“We kissed once. Do you remember?”
“Of course,” I breathe.
“I hadn’t planned on that.” He chuckles, rocking on his heels. It makes him seem vulnerable. It does something to me that I haven’t felt in a long time.
Affection.
Want.
Need.
All of those feelings for Dax.
He scratches the back of his head, making him look like he did when we kissed for the first time all those years ago. Another lifetime ago. “I sat by countless times while you dated one asshole after another. I held you and gave you tissues after each of those relationships ended. You swore off men every time, yet you took them back or moved on to the next dickhead.”
I close my eyes. How silly I was. Starved for attention. I was seventeen and made poor choices. That’s not to say I wasn’t a good student. I just wanted it all—the grades and academic recognition as well as attention from the “hot” guys at our school.
I thought I was too much for this town—that it was holding me back. Serial dating was my way of acting out until I finally left.
But that’s not to say I didn’t often think about my kiss with Dax. Before I met Mitch, I thought about it a lot.
“I didn’t want to be another dickhead on your list,” Dax whispers, but he might as well be yelling. “I refused to hurt you the way they did, and being eighteen and reckless, I knew I would eventually hurt you, albeit unintentionally. I was determined to stay in your life, so I kept my distance. Until one night—”
“Prom night.”
“Your date danced with every girl but you, while I ignored my date to sit with you and throw popcorn at the back of Mr. Davis’s head.”
“We were dipshits.” I shake my head.
“That we were.” His blue eyes shine when they meet mine. His smile slowly fades, and the sad nostalgia from before visibly consumes him again. “You were beautiful, in a black dress that flowed down to your feet. The red in your cheeks from the hot-as-hell gym, but you got cold once we stepped outside. You were too cute with my sport coat wrapped around you. I couldn’t help myself anymore. I had to kiss you.”
My breath hitches as I realize that night from his perspective. All this time, I thought that kiss happened because of the heat of the moment.
Like the other night.
“When my lips met yours, I changed. Everything changed. I knew I’d treat you better than the assholes before me because I was done for.” Stepping toward me, he continues, “You opened my eyes to love at eighteen years old. In a dark parking lot outside our old high school gym, I fell in love with you and never stopped.”
I gasp.
I felt it too. That night, I felt the spark. My body came alive and not just because I was eighteen and hormonal.
It was because of Dax.
“I wanted more, but I didn’t know how to tell you. I didn’t want to scare you, but I’d made up my mind before I got home that I would take you to breakfast the next day and tell you I wanted to be with you. But I never got the chance.” He shakes his head, his eyes tormented. “One call and everything was taken away from me.”
The breath is knocked out of me.
Immediately, I’m thrown back to the day I found Dax in the waiting room of the ER, hunched over, defeated.
“They did everything they could to save them…” he whispers. The words are automatic. Robotic. Like he’s just repeating what he heard. Like he doesn’t even realize he’s talking. “My family was in a car accident with a semi-truck. Willow is in surgery now. But my parents… They, uh…”
Tears stream down my face as I wait for him to continue.
He remains silent.
“What happened to your parents?” I hiccup.
He’s not answering me. He’s not moving. His face is growing redder as a sob makes its way up.
I gently shake him as my own pain for my best friend wracks my body. Terror seizes me as I struggle to find my voice. “Dax? Where’s your mom? Your dad?”
He finally exhales, burying his head in his hands, and lets out a howling cry that I’ll never forget.
Even now, the ghost of his pain haunts me.
“My mom died on the way to the hospital,” he manages, his voice strained. “And my dad… he died in surgery. They died, Clara. They’re gone.”
I wrap my arms around him and squeeze as hard as my limp arms can.
Dax clears his throat, bringing me back to the present. “I drowned in the aftermath of their deaths. Even though I pushed you away, you made sure I still had someone to lean on. Someone I could unload my burdens on. You were there.”
Without another thought, I step toward him and wrap my arms around him. I breathe him in, holding him.
When I lift my gaze, there’s devastation in his eyes.
Pain. Strength. Love. All the things that remind me of Dax.
He’s grown. Matured. The tragedy shaped him.
So many others might’ve crumbled, but losing his parents so suddenly didn’t completely break Dax. He struggled, but he came out stronger.
“So many what ifs,” he whispers absently, like he says it more to himself than to me. He wipes my hair from my forehead, his fingertips sweeping across my forehead, then studies my lips.
The hairs on my neck stand as I suck in a sharp breath.
He’s all I can see. The world outside these walls disappears. I’m in a daze, barely recognizing this man in front of me.
My brain is fuzzy and confused.
“Do you know of all the things I regret in my life, which one is at the top?”
“No,” I answer warily. I’m frozen in place, in his arms, captivated by these new truths of our teen years.
For the first time, I can’t predict him. I can’t finish his sentence or thought, because we’re in uncharted territories. I’m part of this story he’s telling, but at the same time, I don’t feel like I was there at all.
“I regret not kissing you again. Not grabbing you and pulling you against me while I tasted those lips of yours.” He cups my face with both his hands and searches my face like he too is seeing me for the first time. “I want to kiss you every day. To be more than just Dax, your friend.”
I lick my lips as the air crackles around us like two rogue wires coming together with a spark.
This thing between us is crazy, but it doesn’t have to be a bad thing, does it?
Our night together, breakfast with Jacob, our afternoon in the vineyard—they were right. We were right.
I gaze into his eyes. They put me in a trance. I get lost in them like I would the sea, swimming in an ocean of what ifs.
The what ifs of us get the best of me.
“So, kiss me,” I say to him, my voice trembling.
It’s unfamiliar, saying the words to Dax—my longest and best friend—but I don’t mean them any less.
His body snaps, jolting into me.
He’s intense and unyielding, like this is what he knows to be truer than human anatomy.
Heat courses through my body like lava through a volcano ready to erupt.
Because he was right before. I am scared of his feelings for me after all this time of being friends. But more than that, I’m scared of my feelings for him.
Of the feelings I suspect always lingered in my heart below the surface. The feelings that faded to the background as life threw us off the path to our happily ever after.