“He’s nineteen, going on forty. He needs a place of his own and some privacy. I hate that he feels obligated to live here because he’s worried about me.” In my peripheral vision, I see Fallon’s frown. I know what he’s about to say, so I preempt him. “Out of all the places you saw, which had the best stargazing?” I ask, yawning for a third time.
“Africa and New Zealand. It feels like you’re standing in a snow globe of stars.”
Resting my head on his arm, I imagine sitting under a glass dome and watching all the stars float around me as they slowly fall to the ground.
“I like that analogy. I wish I could capture every city you took me to in a snow globe. Then, whenever I wanted, I could hold Paris or Iceland or Barcelona in my hand and remember it all again.”
With a nudge from the toe of his shoe, he sets the swing gently rocking.
“Finding Elizabeth,” he muses.
“The trip that changed my life. I still owe you for that.”
His sigh is heavy. “You don’t owe me a damn thing, Elizabeth. Other way around.”
When will he forgive himself for what Peter did?
I slam my beer bottle on the small side table against the porch railing harder than I should and angrily twist around.
“We’re not going there. Ever again, understand?” To make my point, I lift the hem of my blouse up to expose the faded scars covered with broken blue butterflies along my side. Fallon’s gaze zeros in on them in the darkness. “These do not define who I am. So don’t you dare use them to define whoyouare.”
I suck in a sharp breath when his hand curves around my waist, his fingers skimming over the thin raised lines where Peter’s knife cut into my flesh. He feathers his fingertips back and forth along the curve of my ribcage. Goose bumps explode everywhere, stoking embers of desire into a wildfire of need.
Arousal and guilt fight a war inside my subconscious. I shouldn’t crave another man’s touch. But god help me, I crave his. Fallon makes me…ache. He makes me…want. Like an unwelcome thought, they whisper possibilities that feel like both a promise of something that could be and a betrayal of what once was, leaving me stranded between longing and loyalty.
“Fallon, I?—”
“Close your eyes and tell me who you see.”
He would ask me that every day we were in Europe. When my memories returned, I was so confused. Old Elizabeth versus New Elizabeth. A fractured woman in love with two men. Jayson or Ryder. I chose Ryder.
But somewhere along the way, I fell in love with Fallon, too.
I can’t hear another word. It’s too painful. His parents are monsters. He was a child, and no one protected him. The only thing he ever felt growing up was pain. He has been hurt by every person who should have loved him.
“I’m so sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.” I don’t know what else to say. No, that’s not true. I know exactly what Ineedto say. “I love you, Fallon.”
He twists around and stares at me, confusion and need warring within his blue eyes. My heart aches at the vulnerability I see.
“What?”
“I love you.”
I want to offer him something no one else has given him—a love that doesn’t ask for more. Love that sees beyond his broken edges and says,You don’t have to be whole to be worthy of this. A love rooted in the friendship we have forged.
The warmth of Fallon’s hand burns me like a brand, but it’s the emotion etched on his gorgeous face that singes me to ash.
“Answer me, Elizabeth.”
“I see…” I swallow, refusing to say it.
You. I see you.
Grasping at any excuse because I’m about to do something very reckless, I reply, “My life is a hot mess on a good day.I’ma mess.”
The heated look he gives me curls my damn toes.
“I like you messy.”
