Straight Up Love (Boys of Jackson Harbor 2)

“Why do you say I?” Jake asks, shaking me from my thoughts. “Shouldn’t it be we failed to make it work? Doesn’t Harrison get to take his share of the responsibility here?”

“Well, yeah.” I wave a hand. “It takes two people to get married and two people to screw it up, right?”

Jake reaches across the console and puts his hand on my thigh. It’s not a sexual touch, but suddenly I wish it were. I want the Jake from last night who pinned me against the cooler and told me he knew he turned me on. I want the reminder, the reassurance that he meant it and that this is going to happen. I want the distraction.

Intellectually, I know this isn’t an either/or situation, and that Harrison having a child doesn’t mean I don’t get to have one, but on some selfish gut level, it feels that way. I’m angry that he gets this dream we had together while I’m still floundering so desperately in my attempts to grasp it that I’m going to cross lines with Jake that probably shouldn’t be crossed. I need the reassurance that this crazy plan isn’t going to send my life into a tailspin.

I put my hand on top of his, willing him to sense what I need. The panic is growing in my chest, and I want him to pull over and drag me into his lap. I want him to kiss me until this heavy fear dissolves completely, until my brain is so cloudy with lust that I can’t examine what we’re doing too closely. I don’t want to admit that our plan is reckless and probably a terrible idea, that it might be smarter to accept that being a mom isn’t in the cards for me.

Jake cuts his eyes to me and frowns; maybe telepathy isn’t failing me this morning, because he pulls the car over and throws it into park. “Hey,” he says softly. He takes my chin in his big hand and turns me to face him. “Breathe, Ava.”

“I’m fine.”

He shakes his head slowly, searching my eyes. “Do you forget that I know you?” he asks, and the tenderness in his expression threatens to break something inside me. “You’re not fine, and you don’t have to pretend with me.”

He dips his head, but I don’t get the passionate kiss I wished for. Instead, I get the soft brush of Jake’s lips across my forehead.

I close my eyes, and I breathe.

Ava

Five years ago . . .

Jake Jackson kissed me last night.

I keep waiting for those words to jar me. For it to feel weird. Because it should feel weird when your best friend kisses you.

Instead, I can’t stop thinking about the way he slid his hand in my hair, the graze of his thumb along my jaw, and the heat in his eyes as he lowered his mouth to mine. I can’t stop thinking about how easy it was to open under him and how, when his tongue touched mine, my heart wanted to climb out of my chest and into his.

I’m in love with Harrison, and I consider myself incredibly lucky to have found someone who’s such a good match for me. I’ve never been the girl with a steady line of boyfriends, and I’ve never found it easy to connect with the guys who asked me out. But Harrison and I work. I’m excited about the life we’re going to have together, and when he asked me to marry him, I didn’t hesitate a single beat.

Then Jake showed up at my door and kissed me. That kiss unlocked feelings I’ve stored away for years, and now the ring on my finger feels like a lie.

I had such a painful crush on him when we were in high school. Maybe before that, too. But during our senior year, he was the rock that kept me sane when living with my dad and feeling like I didn’t belong made me want to run away.

That year, I spent hours agonizing about how I could tell him that my feelings for him had grown into something more than friendship. I’d catch myself staring at him when we were hanging out at his house. When he and his brothers would play football in the backyard, I’d watch the way his body moved under his clothes. He was tall and lanky then, nothing like the man he grew into, but in my eyes, he was

perfect. When he’d steal the ball from his brother, he’d look my way and wink as if he’d done it for me, and my heart would pound wildly. I’d think, Someday Jake and I are going to end up together. I believed it, and instead of finding the courage to tell him how I felt, I waited for the day that he might feel it too.

When we started college, I was still waiting, but Jake didn’t seem to be in any rush to change our relationship. We both dated other people, and sometimes I’d lie to myself and pretend I wasn’t madly in love with my best friend. Sometimes I’d even believe the lie.

Then he had this girlfriend, Erica, who didn’t like that he spent so much time with me. She wasn’t the first to make that complaint, but she was the first girl he tried to change things for. One night I went up to Jake’s apartment over the bar to hang out, and I heard them in there together. I heard my name. I heard him laugh.

Erica said she felt like the other woman because he spent so much time with me, and he said he didn’t see me that way. He told her he spent so much time with me because he was a family guy, and I was like his sister.

In that moment, I realized I was waiting for a guy who’d never want me. He always went after the curvy girls, the blondes who looked like fifties pin-ups, whereas I was rocking the body of a 1920s flapper—my curves barely there, my breasts too small.

That night, I stood outside his apartment, vaguely aware of the cacophony of the busy bar below me while the sound of Erica’s laughter cut through me like a scalpel. Standing there, sliced open and raw, I gave him up. I let him go. I took all my girlish fantasies of us as a couple and locked them away somewhere deep inside myself, somewhere I could pretend they never existed.

Then yesterday, he kissed me.

He kissed me and told me he was in love with me, and this morning I can’t stop thinking about it.

I have to tell Harrison. I can’t keep this a secret. Jake kissed me, and his touch was so intense that I’m sure when Harrison looks at me this morning he’ll see it on my skin, see thoughts of Jake in my eyes. Harrison needs to know that this ring feels too heavy on my finger, that I’m having second thoughts. Maybe we should back up a few steps and slow down.

A woman shouldn’t plan her wedding while thinking of another man’s kiss.

Ava