Page 116 of Go Back to December

And now I understand why he offered me my own questions. Once I answer, I’m going to be very tempted to go after the same information from him.

I sigh. “Two years ago.”

It was a month before Lacy contacted me about the café. My job had left me no time for a social life. The loneliness had been clawing me from the inside out. Craig’s best friend from flight school was in town for a training course. The bottle of tequila was one of several bad choices we both made.

“Who was it?” Baz’s voice carries an edge.

“Is that your second question?”

He shakes his head. His hold has tightened on my hand, along with the tension in his jaw, so I throw him a bone and say, “Jess. My brother’s wingman.”

Baz winces.

“Exactly. One stupid night. It’s never happened before or since. It wasn’t a relationship.”

As he relaxes back, he studies the colors dancing above us.

“My turn,” I murmur.

“Same question?”

I grumble an affirmation, and Baz laughs. “Two and a half years ago. Greta. We knew each other in Amsterdam. One stupid night. It wasn’t a relationship,” he echoes.

“Seriously, there was no one else?”

He shakes his head, lips twitching.

The bursts of light above us slow before the big finale.

“What’s your second question?” I ask the sky.

“Why did you freak out the day you left?”

He caresses the back of my hand with his thumb. And I can feel by the way he’s cradling it, the strain in his voice, he’s wondering what he did.

“It wasn’t you.”

“It had to be. One minute, we’re kissing. And it wasn’t some first-date, dip our toes in the water, see if we like this shit experiment. We were really, really kissing.” He swallows. “A minute later, you bolted.”

Rolling over on my side to face him, I pull our hands to rest on the place where our pillows meet, to pull him toward me.

“I bolted because of the way you kissed me. The way you touched me. It felt real. And it scared me.”

His fingers brush my chin, and the question is in his eyes, but he’s sticking to our bargain, so he doesn’t ask why.

“And I wanted so much more with you. But I didn’t think you were ready, or that you wanted what I did,” I confess.

“Am I that big of a dick you couldn’t tell?”

“Truth is, I’ve had so little experience with the real thing, I couldn’t recognize it when it was kissing me in the face.”

“Well, in case it bears repeating,” he rumbles, “this. What we’re doing here. What I feel for you, it’s genuine. And I don’t want to act like it’s anything but authentic.”

“Me too,” I whisper.

The fireworks finale begins; colors explode in quick succession. Baz and I lie back and give the spectacle our full attention.

As the pace slows, Baz says, “I owe you an answer to a question.”