Desire didn’t come crashing back into their lives.
It crept in.
Quiet.
Persistent.
Unavoidable.
It lived in glances held a second too long.
In breaths caught before words were spoken.
In the way their bodies remembered what their minds were still afraid to admit.
⸻
Ava Montgomery had learned how to control many things.
Her image.
Her emotions.
Her future.
But desire?
Desire refused to be managed.
It arrived one evening when she least expected it—when she and Jaxon were standing too close in the campus library, arguing softly about nothing important at all.
“You always have to be right,” Jaxon muttered.
Ava smirked. “I don’t have to be. I just am.”
He laughed under his breath, shaking his head.
And suddenly—
she noticed how close he was.
Too close.
Close enough that sh
