He Kissed Me Before He Knew My Name

Chapter 3: Don't Let Go

I feel everything.

That's the problem. I feel everything — the solid warmth of him beneath me, the way his hands settle at my hips like they were designed to rest exactly there, the quiet devastation of realizing that six years of distance did absolutely nothing. My body never got the memo that this was over.

Get up, Avery. Right now. Get. Up.

I press my palms to his chest to push myself off his lap, and his arms tighten.

"Let me go." My voice comes out steadier than I deserve. "You know this isn't right."

"Right and wrong." He tilts his head, studying me like I'm something that fascinates him. "Whose definition are we using?"

"Lucas—"

"You're still here. That tells me something."

"It tells you I'm trying to maintain a professional—"

"Avery." Just my name. Just two syllables, and somehow it cuts straight through every sentence I'd prepared.

I look away from his face because his face is the problem. Has always been the problem. That jaw, those dark eyes that have never

once looked at me like I was ordinary—I have spent six years trying to forget that a man once looked at me like that, and the second

I walk back into his orbit, I remember exactly why I never fully succeeded.

"Give me the contract," I say. "Let's just finish the work."

He reaches toward the desk.

And then his mouth finds my neck.

❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖

The sound I make is embarrassing.

A sharp inhale, my spine going rigid, every single hair on my arms standing at attention as his lips press soft and slow to the curve

where my neck meets my shoulder. He bites — gently, barely — and I feel it everywhere. My fingers curl against his shirt.

Six years. Six years and my body responds to him like no time has passed at all. Like muscle memory is its own kind of betrayal.

"Stop." The word comes out breathy and useless.

He doesn't stop. He dots another kiss just below my ear, and I close my eyes against my own will.

This is the feeling I've been running from. This exact warmth, this exact undoing — the reason I left Portland in the first place, the

reason I said yes to Derek's steady, uncomplicated love, the reason I built walls out of time zones and wedding vows and six years of

practiced forgetting.

Because this is what I'm capable of. This — losing myself completely in another person until there's nothing left of me that belongs

to me.

I gave him everything I had. My first time. My whole heart. And then I ran before he could look at what I'd handed him and decide it

wasn't worth keeping.

I was twenty-two and terrified, and I told myself it was wisdom.

It wasn't wisdom. It was cowardice. And I've been paying for it in quiet installments ever since.

"I can say your name now," he murmurs against my temple. His arms fold around me, not demanding — just present, just

overwhelming. "Do you know how long I looked for you? I didn't even have a name to look for."

Something in my chest splinters clean in half.

"Lucas." I press my forehead against the side of his head, exhausted in a way I can't explain. "I'm so tired."

He pulls back just enough to read my face. Then, without a word, his hand lifts to my temple — fingertips moving in slow, deliberate

circles.

I don't mean to fall asleep. I genuinely don't.

❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖

When I open my eyes, the office is dark except for the city glow bleeding through the floor-to-ceiling windows. The clock on my

laptop reads 12:14 a.m.

I sit up slowly. My neck is stiff. My heart is—

He's beside me on the small office sofa, asleep.

I don't breathe for a moment. I just look at him.

In sleep, all that controlled intensity dissolves. He looks younger. Quieter. Those thick lashes casting soft shadows across his

cheekbones, his mouth slightly parted, his chest rising and falling in a rhythm so peaceful it aches to witness. He looks like the man I

fell for before I knew how much falling would cost me.

"Lucas," I whisper. So quiet it couldn't possibly wake him.

My hand moves before I decide to let it. Fingertips brush the line of his jaw—just barely, just a ghost of contact — and I feel my

throat tighten.

Don't.

I lower my face toward his anyway. Press the softest, most careful kiss to his lips.

That's enough. That's all you get to have. Now go.

I stand. Gather my jacket, my bag, my barely-surviving self-control—

His hand closes around my wrist.

"You're not leaving me again."

He pulls, and gravity does the rest. I land on top of him with a sharp breath, and then his mouth is on mine and it is nothing like the

cautious kiss I just stole. This one is six years of searching compressed into something that should probably be illegal. Deep and

slow and consuming, his hand cradling the back of my head like I'm something worth being careful with.

I try to pull back. I genuinely try.

His palm slides to my ribs. My left side. And the sound that escapes me—God, we are at the office—

I break the kiss with both hands flat against his chest and put three feet of air between us in one shaky breath.

He watches me across that distance, chest rising fast, not even pretending he's sorry.

"I need to go home," I say.

"I know." He sits up. Runs a hand through his hair. "What about Kendall?"

I blink. He says it like he already knows the answer.

"She's been in Milan." He leans back, entirely too calm for a man who just kissed me like that. "She's coming back next week. And

when she does, I'm ending it." He meets my eyes. "She knows it's business. So do I. There's nothing to protect there."

"Lucas—"

"Go get your things." He stands, straightens his shirt. "I'm driving you home."

"I have a car."

"I know you have a car." He holds the door open. "I'm still driving you home."

❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖

We walk through the empty marble lobby in silence. At the parking garage, I reach for my keys and he catches my hand — lacing his

fingers through mine so naturally, so easily, like this is something we've always done.

We haven't. We never had this. Six years ago we had one breathless, reckless night and then I was gone before sunrise.

We never got to hold hands.

I should pull away. I know exactly what I should do.

I let him walk me all the way to his car.

"This is insane," I say quietly, more to myself than to him.

"Probably." He opens the passenger door. "Get in anyway."

I do.

As the city lights slide past the windows and Chicago spreads out around us in its glittering indifference, I sit with the truth I've been

avoiding since the moment I walked into that boardroom and saw his face:

I never stopped. Not really. Not once.

And this time, whatever comes next—his fiancée returning, my marriage, the impossible mathematics of two people who found each

other at the wrong time in the wrong life—I am not going to run.

I don't know if that makes me brave or reckless or just completely destroyed.

Only time will tell.