Black rage smothers every other emotion. I’m instantly too angry to miss a single one of those things I’d just hoped for. “You know what? You can keep the key. I don’t ever want to see you again.” I fling my door open, and I’m out in the biting air, not feeling a breath of it, warmed through to the core with pure anger.
“August!” he screams from inside the car. Once, twice, who even knows?
I’m inside my house in a matter of seconds, a chair jammed under the doorknob, so even if he tries to come in, he can’t.
I slam on the heater, click on my electric blanket, then, making straight for the bathroom, tear off my clothes as if he’s staining the lot of them. The hot water squeals on, sending a furious shudder through the cold pipes.
But I’m home, and it’s done.
I’m home and about to be fresh and warm and cleansed of every bad memory.
Home, ready to replace the lot with better ones.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
GOOD AUGUST
MIRROR MIRROR
By the time I wrap the towel around my waist, my hands have stopped shaking. With fluid, deliberate movements, I wander back into my living room to take stock.
It’s warm for the first time in months. Instead of a place I dive into bed to hide, it’s calm and it’s cosy, not awful, not lonely.
For once, I’m not worried about where someone is, or who they’re with. I know that August’s either asleep or working on his problem, just like he told me he would be, and my chest feels full and warm thinking about him.
Like I just drank a hot Coke.
The microwave’s glowing invitingly at me, and I almost make one, just to feel like he’s here.
But I have to sleep sometime, reluctant as I am.
What an incredibly long day. A lifetime since he turned up on my doorstep this morning. I’m done with Jon, and I’m falling for August… My life is in no way what it was forty-eight hours ago. Bleak and hopeless then, now it’s all promise.
August can figure this out. If he found a way to break into other universes and land right here in front of me, I know, with enough time to work on it, he can find a solution.
Maybe he’ll create a wormhole, or a portal between worlds. Two worlds, and we’ll date back and forth for as long as it takes to find somewhere we can be together.
Together.
The thought takes my breath away. I’m so desperate to do this boyfriend thing that it would be embarrassing with anyone else. But not with August. Heknowsme. He knows me so completely, and he never, ever judges me.
He likes me.
Every moment of the night cycles on the reel that already played over and over while I showered. August’s dark eyes and long lashes. August’s finger brushing mine outside the elevator and the entire universe of meaning it held for me. August’s jealousy, his spiteful quips in the van, and how I thought he’d never kiss me. Then when he grabbed me, took my mouth…
My fingertip lands there, my lips begging to relive it—the press of his mouth, the scent of his skin, the command, the jealousy in his movements. It turned me on more than he could ever imagine… but afterwards… when he pushed me up against that wall… There isn’t a thing I wouldn’t have let him do. If it had just been us, I would have ripped his belt open, sunk to my knees, and shown him exactly how much I like him.
I wonder what he would have done.
I’m so lost in my delicious thoughts, wandering around my apartment, that I stumble slightly when my knee hits the base of my bed. My low-slung towel falls to the floor, and I’m about to stoop to pick it up when I catch sight of myself in the mirror at the foot of the bed.
Me, completely naked.
Except it’s not ‘me’ I see.
It’s August Blackthorne. And his dick is so hard for me it hurts.
I want to please him. I want to make him feel how much I need him.
