“Are you really content living the life you’re currently living?” He asks, “You’ll be happy when they marry you off to some rich prick that’ll treat you like a little doll? I suppose you’ll pop out a couple of perfect little babies and live in a perfect little house with a white picket fence and a dog that never misbehaves.”
“You don’t know me, River,” I snap at him, “This isn’t fair.”
“Life isn’t fair, princess,” He growls back, “Life isneverfair!”
“I should leave,” My shoulders sag, “Thank you for the invite.”
I start to move toward where I last saw Zara but a hand on my arm pulls me back, it’s gentle but firm and when I spin around to push him off, his hand captures my chin.
He tilts my face up toward him, “You don’t have to live like that.” He whispers.
“You have no idea what I have to do,” I pull my face from his grip.
“Let me show you,” He continues, dropping the hand that was holding my face, instead he intertwines his fingers with mine, “Let me show you what living really looks like. It’s messy and chaotic andfun.”
My eyes drop to his lips, “I can’t.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m not willing to put other people at risk.”
Chapter Eighteen
Zara and Marly left almost an hour ago, and I’ve been fuming ever since.
And I don’t even know why.
It isn’t my fucking business how her personal life goes, whether she has freedom or not, she’s an endgame right? So why the fuck am I pissed at the thought that she doesn’t get to choose her future. That she’s bound by rules and laws and told what she can and cannot do.
It’s not my business.
My business is figuring out how to get her to break those rules for me.
I shouldn’t care about her in any other way than that.
But there was no lying about how I reacted to her. I can’t make that shit up and being as hard as a fucking rock with her pretty body laid over me was unexpected but not unwelcome.
Marly is fucking stunning, the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, with her silky blonde hair and tan skin and eyes that youcould drown in, but that doesn’t remove the reason I need her. I knew I was attracted to her the moment I saw her at the carnival, and it’s only grown from there, with every new piece she reveals about herself, that attraction grows.
I’m still fucking semi hard now, just thinking about her body on mine, my fingers on her skin, watching it pebble and react to me. She’s stubborn as hell, she won’t admit she feels it too.
But I need her to break.
I need her to make it to that fucking finish line. I can ignore the rest, I can ignore the need to protect her, to worship her, I can push away the feelings because what are feelings when everything you ever cared for was burned to ashes? Literally.
Rolling my neck side to side, I down the rest of my beer and throw the bottle toward the trash before I start to make my way to the Plymouth.
Once inside, her sweet scent invades my nose, clinging to the damn air. I’m not going to lie and say hearing her laugh didn’t almost end me. It almost lost me the damn race because hearing that laugh was like watching the sun rise. Distracting and dizzying, like a fucking drug I needed more of.
Granted, I’d snapped out of it pretty quick when I saw I’d been overtaken, but it was that fucking laugh that had me continuing after the race was ended to take her to the one spot I don’t take anyone.
The overlook is a sacred place to me. It’s a place I visit often, a place where I can be silent and see it all. I wonder if she saw it too, the divide between the two sides of West Rock. I wonder if she saw how fucking wronged this side of town has been. In the daylight it’s far more obvious, but I like to visit at night and pretend it isn’t as fucked up as it looks.
I know the world is a harsh place to live, I understand life isn’t fair but at night, when I have a blanket of stars above me and a whole world at my feet, I like to pretend it isn’t quite as bad as it seems.
Marly represents everything that has been taken from me, from my community, and I almost feel guilty for reacting to her the way I am.
“Yo, Riv,” Jake pounds on the window before he yanks it open, “You’re leaving?”
