Page 32 of Creed

More confident.

And beautiful as ever.

She started down the steps but stopped cold when she spotted me standing below. Her mouth parted, and she muttered my name like it still meant something.

“Jameson.”

And just like that, all those doubts I’d had quickly disappeared.

8

DEVIN

"Hello, Devin.”

“What… how…ah,” I stammered. “What are you doing here?”

I sounded like a blubbering idiot. But I couldn’t help it.

I was in a state of utter disbelief.

After all these years, there he was. The man who haunted me in my dreams was standing right in front of me with a damn smirk. “Good to see you, too, babe.”

And just like that, my knees almost buckled beneath me.

He had a way of doing that to me.

It wasn’t exactly my fault. The man had always been the perfect mix of sex appeal and trouble. And that hadn’t changed. Not one bit.

There was a little more gray in his hair and a few crow’s feet around his eyes, but damn, if they didn’t make him look even better. He was wearing a fitted black T-shirt that clung to his broad shoulders with a pair of jeans and his black leather boots, and he had a few more tattoos than he had when I’d last seen him.

He looked good.

Too good.

“You didn’t answer my question.” I crossed my arms tight across my chest. It was the only defense I had left. “What are you doing here?”

He didn’t answer right away. Just looked at me with something that felt like regret and something else I couldn’t name. His silence stretched too long, thick with everything we didn’t say back then.

And suddenly, I was scared.

Because I wasn’t sure I was ready for what might come next.

“I came to see you.”

“Why?”

“You got time for a coffee?”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“It’s just coffee, Dev.”

I let out a slow breath, trying to ignore the ache that came with hearing him say my name like that. Like no time had passed. Like we weren’t standing on the jagged edge of a thousand unresolved feelings.

Everything in me screamed that I should walk away, but then, I heard myself say, “There’s a shop on campus. We could go there.”

“That’ll work.”