Page 159 of The Run Back Home

Heat floods south.

"But what about our run?" I tease cautiously.

Lenny doesn't smile, not really. Instead, her throat moves up and down, and she plants her hand underneath my hoodie in that spot by my hip that she knows drives me crazy. Her palm is cold from the morning chill, but when it touches my skin, heat roars inside.

"Take me home, Jace," she repeats.

Need rushes through me, but I don't move right away—don't sprint back through the park like everything below the belt is begging me to.

Because I'm stuck.

Locked in on the way she says that last simple word.

Home.

Not her place. Not mine. Not to my apartment or her bed—

Home.

I watch her mouth, waiting for more. Wanting her to say it again.

Maybe it means nothing.

Maybe I'm reading way too much into it.

But the word settles somewhere deep in my chest anyway.

Hope floods through me in a way I never expected. One I'm not sure what to do with except hold onto as the clock keeps ticking toward her leaving.

Because I don't want Lenny to go. And I was serious when I told her I wanted to try to make us work even after she was gone. But I'd also be lying if I said the idea of it didn't make me nervous—upset. Frustrated that there always seems to be this shadow of time and distance looming over us. That we can never seem to be in the same place at the same time.

Together.

So, instead of addressing it, I just nod.

"Okay, baby. Let's get you home."

We barely make it through the door of my apartment—the building closest to our previous tree—before I have my sweatshirt balled into a pile on the floor, and Lenny's shrugging off her running jacket.

I want her all the time. Always have.

But something about today is different.

It's that look in her eyes—I know it. It's whatever she's thinking but hasn't said out loud. It's the way that I so easily agreed to going back and reliving the thing that scares me most. Because it means there's a chance I won't have to relive the thing that nearly broke me.

"So much better than running," I say, pulling my t-shirt over my head.

Lenny steps out of her leggings, and my gaze immediately falls to her thighs—thick. Toned.

And her hips? My God, her hips. With the soft pink elastic framing them like the perfect picture they are.

She smiles softly. "I missed you while you were gone."

My eyes trail back up to hers, her sports bra already tossed to the floor, her tongue running along her upper lip.

I stride toward her, my gray joggers hanging low around my waist, my cock obviously hard beneath them.

I don't plan to ask the question I've been subtly holding onto—the worry that's lingered in the back of my mind since the aquarium conversation. But it comes out when I see her heated stare, her aching peaks, her ponytail, now messy—loose tendrils slipping from it and falling around her face.