“You think that’s it?” Embry claimed the bottle. Opened it and took a deep inhale. “I always figured it was more I’m still not used to having stuff so I forget to keep track of it.”
“Because of prison?”
He shrugged. “Didn’t have much before that. We lived on the road until I was twelve.”
My Cornish boy was from the fairgrounds.
He ain’t yours.
The pain in my chest came back and morphed with an older ache and fucking choked me.
I stole the lemon bottle back from Embry and sniffed it. To me, it smelt like the sherbet sweets the old lady who’d lived in the flat next door had kept in her pockets, but it always put a smile on his face, and I’d be lying if I deniedaccidentallyspilling it on my clothes from time to time.
Sudden wind rattled the rooftop. I screwed the cap back on the lemon oil and tucked it into the pocket of Embry’s jeans, careful not to touch anything I shouldn’t.
He tracked my hand forward and back.
Blew out a breath when I was done. “You’re killing me, you know that?”
I knew that slow death all too well. Didn’t always occur to me that he felt it too. I eased off my sore spine and faced him, mirroring his pose. “Sorry.”
Embry stared at me in the dark. The weed blunt was long gone and all I could smell was lemon and mint. But there was something else too. Something that smouldered between us, raw and untamed. He leaned forward.
Hesitated.
Then leaned in again, bringing his face a mere inch from mine. “I missed you.”
His whispered admission washed over me like the warm summer breeze the wind had become. His lips were so fucking close.
Kiss him.
Instead, I rooted my body to the hard roof beneath me. “I missed you too.”
“Why?”
My hands twitched with the need to touch him, a weird tic my body had thrown up in response to the constant state of oppression forced on it in moments like these. “Because I feel like a real person around you.”
He didn’t repeat his question, and for that I was thankful. But his proximity made my head swim, throwing me off balance, despite the fact I was already lying the fuck down.
Kiss him.
Kiss him.
Kiss him.
As if I was that fucking brave. Give me a three-on-one fight any day of the week before I could make this choice with no fear of the consequences.
I know.
Iknow.
The irony that I’d begged him not to overthink this whole thing wasn’t lost on me. Heart pounding, I gazed at his mouth, watching his tongue dart out again to wet his bottom lip. Watching that bottom lip... twist into a smirk.
I frowned. “What’s so fucking funny?”
“We are.”
“Since when?”
