The Allure of Love

Chapter 17

For a suspended beat, Chris simply stared back at Anastasia, his expression flickering through a kaleidoscope of emotions she knew better than to try deciphering. Surprise, wariness, a yearning flicker of temptation...and was that a ripple of authentic fear she detected severing the corners of his eyes as well?

At last, he wet his lips and gave a slow, nearly imperceptible nod.

"You're probably right," he said, voice catching with a subtle rasp she felt plucking at her heart's taut strings. "If there was ever a chance for us to really...sort through some of the debris, I suppose this is it."

A lump formed in Anastasia's throat at the layers of unspoken nuance and history woven into that simple reply. She tried to swallow it back, refocusing her efforts on maintaining her composure rather than melting into a puddle at the mere _implication_ Chris was extending to revisit certain closed doors between them.

Up ahead, Sam had paused and turned back towards them both, brow furrowing slightly as he registered the odd tableau they presented - two old friends fallen behind with features tense and inscrutable.

"Everything okay back there?" he called out, a trace of concern lacing his usual laidback drawl. "You lovebirds need me to grab the nearest dean and have them prescribe some smelling salts or something before the big swoon happens?"

Shooting Chris one last indecipherable look from beneath lowered lashes, Anastasia struggled to smooth her expression into one of breezy nonchalance. The last thing she needed was anyone poisoning the already murky waters ahead with further hints of dissonance or romantic intrigue. Not when she had only just barely gathered the courage to take this fraught first step towards...whatever lay in store.

"We're fine, you nosy gossipmonger - just getting a bit of fresh air and ozone therapy in before you drag us into whatever dicey frat throwback den of sin and filth is next on the itinerary," she quipped back with a passable imitation of her usual wry edge.

Sam regarded them both a moment longer, his knowing smirk saying what any more pointed barbs would surely follow. But Josh chose that opportune beat to divert his attention by gesturing off towards another cluster of iconic CSU sights up ahead. With a final, ambiguous shake of his head, Sam dropped the subject and rejoined their little procession forward.

In his wake, Anastasia released a shuddering breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding - Sam's interruption serving as a jarring reminder of her precarious positioning between two opposing camps at this moment. Anchoring herself with the grounding feel of Chris's shoulder grazing hers once more, she tried to tune out the distant peals of Jack's familiar laughter ricocheting over the lawns. It would do her no good to lose her nerve or purpose now, not when she had stubbornly committed herself to this path...wherever its dangerous riptides might ultimately lead them.

"We shouldn't keep them waiting any longer," Chris murmured into the electrically charged space between them. There was a faint tremor audible in his deep baritone, like the reverberations of an invisible current skirting across the very surface of his nerves.

With a herculean effort, Anastasia stifled the thousand tangled yearnings and doubts threatening to unravel her composure by acknowledging the truth underlying Chris's observation. This _moment_ in time between them felt too fragile, too sacred and self-contained to mar with any further stall tactics or explanations mucking its pristine rarity.

They pressed onwards, falling into step with their friends once more. Yet with each passing yard, an inexorable gravity seemed to intensify the tractor-beam pull between Chris and Anastasia - the latter straining to keep her aura of surface levity intact even as the roiling forces deep within began fraying her seams. Like twin celestial bodies caught in the momentum of an elliptical orbit converging, she sensed them both now hurtling inextricably towards _something_. Whether a spectacular coalescence...or a cataclysmic collision destined to rip apart constellations.

Amidst the playful ribbing and nostalgic shoves from Sam and Josh, Anastasia could feel Jack's keen azure gaze flickering frequently over in her direction. Sizing up the infinitesimal distance separating her and Chris as if attempting to identify the source of some silent cosmic tuning fork reverberating only she and her old friend could perceive. Part of her ached to reassure him, this beautiful man whose passion and dazzling light had become her present oasis amidst so much inner turmoil.

But a deeper, more primal instinct overrode that urge of remorse. _Not yet._ No, for now, Anastasia knew she must hold her peace and allow this secret inertia to carry her and Chris to wherever fate next decreed for them...no matter how forbidden the galactic waters ahead appeared.

The rest of that afternoon blurred into a disorienting fog of overlapping sensory echoes ricocheting through Anastasia's soul. Half-remembered thrills and spectral sorrows from her undergrad escapades haunting every verdant glade and cloistered haunt their rambling pathway traced through campus. Even amidst the overt poses and hammy commentary from Sam and Josh playing up their glory days as Centralia's biggest big men on campus, she remained weighed under their invisible current.

Each time her gaze would drift over towards the broad, solid line of Chris's shoulders, the world around her seemed to simultaneously snap into blinding focus while simultaneously tilting off its axis entirely. How many evenings had she dedicated hours of quiet observation to those sinewy cords of flexing lean muscle shifting beneath his well-worn henley while his deft hands toiled with some woodwork masterpiece in the making?

The unbroken hours they spent inhabiting the same hushed, intimate dimensions of space - like planets orbiting a shared sun, their contented solitudes forever tuned to the same frequency despite any outward displays of obliviousness. Inevitably, Anastasia wondered if her solitary drinking in of Chris's quiet rhythms and patient steadiness had always been tinged by unmistakable shades of romantic longing and desire, or if those insidious threads had only woven themselves into the tapestry over time. These were the hidden truths and aching questions she somehow knew to expect once they carved out their dreaded confessional - both a reckoning and liberation awaiting them on the other side of daring to voice what had gone stale between them.

As the afternoon shadows grew long, their merry band eventually looped back around to a secluded quad beside one of the lesser sorority chateau compounds. With a furtive scan to ensure no one else was within earshot, Sam brought them all huddling together with a conspiratorial gleam.

"Alright, bros and bro-ettes...who's got the brilliant idea to sneak us through the official Campus Gardens this year? You _know_ they're officially off-limits to rowdy reunion riff-raff like us after last year's Arbor Day kegger debacle."

Eyes twinkling with mischief, he gave an exaggerated waggle of his brows between Chris and Anastasia specifically.

"You two lovebirds were always my go-to collaborators back in the day for swindling the security codes and hacking through all the good stuff most folks never got to explore after dark. I'm almost hoping one of you still has the sweet skills to bribe our way through, if you get my drift..."

A vivid peal of disjointed imagery flashed through Anastasia's mind all at once, sharp as a camera shutter with each rapid-fire frame: Warm, simmering intensity of want as Chris's bare, sweat-sheened back undulated powerfully over her that first intoxicating night in the gardens' gazebo hideaway. An exhilarating liberation surging through her veins with each whispered clue bartered between conspiratorial kisses as they wove their way through the dense arbors and false trails after scaling the far hedge walls together. An out-of-body lightness and elated adrenaline rush as she and Chris raced one another, hand in hand like giddy children, towards their secret sylvan sanctuary from the rest of the world...

Anastasia blinked fiercely, as if resurfacing suddenly after a prolonged submersion underwater. The sudden force of memories rushing back had stolen her breath away, leaving her unbalanced and fighting against an intense wave of vertigo. This couldn't be happening - she refused to let herself spiral this far into past delusions, nostalgic fevers so potent and visceral. Not mere feet away from where Jack waited with the others, regarding her curiously with those expressive azure eyes.