Simon walked past me into the kitchen, where he got two shot glasses down off a shelf. I opened the bottle of rum, and he poured us shots.

“So what are you doing here?” He slid one of the shot glasses across the kitchen counter to me.

Good question. I downed the shot in an effort to stall and shuddered at the bite of the alcohol. So many questions bubbled to the surface of my brain in answer to his. So many things I wanted to know. About him. About us. Was there even an us? Where could I possibly start?

Sensing none of my inner turmoil, he sipped from his shot glass, savoring the rum, keeping his eyes on me. He looked as placid as always, while the top of my head was about to fly off. How dare he kiss me like that and not give a shit about it afterward.

There was a good starting point. “You kissed me.” I spat the words out, accused him.

“Ah.” He set his glass down and fiddled with the cap on the rum bottle. “I did.”

“More than once. You kissed me today.”

He picked up his shot glass again and knocked back the rest of the rum before splashing in a little more. “I did. In character.”

“What?”

“Your character likes my character. The pirate.” He picked up the bottle of rum, sloshing the liquid in illustration. “You kissed me back, you know.”

“You kissed me out of character too.” I waved off his offer of a refill. I’d had half a beer at Jackson’s and wanted to keep my head clear. “Last Saturday, when you were yelling at me for missing pub sing and moving some tables around.”

He clucked his tongue before taking another sip of rum. “The tables were fine where they were.”

“They’re even better where they are now.” I sucked in an annoyed breath. This was not what I had come here to talk about. “And then you kissed me.” There. Back on topic. “That was not in character.”

“You’re right.” He closed his eyes and dropped his head. “I’m sorry.”

I blinked. “Sorry?” That was the last thing I’d expected to hear, and the word stung. I remembered our kiss, our real kiss. How he’d pulled away, tried to apologize. And I hadn’t let him. I’d pulled him back and made him kiss me again, and he hadn’t wanted to.

Oh, God. I’d misread everything. I wanted to get out of this kitchen, run out of his house and forget I’d ever met him. But, like poking at a bruise, I had a morbid desire to make it hurt more. “You’re sorry you kissed me.” Yep, that hurt worse. Nausea rose in my stomach. I couldn’t look at him; it hurt too much. So I kept my eyes trained on the kitchen floor. On his bare feet, poking out from the bottoms of those old, frayed jeans.

“Yeah.” His voice sounded like gravel, and his toes flexed against the floor. “I shouldn’t have. And I really shouldn’t have kissed you today at the chess match. That was a shitty thing to do. I thought it would be . . .” He sighed, and I still couldn’t look at him. I examined his lower kitchen cabinets as he spoke. “It was for the bit, you know? When I’m . . . when I’m him it’s okay to do that. Because it’s not really me.”

“So it’s okay when it’s fake. It’s all been fake between us.” I tried to force a laugh, but it came out as an embarrassing cross between a hiccup and a sob. The sound fell flat in the quiet kitchen. “Of course, I get it. I forgot, you think I’m just this stupid college dropout, so why would you . . .” I had to get out of there. I was equal parts enraged and mortified, I was about to cry, and I couldn’t let him see. I took a deep, shaking breath and pushed all the emotion down, forcing a smile to my face instead. “Sorry to bother you. Keep the rum.” I pushed off the counter and started for the front hallway. “Enjoy your night.”

“Hey.” I didn’t see him move, but he’d crossed the room in an instant, catching my arm before I could leave. “No. This has nothing to do with you dropping out of . . . why would you think that?”

“That day I first told you,” I shot back. I was barely holding it together, but if he wouldn’t let me leave with dignity, I may as well let him have it. “At the bookstore? I told you I hadn’t finished college and you looked at me like I was nothing.”

“No.” He didn’t let go of my arm, but he softened his grip from grasping to holding. “That wasn’t it at all. We were joking about Shakespeare and it was . . .” His expression gentled. “It was really nice. But then I saw your face when you said you hadn’t finished school. You looked disappointed. In yourself. I hated that for you.” His thumb stroked my arm while we talked, both soothing me and heating up my blood in a way that had nothing to do with anger.

“Then why?” I shook my head as I tried to reorder my thinking. All this time, I’d thought he’d looked down on me from day one. But this sounded more like empathy. “Why was it a mistake to kiss me?”

He dropped his hand, and now it was his turn to study the floor. “I . . . I can’t imagine Mitch likes it much when I do.” He cast a rueful smile at the linoleum. “That’s why I’m sorry. Not for kissing you. And that’s why I did it today. At the chess match, in front of everyone. Because we’d established these characters, and that story line. It was like a loophole. Just this once, I could kiss the girl I wanted and there wasn’t a damn thing Mitch could do about it.”

The girl I wanted . . . Those words sent a thrill through my chest. But they weren’t enough. They were past tense. Wanted. Not want. “What does Mitch have to do with this? He sent me over here, you know. To see you.” I took my phone out of my pocket and waved it at him. “How do you think I got your address?”

“He sent you . . .” Simon shook his head at the floor. He scrubbed a hand across his cheek, a gesture I had come to recognize after all this time knowing him. He was upset, at a loss. “Why would he do that?” His eyes snapped up to mine, and the intensity in them made me catch my breath. “Did he think it would sound better coming from you?”

“Did he think what would sound better?”

“Telling me to back off. To leave you alone.”

“Why the hell would he do that?”

“Well, you and he . . .” His mouth snapped shut, and he suddenly looked lost. Not as lost as I felt, but he was catching up. “Aren’t you and he . . . ?”

“No.” But understanding started to shine through the cloud of my confusion. “No, we aren’t.”

“No,” he repeated. He looked a little longingly at the rum bottle, and when he looked back at me the longing lingered in his eyes. “Then why has he been all over you, hugging you, asking you out?”

“As a friend. He’s been . . .” I shrugged. “He’s been trying to make me part of the group.”

He narrowed his eyes. “And why were you talking about what was under his kilt?”

A surprised laugh spilled out of me. I’d forgotten about that. “Are you kidding? Every time you flip him over your shoulder the world can see he’s wearing bike shorts.”

A smile played around his mouth, and his exhale almost sounded like a laugh. “But then today, at the chess match. He was challenging me, acting like you and he . . .” He shook his head as realization hit. “He wasn’t telling me to back off,” he said. “He was telling me to fight for you.” The tension eased out of his shoulders. “I’ve known that guy for more than twenty years, and this is the first time he’s ever been subtle.”

The thought of Mitch being subtle made me smile, but when Simon looked up at me the smile faded from my face. The air between us was charged with a kind of energy I’d never felt before as a silence settled over the kitchen. I slipped my phone back in my pocket, and my fingers brushed against the scrap of paper. The fortune. Ask the right question. We’d cleared a lot of air between us, but I hadn’t obeyed the fortune. Not yet.

The deep breath I took didn’t shake at all. I took a step closer to him, and his eyes sharpened like lasers as I approached. “Do you want to kiss me again?” Everything inside of me started singing when I said it, so yes. This was the question I needed to ask. “Not as Captain Blackthorne. Not kissing Emma.” My voice was casual, conversational, like someone suggesting a lunch date. His eyes stayed fixed on me as I took one of his hands between both of mine and held on tight. “But you. Simon. And me. Emily.”

“Yes.” The word was pushed out on a shallow breath. But he didn’t reach for me. He stood motionless and watched me move his hand, placing it on my waist like I was positioning us for a dance. He slid it around to my back, letting out a strangled sound when his fingertips met my bare skin. “Christ, Emily, you have no idea how much I want to . . .” He swallowed hard and didn’t finish the sentence.

His hand was warm on the small of my back. He tightened his grip, and I followed the gentle pull until I was standing in his arms, his other hand curving around my shoulder. His T-shirt under my hands was as soft as it looked, and he sucked in a breath as I touched him. I felt the thump of his heart under my palm, and the speed and the intensity of it reassured me. I wasn’t alone in this.