This house is nothing but a facsimile of death—silent, heavy, doomed. I need to feel alive. I grip his shirt, pulling him closer, kicking one leg over his hip, pressing my heel against his ass, trying to force him even closer.
Hot hands slide up under my slip, and I nip at his tongue. He groans and rolls us, so he’s braced over me, but pulls back, even as I chase his lips. “Shit, Crash,” he whispers, blinking down at me.
“What?” If it sounds more like a whine than a question, well, he shouldn’t have stopped.
He shakes his head in the dark as if he’s knocking thoughts out with the motion, his gaze fierce. “I, fuck.”
“What?” I demand.
“I want,” he closes his eyes, his jaw tight in the pale light from the moon through the windows. “I want this to mean something.”
Blinking up at him, I’m not sure where he’s heading with this confession.
Slowly, carefully, he lowers most of his weight on top of me, his forearms braced on either side of my head. This kiss isn’t an attack, a competition, or a war we’re waging with each other. This kiss is a gentle promise, and my heart clenches in my chest. “I think I love you,” he whispers against my parted lips. “I think I’ve been falling for you for so long that it snuck up on me. You snuck up on me, Clara. And now, I can’t imagine life without you in it. Even if everything goes to shit, even if this fool’s plan fails, even if I end up the meathead second son to my brother’s golden boy and I fail you and Mattie and fucking everybody, I’d still be okay, I think. I’d still have something to fight for. I’d still have you.”
“Trips,” I say, but he presses his lips against mine, silencing me.
“I’d be honored to be your husband. Fuck, you could divorce me and marry any of the guys, and I’d still be thrilled.Just to be in your sphere. And I don’t get it. It makes no sense. As much as I want to fight you, I want to fightwithyou even more. I want to be on your team. Forever.”
A year. Maybe longer. We’ve been dancing around each other. Fighting with grades, with words and plans. “Trips, you never fought me, not really. You always foughtforme, even when I didn’t want you to. But I want you on my team. No question. And as you once said to me, once you’re in, you’re in forever.”
He huffs out a laugh. “My accidental proposal? You’re throwing that back in my face?”
“No, just reminding you of the terms we set out at the beginning. Forever. All of us, tied up in all the ways a group of people legally can be. I’m marrying you, Trips. No matter what happens afterwards, that isn’t changing. I’m yours.”
“You’re not just mine, Clara. And I’m good with that. But you should know, I’m one hundred percent yours. Forever.”
I can’t speak. Trips was the last of the guys I thought would give me his forever. Especially without a fight. But when our lips touch again, the fight isn’t there. Oh, it could be, in a moment if that was what we wanted.
It’s not what we want.
This moment is more than another mock-battle between us. Instead, it’s something beautiful. Soft sighs and delicate kisses, fingers trailed over slowly revealed skin, his strong arms pulling me against his chest as he kneels in the middle of the bed, bracing me against him. When I sink onto him, he holds my face in his palms, like watching my reactions feeds him in a way that nothing else can. Like I’m a delicate, precious thing to him.
Like he loves me.
And as we move together, chest to chest, eyes locked on each other, there aren’t words to describe what the revelation means to me.
I think Trips loves me.
I think I love Trips.
And the future we’re fighting for is more beautiful than I ever could have imagined.
Chapter 21
Walker
Adding heavy blue shadows to the clouds I’ve spread across my walls, I know this isn’t art.
This is coping as best I can with a totally untenable situation. And it’s almost my birthday. So, it’s not going to get any better. It can’t, not with Clara wholly inaccessible to me.
I used to be the forgettable face on the team. It afforded me the freedom to go places and talk to people I had no business talking to. But it turns out that once someone knows my face, I’m perfectly obvious. RJ’s grown out his beard and hair, barely recognizable from the guy he was last fall. Now that Jansen’s in full goth mode, the Westerhouse guards would have to have the visual memory of a Stone Age facial reconstruction artist to recognize him. They don’t. There’s no way.
Meanwhile, I can’t grow a beard, and I have no desire to have the weird old man goatee I can grow. I could dye my hair, or grow it out, but I’ve done some mock-ups online, andI still look like me. Which means I can’t get close to the one person I want to be close to.
I dip the brush into a muddy brownish red I made, swiping it at the midpoint of the wall that’s holding my anger and frustrations. It looks like the dried blood left on Jansen after his surgery.
The doorbell rings as I’m debating what color I should add next, my project I should work on discarded behind me. Tonight. Tonight, I’ll start on the Van Dykes.
