Chapter 44: Chapter 44

But, man, do I wish she didn’t know about that kiss. Not because I want to hide it, but because some things really are better left unknown. I keep my distance still, leaving two cushions of space between us.

“I’m not over you,” I calmly say, “but you didn’t give me much of a choice here, Dakota. You’ve barely spoken to me since you moved. You broke up with me, remember?”

I look at her. She’s staring at the floor.

“You wanted to focus on yourself when you moved, and I got that. I let you have your space and you didn’t do anything to stop me. You didn’t reach out to me at all. Not once did you call me first, not once did you answer the first time I called. Now here we are and you’re acting like I’m a villain because I went out on a casual date with someone.”

So much for biting my tongue and letting it blow over.

I truly don’t want to fight with her. I just want to communicate openly and honestly.

She looks at me with a pointed glare. “So you did go out with her.”

It’s frustrating as hell that after everything I said, that’s all she picked up on.

I’m trying to find some logic behind her accusations, but I’m coming up short without knowing what Nora has been telling her. All night I’ve repeated over and over that Nora and I aren’t dating, but she’s not listening. And then she’s holding me up to this no-dating standard she’d never voiced before.

If the roles were reversed, I would believe her. I know her well enough to know that she wouldn’t lie to me. She’s complicating things. Why is she complicating things?

“Stop lying to me.” She waves her hands through the air and the metal bracelets on her wrists clang against each other. “I get it, Landon, she’s beautiful and older, and aggressive, and men like that kind of shit. You like that, and I’ve been replaced again.”

I can either sit here and get mad that she’s cooking up her own explanations for everything, or I can bite my tongue and remember that she’s drunk, upset, and has been under a lot of pressure lately.

With a sigh, I move from the arm of the couch and kneel on the rug in front of where she’s sitting. I look up at her stoic expression. “I would never lie to you about something like this. I’m telling the truth.”

My hands grab at hers in her lap. Her skin feels cold and the chill forces a memory into my mind. I’m thrown back into a backyard make-out session that happened when we were fifteen. Her hands were so cold and she put them up my shirt to rest on my warm stomach. We kissed and kissed and couldn’t stop. We were frozen by the time we went inside, but we didn’t care. Not one bit.

“Can I ask you something?” Her voice is soft and melts something inside of me.

I’m a sucker for her.

A goner.

I always have been.

“Always.”

Dakota draws a long breath and pulls one of her hands away from mine to tuck her hair behind her ear. I turn her other hand over and trace the lines in her skin, the scar there. She flinches out of instinct and I feel the throbbing ache of the memory behind her reaction.

“Do you miss me, Landon?”

Her hands are soft and light in mine.

This moment feels familiar, yet foreign. How is that?

Do I miss her?

Of course I miss her.

I’ve missed her since I moved to Washington. I’ve told her how much I’ve missed her. I’ve expressed how much I miss her more times than I’ve heard anything remotely close to that come from her.

I lean into her farther and squeeze her hands between mine while repeating her question back to her. “Do you miss me?”

Without giving her time to answer, I continue: “I need to know this, Dakota. I think it’s more than