He isn’t something you can close away in a box or behind a door with hundreds of locks. He isn’t the thing you forget about until you see it again after cleaning under your bed or emptying out your closet. He is always there, tall and proud and beautiful like the statues people admire in museums for hours on end.
And perhaps Iaman idiot, because my hand reaches out and I follow it with my eyes. Slowly, my palm lands on the center of his chest and I feel the warm cotton beneath it. “Is this enough?”
Christian puts his hand over mine and whispers, “I’ll take what I can get.”
My eyes flit up to his, and I can’t tell if they’re sad or angry or if he’s grieving, or it’s everything all at once in a messy slush of emotions. But I wish I could take it away. I wish I could let him go and sleep in his car with those emotions, but he might drive away to “the store” and come back to my house with bottles from “the store.”
The more I think about it, staring into his warm coffee eyes, I know that he wouldn’t do that. Not now, not here. If he is telling the truth, then he knows better than to go to the store and come back here, tomy house, and drink himself dead.
With the corners of my vision blurry, I lift my other hand and it goes to his chest too. “Better?” I rasp.
“A bit,” he says, his voice deep and husky. He stands a bit straighter.
I take a step and press my hands harder against his heart like I might be able to take it out and heal it before I put it back in his chest. I take another step and his hand curls around my hip, his fingers bruising punishingly, but in the sweetest way.
“Lana.”
“You look nice in jeans,” I say. “Now that you wear them again.”
He sniffs a laugh. “I’m not too good for jeans, Lana.”
I wrinkle my nose. “You sure?”
The corners of his lips twitch, but he says, “I’m sorry.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
I want to.
“I have to believe that you are,” I whisper.Eventually.
“And if I prove it to you?”
“Then I’llreallybelieve it,” I whisper. “When I see it.”
Christian gives me the subtlest dip of his chin and his fingers burrow into my hip, his touch searing through my dress, practically melting the fabric away. And I wish it would so I could feel his skin on mine, just to have something to hold onto tonight. Even in my anger.
“Lana, I’m going to,” he promises. “I will.”
“Okay,” I rasp. “And I’m sorry too.”
“You havenothingto be sorry for,” Christian husks. “It was me. I left. I hurt you. I hurt us.”
Those eyes…
Those eyes drop to my lips quickly, just to flick back up into my eyes. I mimic him, stealing a glance at his full, rosy lips, and then back up—just for fun. Well, it issupposed to bejust for fun until the gleam in his eyes makes my lower belly tighten.
“You look beautiful tonight,” he whispers. “Too beautiful for him. Too beautiful for me.”
I swallow thickly. My hands smooth up the cotton of his shirt, both of his hands at my hips now, until my hands are in his hair at his nape.This is bad.“Thank you.”
“I took off twenty points.”
“I took off ten when he didn’t open the door for me again. And when we split the bill.”
Christian tries not to smile, but he shakes his head. “Idiot.”
