Random Acts of Hope by Julia Kent

arms,” I said, feeling my own words rumble low in my throat.
    She laughed, but yawned again. “It’s not an insult. In fact, it’s a compl i ment.” She looked at the clock on her desk. It read 7:02 a.m.
    “Are you expiring?”
    Another yawn. “I’m off duty now, technically.”
    My pulse burst into applause. I could feel the thready pull of it in my throat, and she jumped a bit, stretching back from me, as if she felt my skin jerk under the blood’s pressure. Having her startle in my arms made a rush of uncertainty return. What was I doing?
    “What does that mean?” I asked, sounding and feeling stupid.
    Yawn. “It means I can go to bed.”
    The air changed in an instant. My body reacted damn fast to that comment, and she felt me go hard. Her hips shifted against mine and then settled back in place, eyes intense and fierce.
    Is that an offer? I almost asked. Almost.
    Her long, slow out-breath that wasn’t quite a sigh helped to ground me. Charlotte was in my arms, her head nestled against the crook of my neck, and she smelled like everything I’d missed for years. The distance between us, the gaping, fanned-out past, collapsed into a thin layer of nothing, almost imaginary, as the bare skin of her arm touched my own forearm.
    “I know this seems rude, Liam, but I’m exhausted. In so many more ways than one. Work, the snake, you…”
    “I exhaust you?” I tried to make a joke of it but couldn’t.
    “ This exhausts me.” She shifted and went tense. Her crappy top was for a band I hadn’t thought of in six years, one that was popular when Random Acts of Crazy got its start, but disbanded a few years ago. My mind migrated to stupid details like that, lured away because the magnitude of Holy shit, Charlotte’s in my arms was so great it felt like a supernova. And not just in my pants.
    “Sorry,” was my lameass response. Molecules on my skin rubbed together to produce the kind of heat you only feel in the presence of one person. Ever.
    “I missed you,” she whispered.
    I leaned my head against the back of her couch and stared up at the ceiling, eyes wide and unblinking, my thumb gently rubbing her arm. Zoning out wasn’t my plan, but some message from the universe gave me a few minutes to just do nothing. Say nothing. Be…nothing. No movement, no apologies, no explanations, no demands, no outrage.
    Just pure existence.
    While I was pure existencing myself, though, Charlotte fell asleep.
    God damn Charlotte.
    Charlotte
    The sunlight stream ed through the slats in the blinds, its gentle nudge a bit more urgent than usual. T he rays of heat fro m the window were not what actually woke me up, though .
    It was the strange man’s hot palm on my hip.
    The slide of the sheets against my clothed body felt like sandpaper, my hands rushing to my hair, fingers interweaved with a giant rat’s nest of bedhead as I sat up and stared at the six-foot-plus being in bed.
    Not a snake. Sooooo not a snake.
    Liam. Long and muscled, hard and tanned, his shirt off and pants on, feet bare. The sheets were a tangled mess between us, his golden locks as rumpled as I imagined mine w ere , and his arm was outstretched, fingers twitching as if searching for my body.
    His eyelids fluttered. He looked like a little boy again, like the eleven year old I’d met more than half a life ago. Under those lids were the cynical ocean eyes that still made my breath pause. When he smiled those eyes could anchor my world, the grin of straight white teeth and pleasure and connection all mixed in with his hands, his heart, his—
    Wham.
    Air jammed in my throat. Five years. Five years of wishing for this moment, of wanting to reconcile, of needing it so badly it was a part of my DNA, some sequence that needed to be mapped and understood as part of the genome. The genome of love, of pain, o f heartache.
    A deep sigh from him, then he turned over, his tight ass toward me, the waistband of well-worn jeans pulled down enough to show those two