Blowing out a long breath, I let the anger out with it.
He’s not going to ruin my night.
It’s my first date with Emmett.
The fact that he’s still here, still with me, has my chest pumping up and my smile growing.
I pull him to a stop by pinching his sleeve a few more blocks up, where the businesses are thinning out and the residential area begins. The crowd is almost non-existent down here, the alley between the final few shops I pull us into lit up by a small streetlight.
His eyes widen when I back him up to the wall, my grip gentle on his face.
Gaze dropping to my lips, Emmett wraps his hands around my wrists and hangs on for dear life.
“Kiss me,” he rushes out, nearly panting. “Please, Tristen, before I think too much.”
How can I say no?
I crush my lips to his and it’s like taking the first gasp of air after being under water for too long. That relief of flooding your system with somethingsweetand deadly. As consuming as any other drug.
His lips part and I waste no time diving into his mouth, teasing his tongue with mine.
Dear God, he’s kissing me.
Out in the open.
Emmett’s kissing me.
The thought of shoving my hands in his pants, just like the couple we saw, crosses my mind, but I don’t.
The thought of grabbing him, lifting him up until his legs wrap around my waist, and pinning him to the wall to grind our dicks together floods my mind, but I don’t act on that either.
Not yet.
We’ll get there someday if that’s what he wants.
Whatever he wants.
My chest expands with my breath as I lean back enough to press my forehead to his, my heart thumping inside my chest.
It feels …right.
Like we’ll be okay, even though he’s shaking in my grip.
That happiness is reachable for the first time in my fucking life.
In recovery, they tell you to find something. A higher power, a plan, athing. I never prescribed to the sky daddy belief—to each their own and all—so I went with a life plan. I was gonna get sober. Stay sober. Become someone that helps others. They frowned when I said paramedic considering the access and all, but I wanted to be the one that responded just like Mumford had for me.
Eight years ago.
Fuck, eight years ago to the day, I was his first call.
Nearly a decade has passed since I last attempted to end it all and here I am, with Em right in front of me, looking up at me with a tilt to his swollen lips.
Holy shit, he’s smiling at me.
And, God, it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
I want to tell him that I’m flat on my ass—have been—but I don’t even think I need to. I see it in the way he looks back at me, and I’ve never been more grateful to have been wrong before.
