Whispers Of The Heart

Chapter 26

Emery Rose

The memory of Grayson's kiss wouldn't leave me.

It clung to me, the warmth of his lips replaying over and over in my mind like a scene from a film I couldn't turn off. The Grayson I knew, my best friend, but someone else.

Someone unfamiliar, distant, like he was keeping a secret from me all this time.

I glanced at him across the room. We were still sitting in the library, trapped by the storm raging outside, both wrapped in a thick silence that had stretched for nearly two hours.

Not awkward at all.

His gaze was fixed on the window again, one hand resting on his mouth as though he could still feel the kiss too. The rain hammered against the glass, but it felt so far away compared to the storm inside me.

How could a single kiss unravel years of friendship so easily?

Here we were, stranded in this library with an awkwardness so heavy it felt impossible to break through.

It wasn't just the kiss... it was the weight of what it meant. There was something in the way he'd held me, his arms around my waist, the way he pulled me closer, not just as a friend, but with something deeper, something we'd never spoken about.

And I had let it happen. I had kissed him back.

I could still feel the press of his body against mine, the warmth of his breath on my skin, like a truth that had been buried between us for years finally clawing its way to the surface.

When we were little, we were inseparable-sharing secrets, dreams. But this... this was new territory. The lines between friendship and something more had blurred in an instant, and I wasn't sure how to step back. Or if I even wanted to...

The silence between us was unbearable. We had just started being friends again after four years of pretending the other didn't exist, and now this happened.

But there was something deeper lurking beneath the surface.

The kiss hadn't just left confusion in its wake; it had left Grayson visibly shaken.

I could see it in the way his chest rose and fell erratically, the slight tremor in his hands as he fidgeted with the edge of his shirt. He tried to mask it, to pull himself together.

It wasn't just the kiss that had triggered this moment of vulnerability; there was something darker, something that gnawed at him relentlessly. I could feel it, a weight hanging between us, thick with unspoken truths.

I couldn't stop turning it over in my mind, the nagging questions spiraling around. What was he hiding? What was he so scared of?

"Promise me you won't hate me," he had said earlier, his voice tight and strained during that moment of panic. It had thrown me off balance. He hadn't said that because of the kiss; it felt too deep, too urgent. Why would he say that?

And the more I thought about it, the more I realized it had to be something significant, something he couldn't bear to share. It wasn't the kiss that was causing that; it was something else entirely, something buried deep within him.

Suddenly, I stood up abruptly, unable to sit still any longer. The energy in the room felt charged, and I couldn't ignore the urgency swirling inside me. I felt his gaze shift toward me, but I couldn't look back. I couldn't. The fear of what I might see in his eyes-anxiety, pain, regret- was too much to bear.

Instead, I walked toward the back of the library, desperate for something- anything-  to distract myself.

I made my way to the back, weaving through the rows of shelves, trying to gather my thoughts. The air here felt quieter, more distant, like it was giving me space to breathe, to think.