I know Lucas is going to follow me here. I saw it in his eyes. That same look I’ve caught several times over in the past few months…the same look I know I sport: want, desire—love.

I’ve loved him for years—long before Mum and Dad became his guardians…long before I really knew what it was that had my heart trying to leap out of my chest, my body throbbing, my tongue tied.

I’m eighteen. It’s my birthday party. It’s as good a time as any to tell him—or so I keep telling myself. I can’t go on keeping it locked up inside. But I’m scared. It doesn’t matter that I sense he feels the same, that I see the way he looks at me when he thinks no one else is watching.

I pin his expression in my mind, focus on it as I grab my flute of champagne and throw back the remainder. The hit of alcohol makes me wince, but I need it—Dutch courage. I return it to the side as I watch the door.

You love him. You can tell him. You have to.

I hear footsteps in the hallway, louder than the music from my party, underway further down the hall, and I take a breath, pressing my hands into my thighs, forcing them to still and hoping their dampness doesn’t mark the bright white of my dress.

The door opens and I can’t breathe.

‘Evangeline?’

His voice sends blood rushing through my body, my pulse rate skittering out of control.

‘Yes…’ It comes out like a whisper, my fear coming through, and it frustrates me. I want to be confident. I want him to see me as a woman, not the little sister of his best friend, Nate.

Get it together.

His head appears around the door, his gaze hesitant as he looks from me to the hallway and back again.

‘Hey.’

He steps inside but pauses, the confident twenty-one-year-old I usually see oddly absent. He’s boyish, uncertain, and my heart turns over.

‘Hey,’ I manage back, breathless.

We don’t move closer. My knees feel like jelly and his fingers tremble a little as he rakes one hand through his hair, his other still hanging on to the door handle.

Take control. You need to do this. You need to show him.

‘Close the door.’

I’m surprised at the confidence I’ve injected into my tone—am surprised all the more when he does what I ask. But his eyes don’t return to me. They burn a hole in the floor at his feet.

I take a small breath. ‘Why won’t you look at me?’

His eyes waver and I can sense the fight in him.

I step forward, my progress slow as the tight minidress restricts my movement, riding ever higher up my thighs. The moment I’d chosen it I’d had this in mind. To confess my love, maybe even seduce him. I want my first time to be with him and tonight would be so perfect.

‘Lucas?’

He shakes his head, but then his eyes lock with mine and I feel their burn. Need is etched in the tightness of his jaw, in his hands fisting at his sides.

‘We shouldn’t be in here…alone.’

‘Then why did you come?’ I press.

Please let him be torn. Please let him confirm what I suspect.

‘I—’

He shakes his head again but his eyes are still fixed on mine. His internal fight is clear in their depths, and he runs his teeth over his lower lip. The move distracting me with the glimpse of his tongue, the mouth I so desperately want to taste.

‘Being alone with you, like this…’ He waves a hand up and down my length, his eyes travelling over me and setting my skin alight.

‘Don’t trust yourself?’ I tease, forcing out the playful jest even though I know how much rides on his response.

I pause less than an arm’s reach away and look up at him from beneath my lashes, not quite ready to reach for him. That fear of rejection is still there.

‘You know we shouldn’t.’

It’s my turn to shake my head. ‘Why?’

‘Because—because of who you are. Of who your family are to me.’

‘In a way, we’re your family too.’

‘Exactly, Eva—they’re all I have.’

I risk another step and hold his tormented gaze. I want to kiss it away, take away the pain of his past, his loss, his loneliness. He never had a father. His mother, although best friend to my own, was hardly ever present, and now she’s been dead almost a year. But I have been here. I’ve always been here for him. I can be enough. If only he will see it.

‘And we will always be here for you. But I have to tell you how I feel. I have to tell you I… I…’ My voice cracks and I curse the show of weakness.

‘Don’t, Evangeline—don’t say it.’

His words are a warning that I can’t abide, and it’s the push that I need.

‘Why?’

‘Because it will change everything.’

‘And why is that so bad?’

He takes a breath and it shudders out of him, but he says nothing.

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