It feels good, just holding her and feeling her body soft against mine.
The only light in the room is soft, coming from one of my dad’s heinous, old lamps. This place is nothing special. I keep it clean, but the furniture is old and ratty.
I’m embarrassed.
She deserves more. She deserves a place with a huge, king-sized bed and a soft, white comforter. She deserves to be worshipped in a new, clean, and beautiful space.
“Stop overthinking,” she says against my chest. “Relax.”
“We should go to?—”
“No,” she says, making ashshshshsound, like she’s trying to calm a crying child.
“This place is?—”
“It’s your home. It’s fine,” she says. “Liam, I’m not like that...whatever you’re stressing about, it doesn’t matter. I share a two-bedroom apartment with my son and my sister. It’s nothing special, and that’s okay. We’re just humans. We’re people, and we have lives, and sometimes those lives are good, and sometimes they’re shitty. I accept you for who you are, for the person you are.”
“Emma—” I say, there’s a dozen things tangled up in my voice.Stay. Go. I don’t want you to get hurt. I need to know what happened.
She shakes her head softly. “Not now,” she whispers. “Just… dance with me.”
She tilts her face up, and when our eyes meet, it’s like no time has passed. Every feeling I ever had for her comes rushing back, all the things I buried just to survive.
Tears are glistening in her eyes, and I know she’s thinking the same thing.
I never doubted our love back then. When everything else was chaos, she was the one thing that made sense—the one thing that kept me grounded.
And now, with her in my arms again, it feels like coming home.
I know I should be careful. I should take this slow. I should send her home, have an honest conversation, and demand answers.
Should. Should. Should.
But then I look at her and those parted lips, perfect and begging, every rational thought disappears.
So I kiss her.
At first, it’s soft, just the brush of our lips as we sway to the faint music. Then her mouth opens, her tongue flicking against my lower lip, and my hand slides to the back of her neck, pulling her closer.
When my tongue finds hers, she gasps, and that little sound makes my cock twitch, growing harder, ever more uncomfortable being confined in my jeans.
We keep moving, keep kissing, the rhythm slow and desperate.
My mouth drifts to her jaw, then her neck, then back to her lips again.
Our bodies fit together like they always have—too perfectly.
I could stay like this all night, lost in her taste, her warmth, her everything.
18
EMMA
Liamand I are standing so close I can feel his heartbeat against mine, fast, uneven, wild with adrenaline.
He told me about his situation and the danger, but hearing about it andseeingit are two very different things.
Watching him face down not one but three armed men made my stomach twist. It took me right back to being sixteen again, watching him step between his mom and whichever drunk loser she was dating that week—Roger, Dan, Kevin, take your pick.
