The Swan 2: Taking Flight

*COMPLETE***
"You're not playing fair," I whispered, shuddering when I felt his lips and the stubble on his jaw brush against the side of my neck.

"I don't recall making rules," he said, lifting his head, our noses nearly touching as he stared into my eyes. "If there aren't rules, then I can't be playing unfair."

"Friends don't talk this close," I said as he took a step closer. "Or touch this much."

"Friends also don't respond to their friends' touch the way you are to mine," he said, bringing his hand up to my jaw and tilting my face up towards his, his lips centimeter from mine. "I personally think you set our friendship up for failure by assuming our connection could be ignored. I've never been good at friendship anyway, I say we try something I could do better at."

"What could you do better at, Milo?" I asked, a shaky breath escaping me as his lips leaned in closer and only turned away from mine at the last minute. His lips brushed against my ear as his hand moved to the back of my head, threading through my hair as he whispered.

"Us."

Emery has been in Europe the last eight months. She deals with the challenges of being a growing star with sometimes overly interested fans and people coming back in her life now that she's succeeding. Not only that, she had to nurse a broken heart with her lover, Milo, and was doing the best she could, so good she met someone new. It seemed the new man in her life was more than enough for her feelings for Milo to dissipate, or at least she thought, until Milo contacts her.

Milo's been going through some intensive personal growth as his psychologist works with him on some unresolved issues and challenges that went undiagnosed when Milo was a child. Milo is in the process of learning to break free from poisonous words that filled his head as a child. Through it all he had one goal in sight: to be well enough to be with Emery. He works up the courage to contact her but finds a lot can change in a few months.