But it feels too good holding her to stop now.
“He isolated you,” I whisper.
She chews the inside of her cheek, shrugging.
“I let him.”
I close my eyes, the urge to hold her, to pull her into me and take away her pain overwhelming. I’m just about to act on it when she tugs her hand from mine and wipes her face, letting out something between a laugh and a growl.
“Ugh,” she says, letting her hands slap against her thighs as I straighten in my seat again. My palm aches for her warmth now that it’s gone. “This is not what you signed up for when you asked me to help you get house plants, is it?”
She laughs then, but before I can tell her I’m willing to sign up for anything she needs, she shakes her head again.
“Can we change the subject, please?”
I don’t want to, but I nod regardless, putting the car in reverse.
“So, you promise I won’t kill these plants?” I ask as I back out.
That earns me a chuckle, weak as it is. “I can’t promise that, but I can tell you it’ll be a lot harder with these ones.”
“Poor suckers,” I muse as we pull out of the parking lot. “They don’t even know they’re on the way to their death.”
Amanda laughs. “Just read their little tags about how much sunlight they need, and set a day of the week to check on their water levels. You can always get an automated watering system if you really can’t keep up with it.”
“They make those?!”
Another laugh, and then as we pull onto the highway, Amanda falls silent, turning up the music on her phone now attached to the stereo, instead.
I don’t mind it, the silence, not when I’m getting a glimpse of who she is, of how she’s feeling, based on the music she listens to. I hear the way she gets into “Dancing with Myself” by Billy Idol, how she grooves a little in her seat when Whitney Houston comes on, and how she quiets when Bonnie Raitt’s voice fills the car, singing, “I can’t make you love me.”
It kills me, seeing her like this, knowing that she’s finally found the strength to leave that piece of shit, only to have him make her feel inadequate without him. He didn’t deserve her — and he sure as hell doesn’t deserve to hold power over her still.
When we pull up to my building, I find street parking and turn down the music, staring at the steering wheel for a long moment.
“Did you mean what you said in the hospital?” I ask after a moment, not ready to get out of the car, not ready to say goodbye.
“What do you mean?”
“When I was putting you under,” I remind her with a smirk, but she just looks at me like I have a cucumber for a nose.
“Huh?”
I laugh, turning to face her in my seat. “You don’t remember, do you?”
“Remember what?” she asks, and her eyes narrow before they grow wide. “Oh God, what did I say?”
My face splits with a shit-eating grin. “You said I’m even hotter now than I was at eighteen.”
Her jaw drops, eyes the size of baseballs. “No…”
“Oh, yes,” I confirm. “The nurses have been hounding me for details ever since.”
Amanda blinks twice, and then groans, covering her face with her hands and shaking her head.
I laugh, reaching over to grab her wrists and pull them away. “Hey, it’s fine. It was funny. And people say a lot of crazy stuff when they’re being put under like that.”
Amanda grimaces. “I’m so mortified, I wish you’d put me under right now.”
I bark out a laugh. “Come on, it isn’t that bad.”
She gives me a look, and then we both smile, falling silent.
Her eyes float to where my hand still hovers over hers, where I didn’t realize my thumb was smoothing the inside of her wrist. She swallows, chills breaking over her arms as her gaze slides to mine.
“So,” I repeat, swallowing down the nerves straining my words. “Did you?”
“Did I what?” she asks on a breath.
“Did you mean what you said?”
I don’t even realize how much I’ve leaned into her until that moment, until one elbow is balanced on the console between us, and my eyes are flicking between hers, our noses inches from touching.
“Greg…”
The sound of my name on her lips has me leaning in closer, my breath hitched in my throat as my gaze falls to her lips.
Her plump, bowed, beautiful lips.
Even now, all these years later, I remember how they tasted.
My hand slides up from her wrist to her elbow, and I gently hold her, pulling her closer. Her eyes flutter shut, lips parting as I lean in even more. I can smell her, sunshine and fresh cut grass, and with my heart pounding loud in my ears, I close my eyes and close the distance between us.
Or rather, I almost do.
But then my phone rings, loud and shrill, causing us both to jump and Amanda to rip away from my grasp.
I curse, reaching into my pocket and pulling out the offending device. I curse again when I see the words BAYSIDE REGIONAL on the screen.
“I need to take this,” I say to her, reaching forward to turn down the music.
Amanda nods, and already she’s retreating into herself, hugging the door like she can’t get far enough away from me. She pulls out her own phone, typing away as I grit my teeth.
I force a breath, answering the call, and after a quick conversation with the nurse about a female patient in labor and dilated to five centimeters, I know I need to go in. I tell her I’ll be there in twenty minutes, and when I hang up the phone, I let out a long sigh.
“That was the hospital. I’m on call this weekend, and I need to go in.”
Amanda nods. “No problem. Actually, I called an Uber, so you can just keep the car.”
I frown. “What?” But she’s already grabbing her purse and climbing out.
I scramble out of my own seatbelt and kick my door open as she closes hers. She doesn’t so much as glance over her shoulder at me as she walks down the sidewalk to the corner, and I jog to catch up.
“Amanda, please,” I try. “I… I’m sorry if I—”
“It’s fine. Really,” she says, a smile far too wide to be natural spreading on her lips. “We were going to go car shopping this weekend anyway. It’s no big deal. And this way you can drive to the hospital.”
“You could just take me real quick. I can get a ride back. I—”
A Hyundai pulls up to the curb, and Amanda waves, confirming the driver’s name before climbing in the back seat.
I hold the door before she can close it, our eyes meeting, but I don’t know what to say.
Sorry I almost kissed you… except that I’m not fucking sorry, because I really, really wanted to. I’ve wanted to since that night sixteen years ago. I want to right fucking now, actually.
Amanda swallows, forcing a weak smile once more. “It’s fine, Greg. Go. They need you.”
I clench my jaw, not wanting to let her go, not wanting to leave things where they are now.
But I have no choice.
Letting out a long sigh, I nod, trying and failing to smile as I finally shut the door. I hit the top of the car twice with my fist the second her face disappears from view.