As much as I loved Paige, I never wanted something to end so badly in my life.

She'd been hired to shoot a huge ad for a yoga wear company based out of Boston, so I was dancing around on my toes, waiting for my turn, and looking at Luke's balcony every ten seconds, smiling like a lunatic at the hummingbird feeder I could just make out hanging from the slope of the roof over his balcony.

"Reese, you're up!" Paige barked at me in full boss mode.

Apparently, Paige thought I looked smoking hot in leggings, so I could now add 'model' to my resume and deposit a nice check in my bank account. I told Oliver he should worry a little that I was going to steal his girlfriend as he watched from behind Paige's back as she crouched to take more photos.

"Who needs men?" I joked as I changed poses.

"With the way you were looking at Luke, I'd say you need at least one man desperately," Oliver shot back.

Paige checked the screen on her camera. "I hate that you two are talking about this when I have to concentrate and that I missed the whole damn thing," she huffed. "I want my own love speech, Ollie."

Oliver leaned over, ruffled Paige's hair, and whispered in her ear—something probably too dirty for my ears based on the pink dusting Paige's cheeks.

I rolled my eyes. "It wasn't a love speech. It was a like speech. A miss speech."

"Whatever. Tell me the last time you were celibate for three months because you were pining over your frienemy and you couldn't admit it to yourself," Paige said with her eye up to the camera, snapping more photos. "Cut the face, Adler," she added after I twisted my lips up, "...and the finger."

She instructed the lighting guy to adjust whatever contraption he was holding and made me change poses three times. "You're a natural," she said, winking at me before putting her face back behind her camera. "So what are Luke's flaws?"

"He doesn't have any," I smiled over dramatically.

"Bullshit," she called me out. "You can't love someone until you love their flaws."

"Love?! You're getting ahead of yourself. How much longer?" I whined and looked up at Luke's balcony for the millionth time. "I want to snoop."

Of course his apartment would overlook a beautiful park. I wanted to see if it smelled like a pinecone inside. I wanted to see if he preferred a leather couch or a fabric couch. I wanted to see what movies were labeled as 'Watch Again' on his Netflix account. I wanted to know if he had pictures everywhere like a sentimental boy or if he had a girly candle on his coffee table. I wanted to know what books he kept on his bookshelves, what he had in his refrigerator, how he organized his drawers and closets, what color his comforter was.

"I can't believe you're going to ditch us," Paige said with a sly smile.

"Oh, shut up. You were begging me to give you alone time yesterday. Feel free to sleep in my bed. Just wash my sheets after."

"Day one of being a girlfriend. Already sleeping over," she tutted with a sly smile and shook her head.

"I'm not his girlfriend!"

Paige laughed. "It will take a lot more than a love speech from Luke to convince you into that."

I huffed a few expletives under my breath at her while she snapped another two hundred photos.

"Okay, let's do the last wardrobe change. And then I will set you free."

When I came out of the tent in my teal blue athleisure wear, midriff bare, Leslie, the makeup artist, touched up my bronzer and mascara. "Before you leave, I'll touch it up again," she said, winking at me. "And make sure you keep that on."

Every person working the photo shoot had heard the entire depressing story of my life because Paige had a loud mouth.

I tried to suppress my smile while she fixed my hair into the most beautiful loose French braids. My hair had grown so much longer in the last few months that they were flowing down my back.

Paige and Oliver both raised their eyebrows when I made it back to my spot on the black yoga mat in the grass.

"Shit, Reese," Paige exclaimed. "You should consider a career change into modeling. You're making me question my sexuality. Luke is going to die."

Paige looked at Oliver, who was trying not to stare, and made a face at him telling him to compliment me. "I'm not saying anything," he joked. "But yeah, show up to Luke's like that."

I couldn't hide the red that started to tickle my cheeks. "I've been doing a lot of Pilates," I said, trying to cover my stomach.

"Flaunt it," Paige scolded me. "Now, do some yoga things. I need to capture how amazing your ass looks."

I rolled my eyes at her as she walked three hundred and sixty degrees around me, snapping a picture for every degree.

Finally, after looking at her screen for an eternity, she looked up at me and beamed. "You look perfect. I can't wait for you to see these in a magazine."

"Can I see now?" I asked, standing up.

"No way. I need to edit them first." She swatted my hand away when I tried to grab the camera. "Hands off. I might email them to you when I'm finished if I'm feeling nice."

"I'll be waiting for forever then," I sighed.

Paige hit my hand again and laughed. "Go be nice to your boyfriend."

"He's not my—"

"Yeah, yeah." She turned off her camera and hugged me. "I want a full report tomorrow, and he should totally go with us to the Red Sox game." She patted my ass. "Now get your happy butt up there. You can't stop smiling."

—

I knocked twice in case Luke was home, but no one answered. My heart was about to fly away.

I punched in the code—0526—that he'd texted me, wondering if that was his birthday. I didn't even know his birthday. I'd never cared about not knowing before. This was entirely new territory for me.

I was more nervous than I thought I would be.

The door swung open.

Lemon greeted me with a happy tail wag and nudged my hand.

"Jump," I said, trying to imitate Luke, and patted my stomach.

He placed his paws on me, and I scratched his neck while we pressed our foreheads together. "You're my new best friend, Lemon. It will be our little secret from Paige," I joked with myself.

Lemon wagged his tail and dropped his front paws back to the floor. He trotted over to his bed by the fireplace, settling in a circle.

I slipped off my sandals by the door and put my bare feet down on the hardwood floor. The air didn't smell like Luke. I breathed in—maybe actual lemons.

This apartment screamed Luke. Everything had a place, everything lined up like his suitcases in the corner of our hotel rooms had been.

The kitchen to my left was modern and white. He had two yellow hand towels perfectly hanging from his dishwasher and his espresso/coffee machine angled in a corner on the counter against his herringbone backsplash. Other than that, it was clutter free.

My first thought was to find his toaster, so I made my way around the kitchen until I found it behind a low cupboard door that opened upwards with a loaf of bread and a bag of everything bagels in a basket.

His refrigerator and pantry were filled with a mix of healthy and junk food—at least he ate some junk food.

I spun around to look out into the living room where a dark brown leather couch sat across from a massive television above a mantle. I walked to the sofa and sat down.

Cold and uncomfortable. I hated leather couches. I switched to the oversized fabric chair, sinking into its warmth.

The differences in our apartments were glaring. I thought about my tiny haphazard living room with my cheap mismatched furniture. Luke would probably hate it. His apartment was manly and organized, all of his furniture seemed so solid and expensive. Everything fit together perfectly like it belonged in a magazine, and there was no way he didn't have a housekeeper. My feet were perfectly clean walking around barefoot.

Lemon watched me and wagged his tail every few minutes.

I ran my hand over the gray blanket folded over the arm rest. I sat up and flipped through the anatomy textbook sitting on the square wooden coffee table before I grabbed the remote sitting in a tray and navigated to Netflix. Not a single chick flick under his recent watches. He'd certainly watched a few of Ryan Gosling's non-romance movies though.

Opening the nearest door, I was surprised to find a simple half bath. He had an apartment with a half bathroom. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised by the looks of the luxury lobby downstairs. I'd stumbled like an idiot giving my name to the front desk attendant, caught off guard that I'd even have to do that and wondering if Luke had remembered to give them my name. How embarrassing would that have been if I'd had to walk away? But the young man pointed me in the direction of the elevators after he'd looked up from his paper. I closed the bathroom door. This apartment seemed massive compared to mine.

I picked up a candle sitting on his glass dining table and stuck my nose in it—cedar and vanilla. Not too girly but not too manly.

I looked out the window and saw the hummingbird feeder hanging from his roof clearer this time. My stomach whirred like a ceiling fan. No way. I stepped closer. How in the hell did he have the exact same feeder as mine? But red.

I stepped out onto the balcony, still in disbelief, still thinking I was going to get up close to it and realize it wasn't the matching one. But it was. The metal flower petals around the edge had the same pattern, the string was attached to the same spiral at the top. Was this my mom's? There was no way. I backed up, going back inside the way I came.

In the hallway behind the fireplace, I found three doors. The first was a small closet where Luke kept linens and sports equipment. I saw two tennis rackets, three sleeves of tennis balls, a frisbee, and a basketball. Uninterested, I tried the second door which was his laundry room—an actual room with a counter. Mine was a closet with the dryer on top of the washing machine.

His bedroom door was ajar. His dark brown bed was made neatly with a navy duvet and two simple throw pillows. There was a desk in the corner with more textbooks and his laptop sitting open. His screensaver was a picture he'd taken on top of the peninsula we'd camped on in Buffalo Gap. The one I'd cried myself to sleep on top of. His bathroom door was wide open, and I could see my reflection in the large mirror above the white countertop and beautiful blue cabinets.

Lemon trotted in behind me and sat at my side. He licked my hand before going to sleep on his dog bed in the corner.

His bedroom must have been twice the size of mine. His wide dresser against the wall was where he kept his pictures and books beneath a mirror. I ran my hand across the three volumes of The Lord of the Rings he had between two gold bookends, remembering Ruth and Allen and walking through Witches Gulch with Luke, when a picture of him and someone who must have been his brother in ski gear caught my eye. They really did look alike. I picked it up and smiled at their wind blown faces and red raw cheeks.

"Reese?" Luke called from the hallway, scaring the shit out of me. I almost dropped his frame.

"I didn't get to snoop in your closet yet," I complained loudly.

I heard him chuckle before he came into view and stopped short. His eyes dropped to my bare feet and traveled up so slowly, I had a sudden urge to cover myself.

He ran his hand over his face before he gave me an exasperated look. "I'm going to fail out of med school."

"What? Why?" I asked, concerned. I turned around to put his picture down.

Luke closed the gap between us, stepping up behind me with his hands resting on my hips. "Because you look like you just climbed out of an airbrushed Peloton ad," he whispered against my neck. He made eye contact with me in the mirror and smirked.

"Oh," I breathed out as he kissed my shoulder twice. "I'm a model now."

Luke's hands found my ass. "A model?"

I nodded my head and dropped it back on Luke's shoulder as he pushed his tongue against my throat. "I modeled for a yoga wear company earlier in the park and Paige shot it."

"Ah. I'm sure it will be their most effective ad ever." He nudged my cheek with his nose. His hands switched to my stomach and his fingers lightly ran across my waist from left to right. "I'll never be able to study with you walking around my apartment in this." His eyes followed his hands in the mirror as they cupped my breasts.

I nuzzled my butt against him, and Luke rolled his hips back into me, his hard-on pressing into the top of my butt.

I wrapped my hands around the back of his neck as he pulled my sports bra down, exposing my breasts. He rolled my nipples around in his fingers, making me close my eyes at the pleasure I'd been deprived of for months. He was my thought when I had been the only one pleasuring myself, but now it was finally real again. I moaned his name softly.

"God, Reese. I've thought about fucking you on every surface of my apartment."

We were never going to get anything done between the two of us.

"Luke?"

"Don't freak out on me already, Reese," he groaned softly in my ear as he sucked my earlobe.

"I'm trying really hard not to," I said, attempting to steady my mind from the wildfire he was starting in me. It was being pulled in two different directions: lust and anxiety. I needed to calm myself. My heart rate was too high, thumping against my sternum loudly, now that Luke was here. "Do you need to study?"

He nodded and licked the cartilage of my ear. He stopped and straightened behind me when he saw my face in the mirror, his hands continuing to caress my skin.

"Do you want to sit next to me while I read?" he asked, pulling us back to reality.

"Yeah," I confessed. "Is that okay for right now?"

"Of course. I just want you here with me."