“I told him to get the fuck out,” he kept going unapologetically. “Told him you weren’t going to be meeting him tonight or any other night, and he might as well go hit up someone else’s girl because he wasn’t getting mine.”
My heart shouldn’t have started racing at him referring to me as his. It shouldn’t. I knew that. I definitely shouldn’t have gotten goose bumps all over my arms and back.
But that was exactly what happened.
I let the thrill go through me before I decided that messing with him was too much fun. Messing with him would always be too much fun. “Rip, you had no right to do that—”
“I had every right to.”
He could say those words to me every day for the rest of my life and they wouldn’t get old.
He proved it when he leaned forward and slid me the most heated look I might ever see in my life. “Yeah, I did, Luna. You wanna go out to eat? I’ll take you. You wanna go out and get a Sprite? Tell me. You want to watch a fucking movie? I’ll take you to the goddamn movies. If you want to go to beat the shit out of your cousin again,I’ll fucking take you.You want to meet someone to be your best friend and your fucking partner? I’m right fucking here, baby girl.”
Oh hell.
Oh freaking hell.
“How many times I gotta tell you I just like being around you?” he asked, his voice lowering as his gaze roamed over what was my stupefied face. Because what other face could I have when the man I’d liked for years was running off my dates and sitting here telling me he’d take me on any dates I wanted to go on?
None. There was no other face.
“I can do this same thing a hundred times, Luna, this running off your dates thing, but it’s never gonna happen. I’ll tell you right now, I’m not going to have a problem telling them off. I’ve got into a lot of fucking fights in my life, and I’m starting to think it was all to get me ready for you,” he threatened.
I sucked in a breath and just sat there, looking at him, feeling overjoyed and terrified equally. Wanting this more than I wanted anything, but still…
“What if you change your mind? I’ll have to find another job because I won’t be able to look at you. I can barely look at you now,” I admitted to him, this low-level feeling that might have been terror, but was more than likely adrenaline, running through my veins steadily.
This beautiful man gave me the most earnest expression I had ever seen. “Luna, why the hell would I do something that stupid?”
I fisted my hand. “You don’t—you’ve never even had a girlfriend.”
“So? Want me to lie and tell you I’ve had a couple dozen? Or you good with knowing it’ll only be you?”
Well.
Hell.
“You’re too young. You’re too sweet. You’re too good for me. But I’m done standing around trying to suck up all the goodness you make me feel without you even knowing, Luna. You are my girl. Just you. Nobody else ever has or will be.”
I sucked in a breath and lifted my face to look at his. “I am?”
He nodded, his expression something different than any other I’d ever seen before.
“Really?”
“Really,” he agreed, his smile soft and almost shy.
I bit my bottom lip and couldn’t help but wring my hands as he centered on me so intensely it made me want to hold my breath.You only miss all the shots you don’t take, Lenny had said. I had always told myself that nothing and no one scared me because I had seen the worst in people.
But I had also seen the best, hadn’t I?
“You know everything that matters, Luna. Only thing you don’t is what happened with the cops that day you lied for me. I was with Gio, and he fucked up his sister’s boyfriend because he hit her. I didn’t do shit, but I was there. His family did the same for him. That’s why they came. They needed somebody to try and blame, but I swear I didn’t do shit.”
There it was, and it was exactly the kind of thing I might have expected if I’d thought about it. “I know, Rip. I don’t know how I knew, but I did.”
Those eyes penetrated mine as he said, so carefully, “You wanna know something else, all you gotta do is ask, and I’ll tell you. I’ve already warned you about the rest and you’re still here.”
He made it seem so easy. Could it be that easy?
