Page 72 of Letting Go at 40

“Any of them.” I tip back my head exhaling before admitting the specific one I want to discuss. “The night we first kissed.” The night she’d touched me.

Anna remains quiet.

Pure seduction and desire whisper through me. I want this woman so fucking much. “The night my hands roamed your body, sweetheart. Your breast in my palm. Your hand wrapped around my dick.”

“Mason,” she whispers, like I’m a secret. She can’t tell anyone about me, but I linger in her thoughts.

“Ever think about what it’d be like? Just once, Anna. Just once, to let me touch you. Not just hover, but actually place my fingers where you need me. Rub that sweet spot. Dip inside you.”

Her breath hitches. I don’t have to see her to know she’s turned on, but I want more than dirty talk through a device. I want to see her face as she climbs the hill of passion. I want to hear that catch at my ear when she reaches the top. I want to feel her body tighten while pliable under my hands as she rolls over the edge.

“Sometimes I wonder if we just gave in, if it would take away the ache,” I admit to her, closing my eyes at the confession.

“What ache?” Her voice remains quiet though not ignorant.

“Don’t you feel it?”

“Yeah.” Her heavy exhale sends chills down my spine. I want her here. I want her straddled over me. Hands in my hair. Mouth on my throat.

“Just once, I want to slip inside you, sweetheart. Feel you around me.” Wanting me. Begging for more. Then maybe I’d be rid of this stranglehold, this pull, this desire to have her. And I can walk away for once. I can let her go. We can be the friends she wants to be.

I choke on the lie I tell myself.

I don’t want to be just friends with her.

And she doesn’t want us to be anything else.

“Mason, we can’t keep doing this.”

“Doing what?”

“Winding each other up, only to walk away.”

“What if I don’t want to walk away?” What if I want to hold tight and never let go?

“Are you certain you aren’t just feeling like I’m the one that got away?” She pauses. “Well, more like the one you never had.”

She’s so much more than that, but yes, at times, I do consider she’s a quest I’ve never fulfilled and once I conquer the task, win her over, I’ll be free of these chains around my heart.

Then I laugh, an evil, knowing guffaw at the way I try to fool myself.

When I don’t answer her question, she adds, “We’re too complicated.”

She isn’t saying no but she isn’t saying yes. She isn’t saying she wants me. She’s afraid to lose me but she doesn’t know what keeping me should look like.

“Who says we’re complicated?”

“It would just be difficult with my kids. Our friends. Lynlee.”

“Your kids love me,” I quickly counter.

There is also the admission that most of our friends already know how I feel. I’ve no doubt Logan has talked to Autumn and Zack has told River. Jenna has hinted she knows something’s up as well.

“And our relationship doesn’t belong to our friends. It’s ours.”

“What relationship?” Her voice is a little stronger. No longer lush and low, sultry with need.

“Our friendship.” The word feels all wrong. Anna is more than a friend. She’s the closest thing I’ve ever had to commitment. I’m dedicated to her, to us, to the potential of what we could be if she’d only let me in.