For Keeps. For Always. by HALEY JENNER (top rated books of all time txt) 📗

host lost to the grief at having just buried her mother-in-law.

Mom and Dad left the house the moment the wake wrapped up, needing space from everyone who wanted to help. Dad invited us along, but politely accepted my silence as the rejection I intended it to be. My fear of speaking aloud had been obvious enough over the past days, my voice weakened by the heavy lump in my throat.

Even at this moment, I can’t bring myself to mumble a single word. My stomach feels hollow. My eyes are scratched raw, and I feel a selfish need to forget it all. To bury myself away into something greater than sadness.

But I can’t move. I can’t save myself from the abyss I’m floating aimlessly within.

Henley does it for me when her palm slides across my comforter in search of my hand. I'm jolted by her touch, but my fingers wrap around hers immediately. The warmth of her hand was a balm to my soul I didn’t realize existed.

It’s only then that I can fully appreciate the immensity in the way I’ve missed her. Eighteen months is a long time. For us, it was the difference between our early adolescence and our current journey into adulthood. I knew I missed her, but having her here, this close, close enough to be able to touch her, has overwhelmed me.

I roll to my side, needing to see her. It’s been a whirlwind since her arrival, and now is the first breath we’ve been able to take, together, through this clusterfuck of a day.

She follows my movement, her cheeks pressed against my pillow. Her face is smooth, lacking any emotion. A blank canvas. I feel much the same. My heart is struggling to decide which emotion is strong enough to keep me alive.

Denial.

Anger.

Regret.

Sadness.

All horribly morose feelings I’d do anything to erase.

“It was a nice service,” she murmurs eventually, but I can’t find it in me to respond because as selfish as it seems, the moment our eyes meet, that void I was praying for finds me. Everything fades away, and she is all I see. All I can concentrate on.

The heartache of my world all but falls away. Henley is the center of everything. My best friend consumes me in a way I never considered she would.

My eyes fixate on her lips of their own accord. She speaks, but her words are lost as I track the defined line of her upper lip. The prominent bow that begs to be caressed by my teeth. Her tongue darts out, dampening the deep red cushions I'd give anything to feel against my own.

"Are you listening?"

I glance up at her eyes. "Of course."

"You're a liar."

I smile, my eyes once again dropping to her lips.

“Do you feel the change?” I ask her, knowing I likely shouldn’t. “In us?” But I need to know my feelings are shared. That the tsunami of lust and need and want coursing through me isn’t one-sided. That she feels just as drowned by it all as I do.

My eyes zero in on the thick roll of her throat. The deep swallow that echoes between us. I long to reach out and touch it, to feel the nervous flutter of her pulse.

“Yes.” The word is but a whisper, barely audible, but enough to quicken the beat of my heart.

I exhale in relief, my breath gliding over her face in salvation. “What do you think changed it?”

“Distance?” she guesses without thinking.

She’s thought about it already, like I have. Working to understand how we went from friends to being caught in a cloud of something more.

“The longing for a friendship we both needed exaggerating itself into something deeper.”

“Does it scare you?” I shift closer, our hands still entwined between us.

Her head shakes. “Not in the way it should.”

“Is it real?”

She nods this time. “Yes. It’s too overwhelming to be anything else.”

Our eyes connect, her big brown pools set on mine in something I’ve yet to recognize.

“Will you stay?” There’s a plea in my words. A desperation that forces her teeth into her bottom lip. “Here in Lake Geneva.”

“I don’t think I can,” she confesses regretfully, the power in her voice non-existent as her eyebrows pull together.

“We could run away,” I tell her. “You and me. We’ll go far away and start our life.”

A single blink, one that she holds to shut me away from her thoughts. One that forces a tear to leak from her eyes and onto my pillow. “I would never ask you to do that, Brooks. Your family would never forgive me, and I don’t think you would either. They’re too important to you.”

“You’re important to me,” I implore.

“And I’ll always be here.”

I let my gaze drop to her lips. Perfect pink cushions begging to be tasted. Could my touch convince her she belongs here? With me?

As if hearing my thoughts, her mouth opens, the soft touch of her tongue dragging across her lips, making them glisten.

My body acts of its own accord as my free hand finds the front of her dress, and I pull her to me, needing her closer. Leaning in, I press my lips against hers in a gentle touch. A tender experiment to gauge her reaction.

She emulates the movement and her lips push forward in a brush even more delicate than mine.

We pull back at the same time, a longing anchoring our gaze just as our lips meet again.

This time, I deepen the kiss, needing more connection. Craving an actual taste.

My tongue strokes ardently against hers. A caress of our mouths, a reunion neither one of us could have expected. As the seconds pass, our mouths begin moving in unison, and I couldn’t imagine being addicted to anything more.

The supple swell of her lips, the ethereal graze of her tongue; I’m in a dream. I’m floating. Lost in a clouded bliss of lust and wonder.

A soft whimper escapes her mouth, and I can’t swallow it quick enough. Pushing her back into my mattress, I climb over her, salivating at the feel of her body beneath mine. I