“I don’t know. We had this intense connection. She was incredible. It was...wild. Without doubt, the single most memorable night of my life.”

Wild? The jealousy went from a tiny sting to a stab. “Right. Well, that’s great.”

“It wasn’t great, because I was desperate to see her again. To find out if that night was really as good as I thought it was. If it was a one-off. If those feelings we’d shared were real. She felt the same way. I was sure of it. But she avoided me. At first I thought it might be coincidence, but I messaged her, I emailed her—” he turned his head so he could look at her face “—and she never replied.”

Alix felt her cheeks burn and her heart race. One night that was unforgettable. “She probably had her reasons.”

“I wouldn’t know. She didn’t share them.” His gaze held hers. “But the fact that she didn’t dare engage with me made me think that yes, she probably did feel the same way.”

She was struggling to breathe. “How do you figure that out?”

“If she didn’t care, why avoid me? Why not take my call? She could have messaged back and said, Hey, Zac, great night, but that was it for me. If she had no feelings, she would have told me right out.”

Her mouth was dry. “Maybe she wasn’t much of a plain speaker.”

“She is a plain speaker. It’s one of the many things I like about her.”

Somehow they’d moved from the past tense to the present.

“Then, maybe she had other reasons. It doesn’t mean she cared.”

“Or,” he said slowly, “it meant that she cared so much it scared her to death. And her way of handling all those emotions—because believe me there were plenty of them—her way was to ignore it. Pretend it hadn’t happened.”

There was no more pretending. “Zac—”

“Hush.” He leaned closer, his mouth hovering close to hers. “You don’t have to explain. You don’t have to think, or plan or excuse. All you have to do is think about whether you want to find out if we still have that connection.”

She knew they did. The attraction between them was so powerful she almost surrendered to it right there and then. But a small part of her, the part that had kept her safe all these years, refused to be ignored. Yes, they could enjoy the moment. But moments came with consequences, and she knew this one would come with more consequences than most.

This was about so much more than physical chemistry. She liked him. She liked him a lot. And, yes, that scared her.

When Christy had asked her if she was happy with her life, she’d always said yes, but now she was wondering if it was just that she hadn’t known any better. She’d never know this giddying lift of her mood, the upward swoop of her feelings.

Zac made her laugh. He refused to be frozen out or kept at a distance. He forced her to engage with him. He sneaked past the barriers she put up, charmed his way through her defenses.