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Three days.

It's been three days since my run with Lenny. Since we kissed for a second time. Since she reminded me she was leaving and doing any of this with her will cost me… again.

Since I apparently told myself I don't care about that.

But that's not true.

I care. I care a whole fucking lot about everything that's unfolded—these past six years, these past few days. But the second she said those words—I'm leaving, Jace—every consequence I may suffer felt worth the price.

I expected them to have the opposite effect. For bitterness or anger or resentment to come in and sweep away every other feeling. But having her in my arms again—close. Intimate. My lips on hers and our bodies fiending for each other like a high we've chased but never quite satisfied—felt too right to be wrong.

I talked a big game about telling her off. About leaving her as desperate as she once left me.

But fuck.

The second I see her, my brain turns to mush, my chest aches for her, and my cock throbs between my legs for even just a goddamn touch.

The real truth?

Lenny O'Reilly still does it for me.

In workout clothes and running shoes, in scrubs with a stale coffee in her hand and the smell of antiseptic in her hair—I still crave her the same way I did when I was a horny seventeen-year-old kid.

And judging by the scratch marks running down my back and the sounds she made that I can't seem to forget, I still do it for her too.

And that might have turned me on more than the rest of it.

Thankfully, the last three days haven't been silent.

It started simply—with her texting me that night after we made out in Golden City's poor excuse for a forest.

Lenny

Have a safe flight.

Thanks. Off to a rough start. JJ tried to bring tuna salad through security.

Lenny

Is that not allowed?

Not when I'm the one who has to smell it right next to me for the next six hours.

Lenny

Honestly, fair. That feels like a felony.

From there, I tried to ease back in. To keep things light. Short. To let the conversation naturally fade.

But I couldn't.

Because it never did.

We talked the rest of the day—about nothing and everything. About the guy in the hospital who swallowed an olive with the toothpick still attached and about how JJ and his two favorite rookies spent the whole plane ride to Arizona rewriting the lyrics to old Smash Mouth songs.

Conversation with Lenny still feels as natural as it did back then. Like we know everything about each other—even though we probably don't. It's still easy to predict what she'll say back or what jokes will lead to a three ha's instead of two.

So the days continued like that—us slipping back into the rhythm of texting each other. Me asking about her shifts at work and her trying to make me feel better about each loss by telling me the weirdest things she's found shoved places I would have been fine never picturing.