That Touch by Alexis Winter

I didn’t mean to fall in love with my best friend’s wife.
We were just kids when it happened.
Now, a decade and a half later she and I have bonded over tragedy—she lost the love of her life and I lost my best friend.
I always knew Dolly was gonna break my heart—but the truth is, she never even got the chance.
The second she saw my best friend Dean, I was history.
The three of us were inseparable, always on some adventure together while I suffered in silence and loved her in secret.
After losing Dean, I tried to pull away from her but she needed me and maybe I needed her just as bad.
I’ve convinced myself that the only reason she’s started to look at me differently is because I’m her last remaining tie to him.
I’ve also convinced myself that I can resist the temptation when we end up stranded in a cabin in the mountains with only one bed.
But the way she looks at me—the way her body responds to my touch, my resolve that’s already hanging by a thread snaps and I completely lose myself in her.
I allow myself to give in, to live out this fantasy even though I know that my future at my family’s ranch is going to completely uproot my life in a few months and take me away from here.
I never stopped loving her, but she deserves more than someone stuck in the past and I won’t survive losing her twice
So like a coward, I run—not knowing the secret she’s carrying.
Somewhere along the lines of our tangled journey, through heartbreak and friendship, we realized that maybe the path that brought us together, is the same one that will tear us apart.