Take Me (Fifth Avenue) by Maisey Yates

it disappear.
    Because he wasn’t sure how he would ever go on, with or without it.
    Just the idea of being with another woman, of running his hands over someone else’s curves, made him feel nauseous. He wanted Sydney, not a nameless, faceless body on which to expend his sexual frustration.
    Hell, he wasn’t even sexually frustrated. It wasn’t sex he wanted. It was Syd.
    Maybe he sucked.
    Maybe he was an idiot.
    Maybe he shouldn’t have asked for love. Maybe he should have asked for friendship, with sex against a wall. Maybe he should have buried his heart and just given her whatever she wanted.
    But he didn’t think he could. Not when breathing in her scent created a longing in him so deep it was a physical ache.
    He heard a rap on his window and he got out of bed and walked over to it, throwing up the blinds and looking out to see Sydney, standing in the rain, her dark hair a stringy mess hanging down past her shoulders.
    She was wearing a Harvard sweatshirt that was a size too big and a pair of yoga pants, paired with a pair of canvas shoes that were soaked through. Her cheeks and nose were pink, her eyes glittering, her face bare of makeup. He’d never seen her look more beautiful.
    “Hey, Travis!” she shouted through the glass, a wide smile on her lips, her arms crossed under her breasts as she bounced up and down on the balls of her feet, probably trying to keep her blood flowing. “Come out here!”
    He bent down and grabbed a pair of jeans and walked out into the common area still zipping them, hoping none of his roommates were around to catch the show. He didn’t bother to hunt for a shirt.
    He opened the dorm door, then the front door of the building and stormed outside into the pouring, freezing slush.
    Sydney ran through the mud and toward him, and he opened his arms to her, and caught her. She wrapped her arms around his neck and held on to him, and he clung to her.
    “What are you doing here, Syd?” he asked.
    “I just came—” she extricated herself from his hold and stepped back “—I just came to tell you that I am an idiot.”
    “Okay.”
    “I have been...so scared, Trav. And not just the past few days. I’ve been scared for years. There’s a reason I never dated you. There’s a reason I kept you as a friend, and never anything else, even though you were the most important person in my life.”
    “And what’s the reason, Sydney?”
    “Because. Because you...you are so much to me. You are my rock, my best friend, my happiness, my support. And I was taught that...that love would make you lean on someone too much, and when they took themselves away then you would be left with nothing. Like my mother was. And the thing is...the thing is I always knew that if I let myself love you, and I lost you, I would be...utterly destroyed.”
    She took a deep breath and wiped the dripping rain from her face. Or maybe she was wiping away tears. It was impossible to tell.
    “But I realized something,” she said.
    “What?” he asked, almost afraid to find out what the answer was.
    “I’ll tell you. I realized that I was protecting myself at the expense of my happiness. I had all kinds of excuses why you and I wouldn’t work out. You were my friend, and it was too much to risk. We were both too ambitious, we would never have time for each other, but those were lies. The simple fact was, I was scared, because I knew if I let myself love you, I would love you with all of myself. I would love you in that way that would take over my whole soul, but do you know what the stupid thing was?”
    “No,” he said. “I don’t.”
    “I already did,” she said, smiling, a giggle bubbling up on her lips that was almost hysterical. “I have loved you...I think always. And I thought that if I just...didn’t let myself kiss you that...you wouldn’t be able to break me. But you’re under my skin, Travis. You’re a part of me. With you I’m better. That night in the hotel with you? It was the most