Page 40 of P.S. It’s Always Been You
His eyes are fiery with intensity, the deepest brown I’ve seen. “It will happen. If you want to write something amazing that’ll vault you to the next level, you will. You want to put together an incredible collection for auction? You will. Maybe you’ve had some bad breaks, but that just means you have to keep going. You’ll reach the peak.”
“Going after something doesn’t mean you’ll get it.”
“No, but you also won’t get it if you don’t try.” He shakes his head. “This project will be incredible. You’ll come up with a brilliant book idea from it.”
His confidence is alluring. I want to dip a spoon in and eat it up. “That’s my point though. I need to narrow my focus to work, and only work. That means you and I, we can’t have that kind of kiss again.”
A wry grin plays on his face. “But we can have another kind of kiss? Like a bad kiss?”
“No,” I say, laughing softly at the way he tries to find loopholes. “We can’t have any kind of kiss. Not a good kiss, and I definitely don’t want a bad kiss from you.”
“You’ll never get a bad kiss from me.”
“I know,” I whisper.
“We would only kiss like the world was ending.”
A match strikes inside me. “Is that how you kiss me? Like the world is on fire?”
“Like everything’s up in flames and the only thing that matters is kissing you.”
The fire sparks higher, burning brighter, hotter. “You can’t say things like that.”
“Why?”
I grip the table because I need something to hold on to. Otherwise I’ll fall off the cliff of his swoony words. “Because it’s distracting. You’re distracting, and this can’t be anything more. The job is too important to me, and I need to do it justice. I need to do right by it.”
He nods as if absorbing my words. “I hear you. If you insist, I’ll try not to grab you in a fit of passion when I’m overcome with the desire to kiss you.”
I roll my eyes. “You’re such a flirt. That hasn’t changed.”
“Some things don’t change.”
I desperately want to ask him what else hasn’t changed. But maybe I don’t want to know the answer.
I know enough. His ambition hasn’t changed. He’s still the man compelled to jump off cliffs. He’s still the same man who walked away.
Even if he’s more sensitive and more thoughtful, the reality is he’s still leaving and I’m still staying.
“We’ll see what else is in the house, we’ll check out the letter, and then you’ll be free of me. Just like you want,” he says.
“Just like I want,” I repeat, lying through my teeth.
He pays the bill and grabs the milkshake for Lenny, and after we return to the city, he walks me to the front door of my apartment.
Midnight slinks in closer, the dark of the night like a tempting embrace. “Presley?” he asks.
“Yes?”
“Did you regret the milkshake?”
His gaze holds mine. He’s not asking about chocolate, milk, and ice cream.
“I didn’t regret it,” I tell him.
I’m not talking about the milkshake either.
That’s why before I meet him the next morning, there’s something I must do.
17
Hunter
I yawn.
It’s the size of the world.
“You need more sleep, darling,” my mom says as she wanders into her barn-sized kitchen, early morning light streaking through the windows, lighting up the day. It’s seven. Plenty of time for me to make it into the city to meet Presley.
My mom smooths a manicured hand across her silver-streaked hair before she reaches for a mug on the pristine kitchen counter, lifts it in a question, and points to the pot of coffee she’s already made.
I nod my answer.
“And I suppose you think I’d sleep better if I were living here in town,” I say, leaning against the counter as I finish a glass of water. I wipe a hand across my forehead, still sweat-soaked from my five-mile run at dawn.
“You living here in town. What a fabulous idea,” she says with a motherly wink as she pours.
“I’m shocked you thought of it,” I say, stifling another yawn.
“Why are you so tired?” She hands me a cup of the steaming beverage that gives life to all things in the universe.
I take it, bowing my head. “Thank you for your coffee blessing. I miss good coffee the most when I’m out in the hinterlands. Do you have any idea how bad most coffee in the wilderness is?”
She scoffs, and it sounds like I can only imagine. “You got that from me. Your coffee snobbery. I swear if I didn’t love retirement so much, I’d open up a trendy little hipster coffee shop in downtown. A place where snooty baristas with handlebar mustaches make you a pour-over like it’s a gourmet dinner and tell you where the beans were sourced too.”
“You let me know when you open that coffee shop, and I’ll be the first in line.”
