is over. You didn’t do anything wrong. I wish I’d known, I wish I could have helped you, but I’m not going to blame you for what you did to cope.”
“I was just scared,” I say.
He tucks me closer, his heartbeat a steady drum under my ear, his arms a cage all around me. “I know, baby. I know you were. But you don’t have to be scared anymore. If I hadn’t been so blinded, I would have seen it. I should have seen it regardless.”
“It’s not your fault. Not any of it. I don’t blame you.”
“You should,” he says, and I can feel his pain in the dark because it’s an echo of my own. “You should blame me. I should have known who he is, what he could do. I should have kept him away from you.”
My hands rub his back. “No one can know what lies inside a person. It took me a long time to understand that, accept it. I didn’t know either, not really. Some people are just evil. I’m sure you know that.”
He tucks my head under his chin and I sigh, remembering how well we fit together. Like two pieces of the same messed up puzzle.
“Yeah, I guess I’ve seen my fair share of that.”
“Was it hard? The deployments, I mean. I thought of you when you were there and I think that was the worst, knowing you could die and I wouldn’t be there.”
“Hey,” he says, tipping my face up. “Don’t. I’m okay. We’re okay. No more looking back.” He presses a kiss to my forehead. “No more regrets.”