She moved to rise, but Asher covered her hand with his. “I hope you visit again, Mila.”

She looked at me guiltily before turning back to Asher. “I’d love to.”

He let go of her hand and she turned around, tucking one loose chunk of hair behind her ear as she avoided my gaze. I stood in my spot for a moment, before Asher waved a hand at me, and then I chased after Mila who was already outside of the pub before I’d made it to her.

“Mila.”

She stopped her brisk walk and turned, biting her lip and nervously running her hands through her hair. “Sorry.” She laughed and waved a wild hand toward the building. “We were just talking, and he was asking me all these questions, and then I felt like I had to tell him why this disheveled woman was sitting at his breakfast table, and then—”

I did something that surprised both of us. I stepped up to her and placed three fingers over her mouth. “Shh. I’m not mad. Is that what you think?”

She wrapped her hand around my wrist and pulled my fingers from where they covered her mouth. “I don’t know. You’re not easy for me to read. The way you looked at me made me think you realized just how stupid it was for you to invite me into your apartment.”

“To be fair, I didn’t exactly invite you in. I had to carry you in.”

“Ames,” she pleaded, an embarrassed kind of humor in her voice. “You know what I mean.”

I dropped my hand so she lost her grip on my wrist. “It’s fine.”

“He just wanted to know about my faith—hello, awkward question—and then he told me about Free Refills and then he was talking about you and I didn’t want him to think you brought some hussy around the apartment.”

“Mila,” I repeated, louder this time to halt her rambling. I stepped forward and placed my hands on her shoulders, which were blessedly bare thanks to her sleeveless tank. I gently squeezed, grateful for the access to the soft skin of her arms. Even though I’d been mentally thinking about what to say the entire thirty seconds since she’d left Asher, I found myself so distracted by the feel of her warm skin and the smell of lemons that breezed around her, that I completely forgot what I’d prepared myself to say. “Don’t—don’t be sorry,” I began, meeting her eyes. Hers were so big, so open, the green so mesmerizing that once again, I found myself stumbling over my words. I had to stop touching her, stop feeling that perfect skin under mine. So I dropped my hands and then held them in front of me, awkwardly trying to figure out what the hell to do with them now that I wasn’t touching her. “Asher … he hasn’t laughed like that in so long. It was good to hear him just now. I…” I shoved my hands in my pockets just to keep them from being close to touching her again, but that made me feel clunky and standoffish. Which is what Mila was used to, coming from me, but I didn’t want her to misinterpret my meaning now.

“I just … thank you. Thanks for giving him that today.”

It took a long moment, but finally I saw the whisper of a smile curling the sides of her lips. She stepped closer to me, bringing me into that cloud of lemon and her. “You don’t need to thank me.” As if testing me, she gently placed her hands on my shoulders—mirroring me—as she stared up at my face. She was so close. I was going to lose my composure once again. It was only a matter of breaths, of seconds, before her lips were under mine once again.

“He scared me a little bit at first, like I was taking a pop quiz and I didn’t know any of the answers. But I liked talking to him.” Her pink lips lifted up and I realized then what she’d said about knowing I was about to kiss her was right. Because when I looked at her lips, I could scarcely turn my sights away.

Her hands slid down my chest slowly, and I got the distinct impression they were about to leave me, so I did something again that surprised us both, I covered her hands with mine and pressed them against my chest.

Her breath hitched, and startled eyes looked to mine, so I let her go.

Immediately, her arms wrapped around herself.

“Are you cold?”

She shook her head almost violently fast.

“Then why are you holding yourself like you are?”

She released a breath on a laugh. “Because you make me so fucking nervous, Ames. You’re all silent, and then when you speak you ask me things that force me to process my thoughts, and my thoughts are a jumbled mess, you wouldn’t believe the shit I have up here.” She pointed at the side of her head and I couldn’t help but laugh.

“What’s so funny?” she asked, and her fingers found their way into her hair, tangling with the ends. I was beginning to see that this was one of her nervous tics.

“I’m literally just standing here in front of you, not touching you, and you’re all chaos and words. It’s endearing, really.” And it was. She looked like a tamed tornado—which was an oxymoron of epic proportions.

“It’s not endearing. I can’t hide my emotions around you. It’s like,” she circled her hand over her head, “there’s this lasso that’s spinning around me, threatening to capture me. And I’ll just be helpless and trapped then. So, I’m just spilling out everything I can, to keep from being strangled.” She let go of her hair and made a move with her hands like she was karate chopping the air.

She was nervous—an understatement, but she was also afraid of something. I couldn’t let her stand in fear in front of me.

“It’s okay.” I took her hands and held them between mine. It seemed to immediately calm her, and it had the opposite effect on me. I just wanted to keep pulling her in, touching more of her skin, looking deeper into her eyes. Holding her ignited a long-buried yearning in me, and I couldn’t help but look at her lips again. “It’s okay, Mila.”

Her voice was calmer, softer, when she spoke. “Is it? I don’t know.”

“What don’t you know?”

“I got drunk in your bar—”

“Pub.”

“Pub last night. I was a mess. And you had no obligation to help me, and you did. And I’m so sorry you had to play babysitter.”

“You were a mess last night.” When she looked at me with exasperation, I continued, “But we’re all a little bit messy sometimes, aren’t we? I think that’s literally the human existence. But I still don’t know why you were so upset.”

She shifted her feet and I could tell she was deciding how much to say. “You thought, when you met me, that no sadness could have ever touched me. But it has, and last night it was,” she swallowed. “Profound. That loss.”

I felt the movement of her fingers trapped behind mine, felt the way my ring dug into my skin. “Trust me, I know.” She stared up into my face, eyes searching. “What are you thinking?” I asked her.

“That I’m glad you’re not promising me it’ll get easier.”

I squeezed her hands, but still didn’t let go. “I only make promises I know I can keep.”

A new light came over her. “On the bridge. You promised you wouldn’t let go of me.”

I nodded and hoped she saw the sincerity in my eyes. “I don’t promise things that I don’t know, with absolute sincerity, I can fulfill.”

“But you weren’t able to pull me over the railing. Eventually, you would’ve had to let me go.”

I shook my head, and turned more fully toward her. I tightened my grip on her, not painfully so, but to emphasize how serious my next words were. “I meant it. I would’ve fallen in with you before I would’ve let go of you.”

“Oh.” Her voice had taken on a whisper of air—like she was suddenly weightless. She didn’t stop looking at me. It was if my words had suddenly taken on weight, making me feel completely grounded, stilled to stone.

And then, she blurted, “Why?”

I blinked. “Because I didn’t want you to be alone.”

I swore I could track the emotions flitting in and out of her irises. It was mesmerizing, the way she could switch gears so quickly. I was beginning to understand why she could stand to be so happy when I felt so filled with dread all the time.

She changed the subject. “We haven’t really talked since you kissed me. Not sober at least.”

“That’s true. So, talk. What’s on your mind?” It was all I could manage to say under the circumstances. Her skin was so soft, so warm. I worried, irrationally, that she’d melt in my hold.

“What are we doing, Ames?” She let out a sigh.

“Standing on a street.” I looked at our hands and ran a thumb over her knuckles. “Touching.”

She stepped closer to me, and I wanted her to keep stepping forward until there was no space between us. “Ames,” she whispered. “What are we doing?”

“What a question.” This wasn’t easily definable. “I’m not sure.”

“I’m only here for three weeks.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?” she asked. “What’s okay?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. Truth be told, I lose what little bit of rational thought I have around you.”

The worry came back into her face and I let go of her just so I could touch her shoulders again.

“Hey,” I whispered, my hands gliding to her neck. I stroked the line of her throat with my thumbs. “I don’t know what we’re doing. I don’t have any answers. I’m not looking for a relationship, especially not one with an expiration date.”

Her bottom lip jutted out and I glided my thumbs along her jaw. “But there’s one thing I do know, without a shred of doubt, and that’s when I touch you, I go a little stupid.” I felt her throat jump under my caressing. “You have an effect on me that I don’t want—but now that I know it exists, I don’t want to let go of it.”

“Promise?”

I held her eyes as long as I could. “I promise.”

She wrapped her arms around me and it took me seconds longer than it should’ve to reciprocate. But I did, pulling my hands from her face and wrapping my arms around her, holding her securely to me. My fingers played with the ends of her hair as I just breathed her in, all the uniquely Mila pieces that had found their way into my life. She was like a museum of priceless qualities, and I found myself understanding just how easily anyone could be taken with her.

She felt good in my arms, I realized. A welcome weight. Her light breaths warmed the center of my chest and it felt as if we’d hugged for an eternity, but then she pulled away and it felt like it had lasted only a second.

“So, what’s the deal with you and Mila?” Sam asked as he tossed popcorn up in the air. It missed his mouth completely on its descent and fell to the floor.

I picked up the piece and tossed it back in the bowl. “There is no deal.”

“No, see, you can pull that shit with Lotte or Asher or Jennie, but you can’t with me.” He picked up our bottles of beer on the coffee table and pushed mine into my hands. “I know you better, mate. And, besides, I thought you were going to murder me over her, so I ought to know the why.”

“I’m not sure why I invited you over,” I told him when he dropped another kernel on the floor.

“Yeah, me either. So, what’s the deal with her?”

“What’s the deal with you and what’s-her-name?”

Sam smiled lasciviously. “You’re going to have to be more specific.”

“That black-haired girl you danced with before I all but pulled you off of Mila.”

Sam stretched out. “Oh, her. Well she was a fun five minutes.”

I tossed the kernels he kept losing back at him. “That’s all it took you? Five minutes? Maybe it’s time to retire your dick.”

“Oh, piss off.” Sam threw a whole handful of popcorn at me before settling back into his seat. “And quit changing the subject.”

I took a long pull from my beer. “Do you really want to do this? Talk about our feelings and shit? Because I could start us off with some talk about Della.”

At the mere sound of his ex-girlfriend, Sam gave me a glare to end all glares. “I’m afraid if we merely talk about her, she’ll figure out my location and kick down my door.”

Della was Sam’s ex, a woman who had lured him in with silky promises and then, once his gravity had centered around her, she’d hollowed him of the man he’d been before, sending him hurtling through a path paved with random women who didn’t want commitment. Just like him. He wasn’t afraid of commitment, and he didn’t feel the need to dissuade anyone else from taking it up, but he was done with it.

“Didn’t she do that once before?”

Sam took a long pull from his beer, long enough that I reached over the back of the sofa for another bottle from the case and handed it to him. He popped the top off of it, sending it spinning on the hardwoods. “Yep. Well, she tried. Got her heel stuck in the wood of the door, actually.” It would be amusing if it’d been anyone but Della we were talking about. Della was of a different variety than the average girl.

When Sam had first brought her around us, I’d had a feeling things wouldn’t end easily for him. But that was how I knew she hadn’t been right—because I’d already been seeing their end as an inevitable fact, and not just a possibility. It hadn’t been her bubblegum-colored lips or her waist-length shampoo-commercial hair. It’d been the look in her eyes, that wild, but barely tamed, look that had me averting my gaze and resisting any chance of eye contact. She looked at everyone like they were something to devour—leaving only their bones in her wake. It was a miracle that Sam had escaped from her clutches by the skin of his teeth, and kept them too.

“Mate, you gotta get this fixed.” Sam stood and tapped on top of the television with his beer.

“I’m sure hitting the TV with a glass bottle will do the trick,” I replied sarcastically. There wasn’t anything on anyway, but I’d invited Sam over because apart from the dinner at his family’s house, I hadn’t spent time with him in weeks. And I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I also wanted a little insight into Mila. Not that you’d know it by the way I changed the subject every time he brought her up.

“Sorry for being rough with you.” Sam looked over at me in answer.

“Why were you?”

Here it was, the moment where I had to fumble through my thoughts, through my feelings for this alien creature named Mila. “Mila, she’s just … she’s not just another girl for you to plow through.”

Sam scoffed. “Really, Ames. It’s like you hardly know me. You really think I’d be going after the girl my best friend is pursuing?”

Shrugging, I grabbed a new beer for myself. “You lure girls in without even trying. I just didn’t want you to think Mila was another one you could, you know.” I needed more beer for this kind of talk.

“Well, I don’t believe it. You’re not just interested in her. You’re really interested in her.”

I sat back against the couch cushions. “Great distinction between those two.”

“I’m not a wordsmith. That’s your job.” Sam tapped his fingers over the stack of books by the window and looked back at me. “She’s special, isn’t she?”

“Isn’t that obvious?”

“No need for hostility.” He held his palms up. “I just haven’t seen you like this over a girl in, well, a long time.”

Two years. It hung in the air between us without either of us needing to say it. “Yes, well, she’s only here for three weeks, so we’re not exactly running off together.”

“But it’s a start. When are you seeing her again?”

I looked back at the clock that hung on the wall. “In about three hours.”

“Please don’t tell me she’s coming to the pub again. That poor girl is going to think this is your lair and you only venture out at night, when it’s safe.”

“I took her to Postman’s in broad daylight.”

“An anomaly.”

“I’m taking her to the restaurant. I’m just going to show her around. Before…”

A voice interrupted me. “Hey, Sam.”

We both turned to Lotte, who stood in the doorway, her hands held in front of her.

“Lots. How are you?”

Lotte moved a bit further into the room, but not closer to Sam, who stood by the windows. “Fine.”

“Studio keeping you busy?”

She smiled, and I silently sipped my beer. Though I’d never addressed it with Lotte—because I didn’t feel the need—her unrequited crush on my best friend hung obviously around her neck, like a bloody neon sign. She lived for the attention Sam gave her, but I knew he only saw her in a strictly little-sister fashion.

“A little. Not too much. Been thinking of selling.” Her eyes darted to mine, and I sat up straighter, preparing myself.

“Oh?”

I sighed. “Lotte wants to sell the studio and give the proceeds of the sale to Free Refills and the restaurant, to go to America on an adventure.”

Even though I didn’t hear her intake of breath, the way her chest stretched as she looked expectantly at Sam made me immediately aware that she was waiting for some kind of reaction from him.

“Is that so?” He sipped his beer, and looked out the window. “You should go. Who knows, maybe you could find yourself an American boy to keep you occupied, as Ames has with Mila.”

It was if he’d been aiming for the most vulnerable spot of her heart, based on her reaction. Her breath hitched, and she pressed a hand flat to her stomach. I felt a little bad for her, not because I wanted Sam to return her affections, but to see her hurt from his rejection was just another pain she shouldn’t have had to bear. “Maybe I will.”

I watched as she swallowed hard and turned to me. “Dinner will be ready at half-past.”

When she’d left the room, Sam turned from the window to face me. “Let me guess. You’re against it.”

“Of course I am.”

“You’re a bloody idiot.” He pointed two fingers directly at me, while keeping the rest of them wrapped around his bottle. “What are you going to do, six months from now, without that money?”

“Close the restaurant, of course.”

“It hasn’t even opened.”

“I’ll sell it, then.”

“See? Idiot.”

Anger licked through me, hot and fast. “She’s not selling her studio to fund my silly solo project, Sam. And she’s not going to the States by herself.”

“Are you her father?”

I glared at him. “Don’t be an arse. We’re talking about Lotte, right? You really think she can traipse off to the States and not get taken advantage of in some horrific way?”

“Mila managed to cross over the pond to the UK by herself and live to tell the tale. Why can’t Lotte?”

“Mila is years older, and her eyes are wide open.” I pointed back at the kitchen, where Lotte had gone. “Lotte is still so young. This grand plan of her going to the States is just in response to all the things she’s had to deal with for the last couple of years. I’m not willing to let her run away and get hurt even more.”

“Get off your high-horse, Ames. You’ve no right to tell her she can’t. I get that you’ve been her protector since Mal died, but have you ever considered that maybe she needs to have some space to herself, to spread her wings? She’s not Mal. She’s not you.”

“Fuck off,” I said, my voice flat. “If she sells her studio, what will she have to come home to?”

“Besides Asher? Besides you?” Sam set his beer down. “Who says she will come home? Maybe she’ll like it so much, she’ll stay over there.”

“If you’re trying to convince me to encourage her, you’re doing a piss poor job.”

“I’m not trying to convince you to do anything, because ultimately, it’s not your decision. It’s hers. And you need to give her the space to make it.”