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“It’s a real word.”

“I know it’s a real word.” I lean in, just enough to watch her breath catch. “But I don’t think that’s what you meant.”

Her back is against the counter, her hands gripping the edge of it, and she’s looking up at me, and for the first time since I’ve known her, Olivia has absolutely nothing analytical to say.

“Tell me it was clinical,” I say, low, close enough now there’s barely any air left between us. “Tell me and I’ll back off, dry your floor, and we’ll never say another word about it.”

She opens her mouth.

Nothing comes out.

“That’s what I thought,” I say.

Chapter 14

Olivia

I have a graduate degree.

I have sat across from hundreds of people in the worst moments of their lives and known exactly what to say. I have a filing system for feelings. I can name any emotion in under a minute, narrow it, hand it back to a person in a shape they can use.

Right now I could not tell you my own name.

Luke has me backed against my own kitchen counter, one hand planted on either side of me, close enough that I can see the water still beading along his collarbone, and he has just asked me to tell him it was clinical, and I opened my mouth to do exactly that.

Nothing came out.

Because it wasn’t clinical.

And he knows it wasn’t clinical.

And I am staring up into a pair of deep blue eyes that have apparently decided to look at me like I’m the only thing in the room, and my entire vocabulary has left the building.

He laughs. Low, more breath than sound, and he lowers his head, and for one dizzy second I think this is it, this is the part where he finally closes the distance and I let him and every careful line I’ve ever drawn falls away.

He doesn’t.

He just rests there a moment, head bowed, close, both hands still caging me against the counter, gathering himself, and I realize he is as undone by this as I am.

Then he lifts his head. Slowly. And he looks at me, from my eyes down to my mouth and back up, taking his time, taking all of me in, and that smile starts. The third one. The one that’s only ever mine, unfolding across his lips like he’s got all the time in the world.

“You are very nice looking, Olivia.”

I sigh. It comes out shakier than I mean it to.

“But we’re just friends,” I say.

It’s supposed to be a wall. It’s the wall I built, the one I insisted on, the one I shook his hand over in a coffee shop because it felt safe, and I put it up between us now like it might still hold.

He nods. Slow.

Then he swallows, and I watch his throat move, and I watch him think about it, and the whole world has gone into slow motion, every second stretching out long and warm and impossible.

“We’re just friends,” he agrees.

But he doesn’t move. And he doesn’t stop looking at me. And the way he says it, low and even and straight into me, makes the words mean the exact opposite of what they are.

I feel myself melting. That’s the only word for it. Everything solid in me going soft and warm and useless.