“How can I believe you?”

“Why shouldn’t you believe me?” I feel ice coming into my voice. I wish it could fill my veins, dull my senses. “Why the hell not?”

“I have to go.” Her bus is arriving, and she’s already moving forward. Leaving me.

“I didn’t kiss her, Embers.” To hell with that. She’s Embers to me. Only to me. “I’d never kiss any girl but you.”

“Goodbye,” she whispers, gets on the bus and goes.

I stomp away, not even knowing where I’m going, shaking all over. I fucked up. I don’t know how, but it’s my fault yet again.

What did I do wrong? I haven’t as much as glanced at another girl. Other girls hold no interest for me anymore.

I thought when she stopped snapping at me and calling me names, when she kissed me back and held me, that I’d turn tail and run. So why isn’t it happening? Why do I want her more than ever?

I need her. I miss her. I fucking love her.

Love her. The realization hits me and I bend over for a second. Fuck. When they say you fall in love, I never thought it really felt that way, like falling. Like crashing from up high.

I blink dazedly at the busy street. I love Amber. Shouldn’t it feel more like flying? Where are the rainbows and shooting stars? Why does it hurt so much?

I’d give my soul to be with her. In fact, I think I already have.

Chapter Nineteen

Amber

He’s holding me in his arms, kissing me. His skin is silky soft where we touch, muscles shifting and bulging as he rolls me under him, his warm lips moving from my mouth to my jaw, trailing hot kisses down my neck. Between my legs, his hard-on is an insistent pressure that sends fire to my core.

“Embers…” he whispers, his hips rocking, and he slides into me. “Need you, Embers…”

I need you, too, I want to say, but I can’t speak. Not when he’s sinking into me, a delicious burn and stretch, his hot length sliding deep, filling me up. Need you.

Love you, JJ.

I want to cry, because something’s wrong. He can’t be here. He’s not here. I can’t let him in again, can’t hold him inside me, or in my arms, because…

“Kitten.” He’s moving faster, panting, his strong body sliding against mine, his cock fucking me fast and hard.

Until I come apart, writhing on the bed, waves of pleasure crashing over me, drowning me. I can’t breathe, my nose clogged and my eyes running.

I’m crying. Have been for a while. I wake up in my bed, alone, still shaking from my release.

Crap, it was a dream. He wasn’t here. And when memory returns—the image of him and Cassie kissing at the wedding reception—I swallow a sob.

I knew it would come, but now it happened I can hardly believe it. Never knew a broken heart could hurt so much. At least he stopped calling and texting every day.

How can I trust him again? It took me so much effort to unlock myself, to believe he wants me, to believe we might have something between us.

And he kissed a girl the moment I turned my back.

But against my better judgment, I want to trust him. God, I miss him so much it’s suffocating me, killing me. I miss his faint, real smile and his teasing grin, I miss the look of concentration on his face when I teach him to cook, the way he kisses me like he can never get enough. The way he opened up to me about his past, the way he drew my image, lower lip tucked under his teeth, his eyes hot on me.

I miss the way he held me, the way he teased me, the way he sat with me and shopped with me. The way he made love to me and shook me to my core like no one else before. He treated me as someone strong and whole, not someone broken.

If only he saw me now…

Hugging my pillow, I let the tears flow.

***

“We should start drinking Turkish coffee,” Kayla announces, sliding into the chair across from me in our brightly lit kitchen.

I rub at my eyes. I know they’re red and swollen, like on most mornings these days. “Why would we want to do that?”

“To tell our fortune. Nothing better than Turkish coffee, because you boil the coffee with the water and just pour it into your cup without a filter. Then,” she sticks her tongue out to me when I make a face, “you let the coffee powder settle, drink the coffee, and upturn the cup in its saucer. It leaves streaks and symbols you can read. I saw it on TV the other day.”

Her blond-streaked hair is caught up in two pigtails. Her pajama shorts are fuchsia and her tank top green.

My eyes really hurt now.

“What happened to good old palmistry?”

“Passé.” She waves a hand at me dismissively and grins. “We need new methods. Vosprung durch Technik.”

“Isn’t that the ad for a car?”

“Amber.” She sighs. “Advancement through technology. That’s what it means.”

“And Turkish coffee counts as technology, I assume?” I roll my eyes at her.

“You assume correctly.” She grabs my cup before I manage to take a second sip. “But meanwhile we make do.”

“Hey!” I reach for my cup, my very filtered coffee sloshing. “I’m not done.”

“I’ll help you.” She gulps down the rest. “Our fates are intertwined anyway, what with living in this apartment together and whatnot.”

“Christ, Kay. You’ve been watching too much TV.”

“You can never watch too much TV,” she intones and studies the inside of the cup. “Ah-huh. I knew it.”

“I’ve had enough.” I get up, tugging down my blouse over my boy shorts, and turn to go.

“You love him.”

I freeze on the spot by the kitchen door. “Say again?”

“Jesse Lee. You’ve gone and fallen in love with him, despite all my warnings.”

I turn slowly toward her. “Shut up, Kay.” I sit back down, my vision blurring. Awesome. And here I thought I had no more tears to shed. “I’m not in love with him.”

“Not what the cup tells me.” If she’s noticed my tears, she doesn’t give any signs. She turns the cup in her hands slowly. “Here is the heart, and it’s a double one. Man, I really wish we had Turkish coffee, this filtered stuff is crap for reading fortunes.”

I laugh, choking on tears. “Whatever.”

“It’s fuzzy. Not easy to work with. I mean, look here.” She points with her little finger at a smudge inside the cup. “See that? I can’t be sure, but it looks like a cat.”

“A cat.” This is stupid, but it’s a good distraction. “Really.”

“Yeah. See the tail? And I think…” She gasps. “No, it’s not a cat. It’s a lion.”

My turn to gasp. That’s a funny coincidence. I think again at the pendant I wanted to give Jesse, still tucked inside my purse—the stone lion I carved.

“No idea what a lion means,” she muses, frowning, twirling one pigtail around a finger. “Anyway. I also see a conflict. A collision. See here, this explosion thingy. You will collide with something from your past. And here… I see flowers. Roses, most probably.”

“Most probably?” I arch my brows, suspicious. “What are you up to, girl?”

“Me?” She does a terrible show of innocence, fluttering her lashes, widening her eyes and pressing her hand to her chest. “How low you think of me.”

“And enough of historical series, or whatever it is you’re watching.” I finally gather myself together and stalk out of the kitchen, thinking to grab a shower and do something productive for a change. Take my mind off things.

Off him.

“The flowers are already here!” she yells after me. “They arrived earlier this morning, and I had nothing to do with them.” A pause while I turn back around. “But I did see them in the cup. Oh ye of little faith.”

***

“Who would send me roses?” I grumble as I trail after Kayla into the living room.

“Jesse Lee?”

“No. Jesse has trouble shopping.”

“Seriously? He doesn’t have to go out and buy the flowers himself, only call and give his credit card number.”