Page 93 of Your Last First Kiss

I open my mouth, but I don’t know what to say to that.

“Go,” he says, shooing me toward the door. “I’ll handle the hellions. But, Penny? I’ll still gut him with my bare hands if he hurts you.”

Miller’s tone is easy, but I know he means it because I would do the same thing for him.

* * *

I walkacross the street instead of driving around the block to the TAC’s driveway. I need the time and freezing temperatures to cool off. I can’t walk in there before I’ve collected my thoughts. I don’t want to say something I might regret.

Plus, Dillon shoveled a path through the mountain of snow separating us, making the walk easy because that’s Dillon.

It’s how he’s always been. Isn’t it?

How many times over the last three years has he shown up for his meeting with Lochlan with something for me that he just happened to think I’d like?

My boots crunch in the icy snow, and each step brings forth a new memory.

The donuts from the place in Brooklyn that I know for a fact was out of his way.

The book I was excited about and impatiently waiting to release that he somehow managed to get his hands on early, then said he’d remembered me saying something about it.

When I said I wanted to get an air fryer, but they were so expensive. The next week he showed up with one in a battered box, but the fryer itself was brand-new and untouched. He’d said he’d had it for years and never used it. But I’d always wondered if that was the entire truth because when I got home, it was Miller who pointed out he’d never seen damage on a box quite so perfectly spaced before.

Never, ever forgetting my coffee order.

Binge-watching my favorite shows so we could talk about them together.

My heart is in my throat when I reach the TAC. And when I get to the bottom of the stairs that lead to his new apartment, I’m finding it hard not to fidget.

I unwrap the scarf covering every inch of my face except my eyes, and a cloud of warm air puffs into the night sky.

Before I can talk myself out of this, I clomp up the steps, removing my hat and fluffing my hair as I go.

Breathe in for three. Exhale for four. Paisley’s one attempt at teaching me yoga on the green over the summer runs through my mind, and for once, her breathing techniques help calm the shakiness overtaking my body.

Then I knock, three quick, hard pounds before I can chicken out.

There’s movement inside, a crash, Dillon cursing softly, and my entire being unwinds.

His door opens, and surprise flashes in his expression before he relaxes into an easy smile.

But it’s not his face I’m looking at.

Once again, he’s standing before me in a towel. I’d have to be dead not to remember the last time we were in this position.

But this time, things are different.

Everything is different.

I’m different.

I don’t know what comes over me, but I fling myself at him. Again. He catches me easily, and the door slams shut behind us as he pulls me in out of the cold.

He’s too tall for me to reach his lips, but I claw at his neck in desperation anyway.

One of my hands lands on his bare chest, and he hisses through clenched teeth. “Jesus, Penny. Your hands are like ice.”

I cringe and start to pull back, but his hands clasp over mine and hold them to his bare skin.