Free For the Longest Time by Kendra Leigh Castle Page A

the pavement. Jake knew he wouldn’t have to wait long for Shane to lose his patience with the silence.
    â€œSo forget high school. Was this just some kind of kinky one-off thing? I thought she lived in New York or something now.”
    Yep, typical Shane.
Jake couldn’t keep his lips from curving before he relented and answered.
    â€œShe just moved back home from the city. Actually, she was at the office to see the kitten she’s adopting. Not kinky, but I did talk her into dinner this Saturday.”
    â€œHuh,” Shane said, looking vaguely amused by the idea. “Well . . . I’ll have to keep an eye out for her. Even if I can’t picture her being this blond goddess Angie described, like, at all.” Though Shane still looked puzzled, at least he’d pulled back a little from being actively insulting. Jake didn’t feel like fighting with him. They hadn’t been at odds over anything bigger than what kind of hoagie to get at RJ Grinders in years. Maybe because they had a routine, and they stuck to it. What was to argue about?
    The thought gave him pause. There was a fine line between being comfortable and being in a rut. He’d been walking the line for a while now, and he knew it. Life was good, mostly. The job was fulfilling. But his house was still kind of big and fairly empty, and he hadn’t dated anyone interesting in at least a year—despite his friends’ constant and increasingly annoying efforts to set him up.
    Well, no one in their right mind would have set him and Sam up. That alone made it promising.
    â€œHey,” Shane said, a little breathless now from the exertion but brightening at once. “Max said he was going to call you about movie night this Saturday. You’re supposed to bring beer.” He frowned. “Oh. You’ve got the big date with the, ah, Sam.” Jake heard the hesitation before her name, and he knew Shane had been about to call her something other than her name. An ugly memory surfaced, of Thea Hanover’s narrowed eyes in her eighteen-year-old face as she watched Sam hurrying across the cafeteria, head down.
    â€œLook at that freak. I don’t even know why she bothers to come to school. It’s not like she has any friends.”
    The disdain had been reflexive back then. Hell, he’d been guilty of it too, before he’d noticed that the shadowwith the sketchbook was an actual human being. Not that the revelation had changed things, in the end. He’d still been embarrassed to be seen with her.
    I can make up for that, at least.
    Why did it figure that Sam would be the movie cliché that never seemed to happen in real life, the odd duck who returned as a swan? She’d gone from shy alt-girl to edgy Nordic goddess. Though he had to admit that even if she’d shown up with pink hair and facial piercings, he’d still be chasing her around. The woman pushed all of his damned buttons. All of them at once.
    â€œIf dinner goes well, maybe I’ll bring Sam with me. We don’t usually get the movie in before nine anyway.”
    Shane gave him a strange look. “Yeah, sure,” he said with a soft, incredulous laugh. “That won’t be awkward.”
    Jake arched an eyebrow. “It won’t be if you don’t
make
it awkward.”
    â€œJake, I’m not going to make it anything. But movie nights are kind of our
thing
, you know? It works. Toss in artsy awkward loner girl who nobody liked and it’s just going to mess up the night. I mean, what are we supposed to talk to her about? The good old days? Impressionism versus modernism?”
    â€œWell, you know, there’s always talking to her like she’s a human being you just don’t know very well. I think you’d be surprised,” Jake said, his annoyance returning.
    â€œBy the way she looks? Yeah, sounds like maybe. But no matter what she looks like now, she was
weird
. That shit