Over the thrumming echo of his heartbeat.
Over that red line that I knew we could both see.
“With you.” My gaze lifted to look at him, at the tears caught softly in his lashes and the uncertainty still in his eyes. “I’ll carry thatwithyou.”
It wasn’t an accusation. It wasn’t even a demand.
It was almost a question…
“With me,” I echoed. “You’re with me.”
He shivered, and his fingers on my chest clenched. When he spoke again, it was even softer. “I feel like I’m losing my mind. It was so easy before, to pretend that I didn’t want… that…” His pretty mouth pulled into a frown, and Cole dropped his eyes. “Since the lake, I’ve been wondering if my feelings… if any of this is real. Or if something happened. I…”
“Cole…”
“Sephtis, are we pretending?Canwe still pretend?”
If I were kind, I would have said yes. If I were less selfish, I would have told him I could go back to the way it was before… but…
My fingers slid along his jawline and he shivered as I shifted closer… close enough to feel the cool play of my breath on his lips as I sighed a confession I should have been unmade for. “I don’t think I can pretend now that I know what you feel like.”
This close, I could see the way his pupils slightly dilated at my words, could feel the intake of his breath. I could watch the decision as it slowly formed behind his eyes—the walls he’d been desperately trying to rebuild crumbling in the wake of my confession.
“Then I need to know that this is real. That it wasn’t just my fucked-up way of coping with what I did. A red thread doesn’t get to decide how I feel about you, it doesn’t get to choose for me.” As much as I could have told him that wasn’t the way it worked, I stayed silent as his fingers hesitated for a moment, before his hand slid up and he cupped my jawline. “But… I want to try.”
The words struck me somewhere in the hollow of my chest where a heart would have beat if I’d had one. That soft, earnest truth that he seemed to nearly pry from between his ribs to offer to me was the most precious gift he could give.
“You do?”
He bit his lip—maybe I shouldn’t have given him a chance to take it back. The thought was nearly enough to make me panic, but he nodded. “Yeah… but Sephtis… if I do this, I want it to be because I choose to. Because Iwantto. An arrow doesn’t get to make me fall in love…” He narrowed his eyes, almost like he was still angry… and maybe he was, but that anger held a heat now that burned in a different way. “You have to earn it.”
Earn it.
Hewantedme to earn it.
“How?” I could spend the rest of eternity showing him my affection, doing everything I could to make him see that I was made just for him… but it felt like that wasn’t what he wanted.
What he needed.
“Start right now.” He dropped his gaze to my lips. “Show me that the lake wasn’t a fluke. I need…” Cole’s breath came in a soft, shaking inhale as he leaned in. “I need to feel like everything can actually be… okay.”
Even as he said it, he tangled his fingers in my hair and pulled me backward until we were lying together. It was different this time—he covered his body with mine like he wanted to drown in the feel of my frame pressing atop his… and I still didn’t know what I was doing.
I didn’t know how to give him what he wanted, but I was willing to break my chest open and let him pull the answers from the depths of my soul if that was what he needed.
He leaned up long enough to rip his shirt over his head, baring his golden skin to me and letting me see the rise and fall of his chest, the rapidfire beat of his pulse caught in his throat.
“You’re so beautiful.” The praise came out before I could stop myself, and heat blossomed across his chest and cheeks in little spikes of color that nearly made me dizzy. He still seemed sounsure, so… almost afraid to admit that he wanted this. “I’ll give you whatever you need, Cole. Just tell me what you want.”
I would gladly have flayed myself open for him so he could see the way a phantom image of his heart was nestled in my ribs, but…
“I need to know that I can still be…” He trailed off, but I could see the word in his eyes, burning across his skin in scarlet waves of blush and agonized desire that made me want him all the more.
“You’re good, Cole.” I leaned down as I said it, pressing the praise to his fevered throat with gentle kisses that I could only hope trailed more than skin deep.
Soul deep.
“Sephtis.” It came out in a hitched moan, trembling syllables that painted the air with his self-doubt and desperation. His fingers played counterpoint, skating up my shoulders and threading through my hair. He didn’t have to say it for me to know he needed more.
