She shook her head, both hands clutching at my forearms then, soft tremors beginning to overtake her body. “Just hold me for a minute.”
I swallowed, for the first time feelin’ an anger so violent I wanted to drive my truck right up the road and lay into them for hurting their daughter the way they did.
Dimming the light she radiated naturally.
“Worried about you, Augusta Belle. If you’d let me—”
“I’m okay, Fallon. This isn’t the first time she’s hit me. It’s just the first time in a long time.”
My eyelids sank closed with the knowledge that something like this had been happening to her right under my nose and I hadn’t done anything to stop it.
“You feel dizzy or anything?” I asked, still concerned.
“No.” She tucked herself deeper into my body.
I frowned, wishing like hell I could steal her away from that house, from those narcissistic assholes that didn’t deserve the special daughter they’d been blessed with. “Wish I could snatch you out of that place.”
Her angelic lips turned up at the corners. “I don’t need a white knight, Fallon.” Her fingers threaded through mine and settled across my bare chest. “This princess saves herself.”
I placed a kiss on the dips of her knuckles. “Think of me as the horse you’re riding in on, then.”
She burst into a soft laugh before stifling it. I pulled another blanket over us, digging deeper into the thin old mattress with the almost see-through sheets.
“Some days I don’t know if I’ll make it to eighteen alive.”
I winced inwardly, thinking not for the first time that she was still the saddest girl I’d ever met.
“You know, I was going to do it that day. I was plannin’ it.” Her lips brushed against my chest. “You already saved me once.”
Augusta Belle’s words destroyed me.
Her touch more devastating when our hearts were shredded raw.
“Save me again,” she breathed, her fingertips trailing up my torso before dusting along the stubble at my jaw.
And in that moment, I knew.
I knew there would be no going back for Augusta Belle and me.
“Augusta…” I husked, pleading. For what, I wasn’t sure.
“I love you.” She peppered kisses along my jaw, sliding her small body on top of mine, all ten fingers lacing together.
I swallowed, feeling like a caged man just given the keys to paradise.
“Love you more, Augusta Belle. But I don’t think—”
“Sick of all that thinkin’ you’re always doin’, Fallon Gentry.” She brushed her lips against mine and the faint taste of whiskey zapped my senses.
Shit, she’d been drinking. Not like her at all.
“Baby, I want to make sure you’re okay.”
“I’m so much better now that I’m in your bed.” She pushed the sweater over her head, letting it land in a heap on the old linoleum floor before she was pressed to me again. “Only you can make me feel better.”
An audible groan escaped my lips as I thought about all the reasons I shouldn’t have Augusta Belle in my bed right now.
The second thing that snapped through my brain was that I probably shouldn’t have let things with her get this far to begin with. She was a certain sorta girl, and I really wasn’t the type of guy who came from the sorta family that was accepted by people who lived up on the ridge.
