by Lindsey Hart
God. Jesse had kissed her all of one time before. That she remembered. The time that she refused to think about- the time that was not a time because she’d erased it completely out of her mushy ass mind and out of her even squishier, stupidly beating heart. So yes. Once.
It was that kiss that led to everything. Parents are right, kids, when they say that kissing leads to sin. It did lead to sin that night. The unforgiveable sin of sleeping with a best friend. It ruined everything. She had no choice but to run after, because that was the only option left. Staying and enjoying it in blissed-out pleasure for however long it lasted before everything went to shit- because everything always went to shit eventually, wasn’t on the agenda.
“How could you just- freaking kiss me?” she hissed when she realized Jesse was standing there, just as stunned looking as she probably was. He didn’t have any right to do the deer in the headlights routine. That was bullshit, also with a capital B.
“Because I wanted to show you that you wanted it.”
“No!” Sydney raised her hand to her lips like she could brush away that lingering kiss. “No! You don’t get to just- tell me what I want and don’t want. You’ve been trying to do that this whole time.”
“Because you said you wanted me to.”
“I’m saying now that I don’t.”
Jesse sighed, that annoying kind of sigh that her mom sometimes gave her, even as an adult. “I don’t know why you’re fighting this so hard, Syd. We were best friends. We did everything together. Everything. You took off after that night when we could have either said it was a mistake and got over it or given it a try and taken things from there. But no. You ran because you were scared of what you felt.”
Before she could stop herself, she slammed her arms over her chest like a petulant kid. “Listen here, fucknuts, I was not scared. Not of my childhood best friend who I’ve seen cry on at least ten different occasions including once when the candles went out on his birthday cake before he could actually blow them out himself.”
“I was seven!”
“Old enough not to cry over stupid shit.”
Jesse’s jaw clenched up so hard that she heard it click. Yeah. He always did that when he was pissed. Good. He needed to be pissed. Maybe then he’d agree to let her go back home.
“You were scared, Syd. Just admit it. Seriously. It was right. It felt right. We felt right. That scared you. You never dated anyone seriously. You were never in a relationship long enough for it to mean anything. By all accounts, you still haven’t been, and now you’re thirty-two years old and this isn’t some cry for help. It’s you giving in to what you’ve always wanted, even if it was your subconscious and your drunken fingers doing the work for you.”
“Stop it! You think you know me! You might have known me when we were younger, I’ll give you that, but you know less than nothing about me now. I’ve changed. And I’ve had some meaningful relationships, thank you very much. They just didn’t work out. It doesn’t mean I was scared of being hurt.”
“Yeah fucking right.” Jesse’s eyes narrowed.
He’d never been overly athletic, though his new body belied the fact, but he’d been a fierce competitor on the debate team, at chess, and any other mental exercise he put his mind to. He was smart. Clearly. Smart enough to start his own freaking company and make a difference in the world. Smart enough to make a whole pile of money doing it. Smart enough to still stay the same, at heart, because it was obvious he had.
“I don’t believe you.”
He dug in his back pocket, and god help her, she thought about his ass in those pants, tight and toned and perfectly squeezable, which made her think about knocking him down and licking him all over. Which was not at all appropriate. Obviously. It was her brain. Her swollen, drunk addled, hungover, traitorous brain betraying her all over again. As if the drunk message to him wasn’t bad enough.
He produced a phone and held it out in front of him. She watched him, breath baited.
“What do you say that we call your mom and ask her about all these meaningful relationships? She sounded pretty relieved that you were here with me and that you were engaged. She wasn’t at all worried about you being fake kidnapped. I think she’s so freaking happy that you’ve finally found someone and settled down that she’s doing a happy dance. Should we call her? Ask her to send us a video of it? I’m sure she would. Your mom was always fun. Always game for anything. I think she’ll set the record straight, don’t you?”
Sydney knew she was screwed. He’d called her bluff. Of course he did, he knew her better than pretty much anyone else on the planet. Which was a good reason to stay friends and friends only, which they couldn’t do because even though she was drunk, she remembered how good it felt being with him. How right it had been giving him her virginity.
He was the first guy who ever got her off. He might be the only guy who’d ever got her off at all. Sure, she faked it, but she hated that he was right, and he knew it.
That made him dangerous.
His not so average sized pokey stick made him dangerous.
The fact that it had been a decade and she still remembered exactly how right it felt, just like he said, when they were together, made him really dangerous.
And then, on top of it all, he’d gone and morphed into some god-like being who clearly had the ass now to be an ass model. If such things existed. And they probably did.
“I’m done here. I’m too hungover for this.”
Really, she just needed to escape. Sydney didn’t care if she had to walk the entire way back to San Francisco. She was getting the hell out of Philly, away from all the craziness and the one man on the planet who had always been far too dangerous for her heart. The one man on the planet who had the capability to break it, break her, ruin her for anyone else.
Oh wait. He pretty much already had. Jesus effing picklebeans.
Sydney stalked to the door, head pounding, chest aching, her body an odd mix of frustrated beyond belief, sore and tired from being hungover, and traitorously excited for something that was never going to happen. To top it all off, her stupid lips were still buzzing from that kiss.
Right before she reached the door, she turned around and shot Jesse the double bird. Yeah. Eat that, mothereffer.
She was done. Done with all of it. Just freaking done.
Sydney closed her hand over the ornate handle at the front door, nearly ready to let out a triumphant yell at her escape. She pushed down her nagging inner voice whispering poisonous words about never being able to escape because she couldn’t escape herself or really lie to herself. She flung the door open wide.
And froze in her tracks as an entire horde of reporters rushed across the lawn, scrambling over each other in their haste to get to her.
CHAPTER 9
Jesse
Sydney shut the front door with a yelp. She slid the deadbolt home, then did up the other two locks just for good measure. After, she leaned against the door with her back, like she needed it there to support her.
“Holy shit,” she breathed. “Holy mother loving pickles shit.”
“You know that we’re adults now,” Jesse said, amused. He leaned casually up against the wall right by the entrance, a few feet from where Syd stood taking in great gulps of air. “You can use foul language.”
“Fuck you. How’s that for starters?”
He grinned. “Much, much better. You’ve always had this crazy fighting spirit. For a second there, I thought you might have outgrown it. It’s good to see that you’re still the same old Syd.”
“Thanks. Thanks a lot. And you’re the new asshole Jesse that kidnaps people against their will, uses his money to try and wow them into some kind of crazy submission, then gets his parents to call on the attack dogs in the form of every media station on the planet to broadcast the fact that he’s totally fake engaged.”
“First of all,” Jesse corrected easily. He kept his causal position because he knew it drove her nuts. “I didn’t br
ibe my parents into anything. My mom did that all on her own. She’s happy that we’re together. She’s always wanted this. She always liked you. I’ve dated some real winners over the years but when she heard that we were getting married- she just about died and went to heaven. Or she’s living heaven on earth. I don’t know. She wasn’t supposed to find out, but when I had to tell her, cautiously, because I wasn’t sure what you meant by putting that message out there, she nearly did a backflip.”
“I doubt it.”
“You didn’t see her. Don’t put anything past my mom. Second, I haven’t used my money to impress you. And here I was going to make you an offer, but I guess that’s off the table.”
Sydney’s eyes darkened dangerously. She only ever looked that way when she was super pissed off or really turned on. He’d only ever seen the latter once before, but he’d give his left nut- okay, maybe that was going too far- to see it again.
“What kind offer? Let me guess. I’m really not going to like it.”
“You’re probably not, but you’re here now. I’ve expended a considerable amount of time, money, and effort in getting you here all because of something that was a drunken joke to you. I don’t think that people would like to hear that about you, do you, Syd? That you so casually toy with a man’s heart. A man who used to be your childhood best friend.”
“You wouldn’t…”
“Oh, I would. I would go out there right now and set the story straight, but I don’t think that’s the kind of light you want to be painted in. The girl who broke Philly’s most eligible bachelor’s heart for the last and final time. If I become a reclusive man who lives on the edge of a mountain and can’t face the world after this, that would make some story, wouldn’t it?”
“You- you bastard!” Sydney’s eyes widened so big that they looked like baseballs in her head.
“That’s right, Syd, I know all your weaknesses. If you wanted to stay away, off my radar, you never should have written that message. You should have blocked me a long time ago so you didn’t have the chance to drunken anything.”
“What. The. Hell. You are an asshat of the finest variety. Grade A.”
“I might be. But I’m also serious. I’ll do it. I’ll tell the whole world that you broke my heart ten years ago, then left, then wrote that message just to toy with me and break it all over again.”
“I didn’t break your…” she trailed off like his words had just sucker punched her in the gut when she took a second to digest them. “Jesse? No… no, we were just friends. That was it… you couldn’t- you didn’t…”
The air shifted and crackled between them. Syd’s shoulders slumped and she actually slid down the door, like her legs just couldn’t hold her up anymore. She couldn’t look at him. She buried her face in her hands and for a second, he actually felt bad about the guilt trip he’d laid on her. How could she not have known what he felt about her? He figured that she pretty much did, she just chose to ignore it because like him, she didn’t want to do anything to ruin their friendship. That she never wanted more. And then that night… the night that was going to be forever etched on his brain, carved inside of him, chiseled away on the walls of a heart that never wanted anyone else- that night happened.
And Syd ran.
She ran from him.
He’d always wondered if she’d run from herself too. Because drunk or not, she’d had four orgasms. Four. One could be a mistake. Two could be a fluke. Maybe three she could blame on the amount they’d drank and strange and shocking chemistry, but four… seriously. Four. Was. Not. A. Mistake. Four was her being into it. Four was right in ways it had never been right with anyone else.
Syd was there, and he was going to be damned if he let her walk out that door again. Not until he’d exhausted every last option and he was definitely not above bribery.
“I’ll make you a deal,” Jesse finally said, his voice a little softer, the edge gone, because Syd looked so damn miserable it ate him up. He couldn’t stand seeing her that way, even if she’d nearly shattered him a second time, because talk or not, he’d definitely had his hopes up.
“What?” Her head snapped up and her eyes, eyes which were beginning to leak a little out of the corners, went even wider.
Damn it, he hated when she cried. Those tears were his weakness. His kryptonite. He couldn’t keep being an asshole to her when she was crying. He wanted to go to her, wrap her up in his arms, tug her right up against his heart, so that hers beat in time with his, and they were a part of each other again, like they used to be, but in a different way. He wanted to welcome her home, to prove to her how right they were and were always going to be.
“What’s your deal?” she prompted, when his words died on his tongue.
He stood there, mouth parted, ready to put it out there between them. Ready to take the chance, because hell, he’d already let her go once and there was no fudgepickling way that he was going to let her walk out on him again. He probably would spend the rest of his life lonely, because he was damn sure that there was no one else on the planet for him, so frickstingling rights he was going to fight for her with everything that he had.
“It’s already late afternoon. I was going to say that I want the weekend to prove to you that we’re right for each other, but two days are not enough. I also want Monday as well.”
“No go,” she said automatically, too quickly. “I have to work on Monday.”
“Call in sick. It’s not negotiable. You give me three days and an open mind and at the end of it, if you’re still not feeling it, then I’ll fly you back home. I won’t bother you again. I’ll make up some story for the media. No hard feelings. No one the wiser. You’ll get to go on with your life and I’ll go on with mine.”
“So, you won’t turn into a reclusive hermit?”
“No.” I probably will.
“And you’ll find someone else to make you happy and drop the stupid notion of me somehow being the one for you?”
“That’s right.” Not a chance.
“And you’ll get some serious fudging help because there is no way that I broke your heart ten years ago. You’ll admit that we were just friends and that you got it wrong?”
“Yes.” No way in hell.
“And you’ll throw in a thousand dollars for my trouble. For kidnapping me. I’m going to buy my mom something with it. A purse or some shoes or something. Not only does she deserve it, but I’m going to let her down big time with this one, as much as I hate to admit it. And it’s not because I didn’t have serious relationships. It’s because she wants me to get married and have grandbabies for her. Like… asap.”
“I’ll give you enough money to treat your mom to a nice girl’s day out. Complete with spa and five-star dining, champagne, and a shopping spree.”
Sydney arched a brow like he’d gone too far, and he was pretty sure that he had. Seriously. He knew that she hated accepting things from people. Mostly help, but money, whatever. He knew she’d never use him for it. That it would never cross her mind. Ten years apart or not, Syd was still Syd. It was as much a relief as anything. He knew the old Syd. He could work with the old Syd. Three days wasn’t a long time, but it was seriously all the time he needed.
“I…” She blew out a breath. “Fine.” Thankfully she swiped away her tears at the same time as she rolled her eyes. “But this seriously can’t involve whoring.”
He took a step back and threw his hand over his heart in mock astonishment. “What do you take me for?”
“You’re going to try and seduce me. These are my stipulations. We stay here, since the media will dog our every step anyway. That way, you can’t throw money at me to try and impress and confuse me. It’s easy to whisk someone to Paris or Rome or like… the freaking beach or whatever. It’s a lot harder when it’s just you. No distractions. No fancy dinners. No nice things. No money, period. I’ll give you the time you asked for because it’s obvious that if I don’t, you’re going to throw a stupid grown-up tantrum and I don’t
want to ruin my life, for my mom’s sake. She’s happier than she’s sounded in a long time, unfortunately. I’m going to have to let her down easy. My last stipulation is that you don’t do anything to confuse me any other way. Like manipulating my feelings.”
“So, I can’t try and seduce you? We can’t really see if this would work in any other capacity other than friends?”
Syd frowned. The tip of her little pink tongue darted out between her soft lips to moisten them and he nearly groaned out loud. Jesus, she really was trying to kill him. And so far, she’d been absolutely successful.
“I…”
“That’s not part of the bargain. We can’t figure anything out that way.”
“That’s not fair. I’m not a whore.”
“Never said you were. This isn’t about that. This is about you and me figuring out if that night meant anything at all. If it might mean anything in the future. If you were just drunk texting or if some part of you wants this. I want you to give it a real shot or the deal’s off. I’ll march out there right now and feed those reporters a sob story that will break hearts around the world. You’ll forever be known as Heartbreaker Syd. Or Dream Crusher Sydney. Or-”
“Stop! Alright! God!” Sydney pushed to her feet, her eyes blazing with the force of her anger and her indomitable spirit.
Jesse was privately relieved. He didn’t want to see her sitting on the floor like a kicked puppy, a crushed up, mangled up version of the Sydney he knew and loved. Yes. Loved. The Sydney he didn’t really even know but was pretty dang sure that he still loved.
Thankfully, she faced him, dry eyed.
“But it has to happen naturally. I don’t want to be forced or feel obligated. That’s not going to get us anywhere. And like- no- no actual… I think we can both tell from whatever develops. It doesn’t have to go all the way.”
“Yeah.” Jesse nodded.
All the painful knots stitched up in his chest loosened just a little. She wasn’t giving him much, but he could sure as hell work with what he had. A little was better than nothing at all. He stuck out his hand and Syd stared at it like it was some kind of lethal animal coming for her. Not a snake. Something worse, something that liked to toy with its prey before it devoured it.