Chapter 19

19

KANNON

L ying there, breathless and tangled in Merritt’s arms left me feeling a little off. Discombobulated. I couldn’t believe what had just happened. This wasn’t how I thought the night would end. Hell, this wasn’t how I thought we would ever end up.

Yet here we were.

She was on her back, one arm thrown over her face, trying to catch her breath. I didn’t need to see her expression to know she was smiling. I felt the same damn way—like the ground beneath us had shifted in the best possible way. Like finally crossing the finish line after busting ass for twenty years.

I lifted myself off her slightly to find a more comfortable spot. I didn’t want to squish her. A small, satisfied smile played at her lips.

Neither of us said anything. I wasn’t sure what I could say. It had happened. Now what? Did we have a conversation about what it meant? I didn’t know what it meant, and I wasn’t sure I really wanted to think about it. This was something that took a minute to process.

I rolled away from her and found my boxers. I pulled them on and quietly padded down the hall to the bathroom. I took my time cleaning up, splashing cold water on my face and staring at my reflection for a beat longer than normal.

Kannon, you idiot. You really just went there, didn’t you?

But there wasn’t a shred of regret. Just disbelief that it had finally happened. After so many years of wanting, I had kind of accepted it would never happen for me and Merritt. She was the one that got away. I had learned to live with that and moved on.

Mostly .

I left the bathroom and walked to the kitchen. I grabbed a couple bottles of water from the fridge. I opened mine and took a long drink, then walked back to the living room where she was still lying naked on the floor.

“Thirsty?” I asked.

“Yes.” She sat up, her hair a mess and her cheeks flushed in a way that made her look even more beautiful.

“Here,” I said, handing it over.

“Thanks,” she said, her voice still a little hoarse. She drank deeply, draining half the bottle in one go.

“I should get dressed,” she said, seeming to finally notice her nudity.

“I’ll get you a blanket,” I offered.

“Actually, this floor is hard. Can we have this conversation in my room? Not that I’m expecting anything, but I’m guessing we should talk, and I would rather do it with my ass on a soft surface.”

I laughed and reached out my hand to pull her to her feet. We walked to her room, the air mattress in the center. She sat down and wrapped a blanket around her. I liked that she wasn’t kicking me out, but I wasn’t interested in the weird conversation.

“If my sixteen-year-old self knew this was in my future, he would have lost his mind,” I said and sat down beside her.

“If my sixteen-year-old self knew, she’d be squealing and acting like a damn fool.”

I loved seeing her like this—unguarded, real, without the walls she always kept up. It was just the way we used to be.

She finished drinking her water and lay down on the mattress, pulling the blanket over her. I stretched out beside her again, folding my hands behind my head. The silence between us wasn’t awkward. It never had been. We’d always been good at filling it, and tonight was no different.

“Do you ever think about the old days?” I asked, glancing at her.

“Of course. It feels like a lifetime ago sometimes.”

We started reminiscing, trading stories about our high school antics and the trouble we used to get into.

“We were always up to something,” she said, her voice tinged with nostalgia. “Remember when we stole Mr. Hargrove’s mower that one summer?”

“How could I forget?” I laughed, remembering how wild Merritt had been. “He had no idea what hit him.”

“You were so terrified you would get caught,” she recalled, giggling in that infectious way that was so typical of her.

“Only because you were the mastermind behind it all, and I was your willing accomplice,” I responded, laughing along. “We were going to mow lawns and make enough money to go see that movie.”

“We were always going to return it,” she said with a giggle.

“Of course we were.” I chuckled. “But not before we used it. You always did like to live on the wild side.”

“And now look at us,” she said. “You’re the rebel and I’m the uptight one.”

“You’re not uptight.”

She was silent for a moment. “I miss those days, Kannon. We were just kids, and everything seemed possible.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “We had our entire lives ahead of us and it felt like we could do anything.”

“Back when we were immortal,” she said with a sigh.

She had no idea how true that was. We had both been touched by loss. She lost her mother at a young age. I remembered wondering how she even got out of bed. But now I understood grief. You just kept living. You just kept moving forward. One foot in front of the other.

We lost ourselves in the silence for a while as we both stared at the ceiling. I didn’t know what was going through her head, but for me, it was a whirlwind of emotions and memories. A bittersweet tension filled the air between us.

There was one memory I didn’t bring up. One I didn’t dare touch, even though it was burning in the back of my mind like it had happened yesterday.

Graduation .

I could still see her in that stupid cap, all askew after she’d tossed it in the air. Her nose was pink from crying with her friends, her hair wild and her lip gloss smudged. She’d been wearing those strappy white heels that made her ankles wobble and a pair of sparkly earrings her dad had given her.

I’d been shaking like a damn leaf when I held her hands, looked into her eyes, and asked her to make me a promise. I knew she was going to college, and even back then, I think I understood our lives were never going to be the same. I felt the change mingled with the loss in the air as we stood in our caps and gowns.

“Promise me you won’t go breaking my heart by falling in love at college and forgetting about me.”

She had promised.

But she hadn’t kept it.

I never forgot our promise.

Even when I tried to move on—when I married Leah and tried to build a life with her—Merritt was always in the back of my head. Always there, a shadow I couldn’t shake. Leah knew it, too. It drove her crazy. We fought about it constantly. My friends couldn’t even mention Merritt’s name without Leah seeing red. I went out of my way to convince Leah I was long over Merritt, but I clearly didn’t do a good job of it. She knew. She had always known.

“What are you thinking about?” Merritt’s voice pulled me back to the present.

I turned my head to look at her. Looking into those pretty green eyes made greener when passion was pumping through her veins. I sure as hell couldn’t tell her what I was really thinking about.

“That time you used eight cans of shaving cream to fill Joe Sully’s locker after he cheated on Stacy,” I lied, a grin tugging at my lips.

Her laughter burst out of her, loud and obnoxious, just like it used to be. “Oh my God, I forgot about that! He was so mad, he couldn’t even see straight.”

“Mad at me, ” I reminded her. “Because I took the fall for you.”

“To this day, he still thinks you did it,” she said, shaking her head. “He used to complain about how much he hated you. I would always smile and nod.”

I smirked. “I had two black eyes in my senior photo because of that stunt.”

“The shiners suited you,” she teased, poking me in the ribs. “Made you look edgy.”

I grabbed her hand, holding it in mine to keep her from jabbing me again. “My mom was pissed,” I said.

“Oh, please. Your mom was always pissed about something. If it wasn’t the black eyes, it would’ve been that hideous shirt you wore. Or that cowlick you never smoothed down.”

I frowned, pretending to be offended. “I liked that shirt.”

“You were the only one.”

We kept going like that, the easy banter flowing as if no time had passed. For a while, it felt like we were back in high school, back when everything was simpler. I could see her relaxed expression and hear the lightness in her voice.

I wondered why I always stopped myself from going there with Merritt. Clearly, she wanted me just as badly as I wanted her back then. Hell, always. I never stopped wanting her. If sex helped us both drop our walls and laugh like we used to, could it mean this was what was always meant to be? Were we always meant to be together?

Both of us had been too afraid to make the first move. My heart squeezed. What if we had lost out on ten years because neither of us had dared to take the risk?

But then she shifted, the mood changing in an instant.

“You should probably go,” she said softly.

My stomach twisted, but I kept my expression neutral. “Yeah?”

She nodded, her eyes dropping to the blanket. “I mean, it’s late. And I couldn’t stand the embarrassment if your crew showed up in the morning and figured out what happened.”

Ah, there it was. The walls coming back up, brick by brick. I wasn’t about to beg her to let me stay. I had some dignity.

I sat up, swung my legs over the side of the mattress, and walked back to the living room. She followed behind me, watching as I got dressed. I caught her gaze once and it looked like she wanted to ask me to stay, but she didn’t. She said nothing.

When I was ready to leave, I hesitated by the door. “Goodnight, Merritt.”

She looked up, her expression unreadable. “Goodnight, Kannon.”

And just like that, I was out the door, the cool night air hitting me. I climbed onto my bike, started it up, and sped away.

I didn’t look back.