Jayla gave Andrés a baffled, long-distance look, her heart doing a frantic, jagged rhythm against her ribs. The air in the ice cream parlor suddenly felt twice as thick, tasting of sugar and the ghost of a two-year-old secret.
"Indeed," she breathed, her voice a low, vibrating chord. "It has been a very long two years."
She fought the urge to touch her own hair, to straighten her jacket, to do anything that betrayed how often his face had flickered across the back of her eyelids in the dark.
She wouldn't let him know. She wouldn't give him the satisfaction of knowing he had been her gold standard, the benchmark against which every other man had failed—miserably.
Andrés let out a rough, appreciative chuckle and didn't wait for an invitation. He pulled out a pastel-pink chair with a casual, predatory grace, the metal legs screeching against the tile like a warning. He sat, directly next to her, claiming the space with an effortless arrogance.
