Small Town Girl, Big City Dreams • Kate Martin

Chapter 32: It's Different This Time

A/N: Just a heads up, if you haven't caught on by now, most of the songs for the chapters have significant meaning or help set the mood. This chapter is no exception.

Kate's POV

In the car on the way home, Jade reached across the middle console, searching for my hand, which I gave her, intertwining our fingers. Jade was so affectionate tonight and, while I was happy for it, I was thrown off by it. While, yes, I had been the one to draw the line on our affection, we had both agreed it was for the best. The Jade I was seeing tonight, however, felt much like the girl I had met months ago. It gave me hope, but also made me wary, especially after her mom's comments tonight.

I hadn't thought meeting her family had gone that well, but she also hadn't seen the way her mother was treating me or what was said to me. I knew, eventually, I'd have to tell her. She was in such a good mood tonight though that I couldn't bear to ruin it. I had expected her to be a little more closed off around me, especially with my meeting her family and having them in town. Yet, there she was asking me to kiss her with no regard to anyone or anything else.

I should've said no. I told her specifically that if we were going to keep our friendship that we couldn't keep blurring the lines. We didn't even have the excuse of alcohol tonight because neither of us had drank excessively—just one drink and a shot each. If we were being honest, had we ever really stopped blurring the lines? Here I was holding her hand after having kissed her after having a repeat of our first hangout where we had dinner with her parents beforehand who were suspicious of me due to rumors flying around that we were dating, which we encouraged by our engagement with edits of us on Tiktok...We had never been just friends. We never could be, I didn't think. We'd either move past this undefined thing we had going on and finally admit that we were meant to be together, or one of us would eventually move on, causing us to fall apart. She was my best friend, but we were never just friends and that would be our downfall if things didn't work out between us.

"What's going on over there in that head of yours, Just Kate?" Jade asked, bringing me back to the present moment. She squeezed my hand softly.

"Sorry, I'm good. Just thinking," I replied, squeezing her hand back, debating whether I should be honest about my fears or push it off and enjoy the night. The latter option was very tempting.

"Care to share some of those thoughts, superstar?" she asked, never taking her eyes off the road.

I looked over at her. She was beautiful as always, but she seemed happy and relaxed, glowing, really. It warmed my heart to see it. "You look happy."

"I am happy," she looked over at me quickly, her smile reached all the way to her eyes. "Thank you for being a big part of that."

"Always," I brought her hand up to my lips and kissed her knuckles softly. Fuck it; if Jade wanted to be affectionate tonight, I was going to soak up every second of it. Sure, it was possible that this would all blow up in my face, but at the moment, I didn't care. I was going to take every second of joy with this woman that I could. Consequences be damned. Really, I think I was just coming to terms with the fact that either this was going to work, or I was going to be absolutely devastated by it. I was too far in to look back now.

When she opened the door to her apartment, Thomas immediately greeted me with a small yowl and a rub against my leg. Once Jade shut the door behind us, I knelt down to give him some love. He purred enthusiastically. "Hey handsome."

"You and that damn cat," Jade said.

"Jealous?" I asked, looking up at her with a smirk.

"Super," she replied, rolling her eyes, but smiling.