This August is going to live.
I’m going to make sure of it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
BAD AUGUST
EVERY ROSE HAS ITS THORN
It must be a spectacular sunrise out there, because the room is bathed in a thousand shades of red and orange, like I’ve never seen before. It casts everything in a glorious glow, a shining mockery of my life and what I’m about to do.
Because for all that, August is all I see.
The whole night, we lay with our arms wrapped around each other. Sleep was fleeting, snaps and gasps, because I didn’t want to miss anything. This is the only time the two of us will ever be happy together. It’s the only time we’ll ever be together at all.
I’ve spent hours meditating on what’s right. Do you tell someone the truth when you know it will hurt them? Would it hurt him more to never know why I’m doing this?
I can’t stand the thought of him wondering whether I chose to leave him. Doubting himself. Thinking he wasn’t enough.
Equally, I hate the weight of what I’m about to put on him.
Maybe if I didn’t tell him, he’d move on and forget me. Maybe I’d become nothing more than a terrible memory, some prick who used him and left. Maybe he’d find consolation in the arms of someone else. Someone who would love him the way I could.
Impossible.
No one could love him that way.
No one would have this black hole swirling and churning in their gut, like it’s swallowing their insides whole, at the thought of upsetting him.
He’s a part of me. And I can’t stand to leave him.
His eyelashes are long, his smile slight, his face perfectly at peace in the scarlet dawn. Arms stretched over his head, body long and lean, he’s a man who knows he’s safe and adored. Like he always should be.
But it’s time.
I’m quiet, skirting the bed. Not a sound as I find my clothes, slip back into them. I’m careful not to scuff a shoe or crunch any of the items we tossed off the bed last night.
The first sound to reach him is the click of his handcuffs closing.
His eyelids flutter, blink, then open properly. The room in red, the restraints on his wrists… then me, sitting here on the side of his bed.
He pulls his arms, trying the cuffs, then stares at me, bewildered.
I lean in, kiss him goodbye.
But he smiles. “You’re the best thing I could have woken up to.” He arches forward, takes another kiss, kicks the sheet off his naked body, and wraps a leg around me. “I have been dying all night to fuck you again.”
It’s painfully tempting. But I already feel like a sack of dried shit, and I’m not going to do this to him. “August… Listen. Um.” I pull the sheet up a little, letting it settle softly across his midline. “All that stuff I said last night about not developing feelings…”
He watches me, waiting, bated breath.
“I’ve developed them. I have strong and undeniable feelings for you.”
“Yes!” he cries, his grin delicious. “Sex worked!”
Even given the gravity of the situation, a smile catches me off guard. “It was very dishonest of you to manipulate me like that.”
“And what are you going to do about it?” He kicks the sheet back down, exposing his gorgeous body in full, his dick ready for me, and close to impossible to resist.
