I might not care that ten years had passed. I was a different man. I didn’t live in town. I was a professional golfer. I had my own life. But no one could escape high school gossip.
“Let’s go outside,” I suggested.
“Landon, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Heidi said.
“Fuck, good ideas.” I took her hand in mind and gently tugged her back to the emergency exit. It had been disabled for as long as I could remember, and I breezed through it and out into the hot summer night.
“All right. We’re outside. What’s up?” Heidi asked. She leaned back against the brick wall and popped her foot up. “The last time I talked to you, you said that we shouldn’t talk anymore. You said it wasn’t fair to your wife.”
“That was all true,” I agreed.
But my body and addled brain couldn’t care what I’d said all those months ago. January felt like a lifetime ago. The reasons I had reacted that way no longer applied.
“This probably isn’t fair to her either, Landon.”
I stepped forward into her personal space and her breathing hitched. My hands went on either side of her face, boxing her in. She swallowed, but met my gaze fiercely. I thought she’d push me away. I thought she’d stop me.
“Do you still feel the way you felt back when we were talking?”
“Landon,” she whispered. Her words came out breathy and soft. “Don’t do this.”
“Do you?”
“I haven’t spoken to you in months. Emery suspected at the time what was going on, and I’m her best friend. There’s girl code to consider. I can’t do this. I can’t answer you.”
“She’s dating my brother. I don’t think that applies anymore, Heidi. Just answer me this: do you or do you not still care for me?”
She paused, frozen in place with her ice blue eyes boring into mine. She was trying to find where this was a trick or a joke. But she wouldn’t find it with me.
“Yes,” she whispered.
Without another thought, I pushed my hands up into her wild blonde hair and brought my lips down onto hers. I tasted her like a luxurious delicacy and then devoured her as if I could never have enough.
Fuck everything else in my life.
There was only the moment when I made Heidi Martin mine.