Page 63 of If We Were Young

“I thought you held my hand under the desk that day because you were trying to calm me down from a panic attack.”

He shook his head, his gaze never once breaking from mine. “No. I held your hand because I couldn’t bear another moment of not touching you.”

“But…”

The heat of his palm burnt into mine, liquid gold spreading up my arm.

“So I think if holding your hand feels like everything, then what happens if I do this?”

I forced myself to maintain eye contact as, with his free hand, he used a finger to trail up my throat and along the edge of my coat collar. I held in my breath as he then ran it along my cheekbone, around my ear, slipping into my hair.

“You almost kissed me once.” I stuttered the words, each syllable gushed with the pound of my heart.

“I know.” I could taste his breath, feel the warmth of his mouth hovering just above mine. Sweet Sake and Matthew combined. I wanted to inhale him.

“You could have. I wouldn’t have minded.”

He nodded and brushed his lips closer still. I wet mine with my tongue and it tanged at the almost taste of him. “The thing with my theory.” I had to strain to hear his whisper over the rushing in my ears. “Is that I’m pretty sure it’s because it’s meant to be perfect. You can’t deliver perfect half-hearted, or half promised. It has to be one hundred percent.”

“But you’re leaving in days, assuming I can help you with the rebrand?”

The intensity of his gaze ate me alive. “That’s why you have to be ready to speak, because I need you to say the words. Tell me you want it.”

My stomach plummeted to the core of the earth and he gave me a small, but almost sad smile. I ached all over as it registered with me. What he wanted.

He wanted me to be the one to ask. He’d done it once already, and I’d hesitated.

I opened my mouth, ready to say yes, three tiny and easy to pronounce letters, so simple and easy, but with so much weight and meaning I could drop them at sea and they’d never surface again.

Because yes.

But what about him leaving, and Hannah, and our companies? What about Ma and her finger of doom? What about the fact he was leaving? I couldn’t ignore that point. His life was in Scotland, it had always been in Scotland, and I was here in London where I’d also always been.

His hand scorched on my skin, burning me up from the inside out.

And yes.

But the word didn’t come.

He waited, never taking his gaze off my face.

Then when it was clear I wouldn’t say anything, he pressed his lips into the corner of my mouth, just like he did once before.

It wasn’t a full kiss.

It was half a promise.

Pushing just at the edges of my lips, it swirled his scent in my senses until I was high on fabric softener and soap.

With his half kiss he made me see the truth. He rewrote the past. Because I could turn now and my own kiss would be my yes.

I could have turned all those years ago and my kiss would have been my yes.

It wasn’t him who’d not been one hundred percent. It was me.

It’d always been me.

His expression when he pulled away was a broken picture frame, a shiny image slipping out from under glass. He knew that I now knew.