Free When I Was You by Minka Kent Page B

thinks I’m seeing things.
    He thinks I’m behaving abnormally, erratically, and irrationally.
    He isn’t all wrong.
    “I just went out for a couple of drinks,” I say.
    His gaze falls to the leather messenger bag slung across my body. I wait for him to ask why I brought my laptop, and then I quietly exhale when the moment passes.
    “Alone?” he asks, his tone equal parts disbelief and concern.
    “It felt good to get out again.” I remove the bag and sling it over the back of a kitchen chair. “Baby steps, right?”
    When I turn back to him, he cups my face in his hand, eyes searching mine. A shiver runs through me, the good kind. And then I’m blanketed in velvety warmth, the kind that feels like home.
    “You have no idea how worried I was.” There’s a lightness in his voice that wasn’t there before. I suppose he’s relieved.
    “You don’t have to worry about me.”
    “You say that like it’s so simple.” His thumb brushes across my lower lip, and I’m too paralyzed to move. “You’re the only thing I worry about.”
    Oh, my God.
    He wants to kiss me.
    I see it.
    I feel it.
    But I’m not ready.
    I’m not there yet.
    Niall is my closest friend. My companion. And my confidant.
    I’m not prepared for that to change even if I have fantasized about it more times than I should.
    I’m paralyzed. Unable to speak, unable to move. Terrified of scaring him away but also wondering what would happen if I succumbed to this moment with him. All those times I thought he pitied me, perhaps I had it all wrong.
    The space between us closes, and an endless moment later, his lips are pressed against mine.
    His kiss is soft, lingering. Merciful.
    I kiss him back—against my better judgment, lifting my hands to his face and letting my fingertips trace his jaw before trailing down his neck.
    And then he turns away, the kiss ending before it had hardly begun.
    Molten heat sears my cheeks.
    “I’m sorry,” he says.
    I chew the inside of my lip, avoiding his eye contact.
    “We shouldn’t rush this,” he says. “Your recovery. You have no idea how many people I see every day, patients who want things to go back to normal so badly that they hurry their recoveries and find themselves sick all over again,” he says.
    I take a step back, arms folded. “I’m not one of your patients.”
    “That’s not my point,” Niall says. “One thing at a time. If we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it right.”
    “You do realize you kissed me first?” I say.
    He drags his hand through his neatly combed hair, his lips moving though nothing comes out but a sigh.
    “This is about the divorce, isn’t it?” I ask before he answers my first question.
    Last I knew Kate still hadn’t signed.
    It’s possible he likes me.
    And it’s possible he’s still holding out for her.
    And it’s also possible that he kissed me and suddenly felt guilty and now he’s trying to backtrack, to put it all on me.
    Exhaling, he lifts his shoulders and lets them fall. “Yes.”
    Niall might be a lot of wonderful things, but he’s also a man with baggage and a past.
    “Good night, Niall.” I squeeze past him and leave the kitchen, heading to my room and locking the door behind me. Not that I need to. It feels more like a metaphor than anything else. I need to guard my heart right now.
    I need that separation and distance.
    I strip down and change into jersey-soft pajamas, pale peach covered in tiny flowers. Girlish. Unsexy. And then I wash up for bed. When I’m finished, I grab my phone and lie in bed, ignoring the fact that it’s hardly seven o’clock.
    The glow of my screen stings my eyes, and I dim the brightness until my vision adjusts. Tapping the Instagram icon, I get a wild hair to search for Niall. I’m not looking for anything specific . . . just looking for the sake of looking.
    He’s a few years older than me and one of the rare human beings on this earth who aren’t walking around with their noses buried in their