Still, for her, I’ll try.
“I don’t know,” I admit. “I think… even in high school, I was drawn to you. You were always so brave, loud, and outspoken. I think I was envious of the person you so freely were. At some point, I started needing to know everything about you, where you were, who you were with. I didn’t realize I was obsessed until I was forgoing my own needs just to watch you smile at someone else. I couldn’t get you out of my head. I wanted so badly to be with you, I just didn’t know how. I went to college thinking I could move on, and for a while, it worked. I had a normal life, a girlfriend, friends. And then, my friend dragged me to a concert in LA. A new, upcoming band that she’d seen online. Young Decay.”
Bonnie’s brows lift. “You were at that concert?”
“I saw you across the room, and everything came flooding back. Somehow, that obsession morphed in that moment. I saw you chatting with Rad, saw how angry you were when you walked away from him, and it just… it struck me—this possessive rage, this need to protect you at all costs… After that night, I didn’t know how to let you go. Even if I didn’t have the courage to become real to you, I’d make sure you lived long enough to find someone who’d protect and love you as I would. And that was my plan, until that Halloween night. That night changed everything.”
“You could have just talked to me,” she says.
I eye her smirk. “Tell me it would have been the same as this if I had simply said hi to you that night,” I say, leaning in to nuzzle the crook of her neck. “Tell me we would be who and what we are now.”
Her shoulders draw up as she hugs me closer, our bodies flush. “No,” she admits. “It wouldn’t be this… But that doesn’t mean I can’t be mad at you for it.”
I smile against her skin before pulling back. “Take your time with it. Stay mad as long as you need. I’m not going anywhere.”
She nudges her nose with mine. “Yeah, you’d better not.”
“I told you I was yours, and I meant it,” I add as our lips brush.
Her jagged breath skims my mouth. She braces her hand on my cheek, her forehead resting against mine. I wrap my hands around her ass and squeeze, eliciting a groan from her lips that raises the hair on my arms.
“Do you want to go inside?” I ask, kissing her neck.
“Hell yes.”
It’s a good thing Bonnie’s dad is a heavy sleeper.
The moment we get back inside, she decides she has to try to make her mom’s snickerdoodle cookies. And it’s so fucking cute that I don’t bother telling her the time or insisting she get some rest. We can bake cookies all night if that’s what she wants. So long as it occupies her mind and feeds the parts of her ever-healing soul, she can bake, cook, knit, punch, jam, read, anything… And I’ll stand by her side every minute of it.
Eventually, we’re covered in flour. My face aches from laughing and grinning as I try to help her recreate the recipe, even looking up instructions on my phone that she swears don’t sound right. In the end, she throws together a concoction that I think is going to become a disaster once it’s baked. Still, she swears by it, and crushing her spirit is the absolute last thing on my mind.
I’m on cloud nine from every kiss and touch we steal from each other while figuring it out.
“Wait, okay, I have to know.” She hops up onto the counter and grabs the bowl of leftover cookie batter. “Were you losing your shit the other night when I said your name?”
I don’t know what my face does, but Bonnie bursts out laughing.
“Oh my god,you were!” she exclaims.
“I… I…”
I can’t even explain the absolute terror I felt at that moment.
“You were so mad,” Bonnie teases.
“I was… terrified and gleeful and just… everything all at once,” I admit before eating a few white chocolate chips directly from the bag.
“You grabbed my throat…hard.”
“I didn’t know what else to do,” I tell her. “I ran out of there because I went blank. And then you… You were so embarrassed about it that you didn’t speak to me for aweek.”
“How was I supposed to look you in the eye after that?” she argues.
“You were such a brat pushing me away, though,” I tell her.
She snickers. “So then you had to fuck me to put me in my place.”
“I’ll do it again if that’s your preferred form of punishment,” I say.
