Page 43 of A Winter Thaw

Thankfully, Michelle brought it up for him. “So,” she said slowly. “You kissed me.”

Theo cleared his throat again. “Uh, yeah. I did.”

She watched his face carefully, and he couldn’t read her expression. She looked wary, almost nervous. “Can I ask why? Like was it just a random thing, or…”

Theo shook his head. “Not random, definitely not.” He took a deep breath. As nervous as he felt, he was determined to be brave enough to finally tell her how he felt. “The truth is, I’ve had a crush on you for a long time. I thought you were fun to tease when we were kids, but whenever you visited here in high school, I would develop a bigger and bigger crush on you. I know I kept teasing you, and you probably thought I was the most annoying guy on the planet, but I always thought you were the smartest and funniest girl around.” He swallowed. “And I still do.”

Michelle blinked at him, her expression totally unreadable. Theo’s emotions went up and down on a rollercoaster as he stared at her. One second, he was sure her wide eyes meant that she was about to politely but firmly tell him she would never feel the same way toward him. The next second, he thought he saw a glint in her eyes that hadn’t been there before and he dared to hope that she did feel the same way, at least a little bit.

“I, um, I don’t really know what to say,” Michelle said slowly, and Theo’s heart sank all the way down to his boots. “I have felt… um, confused about how I feel about you for a while now.” Theo’s heart rose a little again, like a balloon that still held a tiny bit of helium. “My fondness for you has been growing for a while now, and I do really like seeing you. I love it when we bump into each other, and you make me laugh, and I know I don’t come out and admit it, but your band really is amazing and I love watching you play.”

Theo froze, holding his breath as he listened to her say her next words.

“But I don’t really know how I feel,” Michelle said. “I feel like I’m moving forward in the dark, kind of. I know I’m fond of you, and I feel weird around you, but I don’t really know what it means yet. I think my heart will tell me eventually, but right now, I don’t know.”

Theo nodded. He felt both incredibly disappointed and incredibly relieved at the same time. She hadn’t told him that she felt the same way, but it was possible that someday she would.

Michelle cleared her throat, looking down at her coffee cup and swirling the coffee around inside of it. “So, um, yeah. I guess I don’t really know what to say.”

“That’s okay.” Theo felt as though he was all limbs. He didn’t know what to say either. “So, I guess the question is, now what?”

“Like how do we move forward from here?”

Theo nodded. “Do we act like we never had this conversation?”

She shook her head. “No, I mean obviously, we’ve had the conversation. I think we can at least be better friends for now. We’ll just stick with that and not let this conversation make things too weird between us.”

“Sounds good.” Theo forced a smile.

His head filled with a million questions, but he didn’t want to ask her any of them. It sounded like she wouldn’t know the answer to any of them anyway. The question on the very tip of his tongue was, “Did you like it when I kissed you?” but he felt that would be too invasive of a question. Besides, liking a kiss didn’t equate to wanting to date someone.

Did he want to date her? He’d never fully formed the question in his mind before. He knew he liked her, but did he actually want to be in a relationship with her?

Yes. Yes, he definitely did.

Would she ever feel the same way?

“Well, I’ll get out of your hair,” Theo said, smiling at her. He stood up, wanting to leave as soon as possible and hating the idea of walking away from her at the same time. Part of him would have been content to just sit there and watch her work for an hour or more. “See you around, Michelle.”

“See you around, Theo.” Her eyes were so wide as she looked up at him that for a moment, he thought she was going to ask him another question.

She didn’t, however, and he gave her another smile and left the bakery. The cold winter air rushed against his cheeks as he walked down the sidewalk, and he felt a flutter of disappointment. Although he was glad that he’d had a chance to talk to Michelle, he felt just as restless and uncertain as he had before.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Audrey clambered onto her hotel bed and opened her laptop. It was snowing lightly in Boston, but when she’d checked the weather earlier that day, she’d seen that there were still storms between Boston and Coral Sands. The wind seemed to be the biggest problem that day, and it was very windy in Boston. Every once in a while, a terrific gust would rush against the old windowpanes, causing the glass to rattle.

She checked the weather for the following day first, and her eyebrows lifted when she saw that the meteorologists had predicted that the storms would clear up in the middle of the night. She sucked in her breath excitedly, wondering if their flight had finally been rescheduled. She pulled up her email next and let out a squeal when she saw that the airline had emailed to say that they had a flight scheduled for early the next morning!

She jumped off the bed and hurried across the wooden floorboards of the hotel room on bare feet. Her phone was resting on the desk by the window, and she snatched it up and then jumped back onto the bed, covering her feet with a blanket because they were cold. She immediately dialed Evan’s number, grinning while she listened to it ring.

“Hey, sweetheart.” He sounded a little out of breath, and she guessed that he was on an afternoon run.

“Hey! I have great news!”

“You do? Is your flight back on?”

“Yes!” She flopped back onto the bed and looked up at the ceiling, grinning. “We get to come home tomorrow morning. I’m so excited.”