“God, you’re killing me here, baby.” I breathe, not even trying to hide how gone I am. “I’m trying to do this right, but if you keep looking at me like that, I’m going to do it so beautifully wrong, you’ll never forget it.”
The connection between us—fuck, it feels like it’s alive.
I never lost this feeling, not for a second. But she did. She had to let it go to survive, even if some part of her kept reaching back for me in those beautiful, brutal letters I reread until they burned themselves into my head. And now she’s here in my lap, thighs wrapped around my hips, staring down at me like she never really let go.
“If I hadn’t gone back to that reunion, would you ever have come for me?”
I hate that question because the answer isn’t simple. It’s shame and self-punishment and the way I knew—and still know—I don’t deserve her.
“Only when I felt like I had any right to be a part of your life.”
“I would’ve let you in, you know, if you’d shown yourself. I would’ve screamed at you the way I have been, sure, but it wouldn’t have lasted. Not after the shock wore off.”
She brushes a strand of hair from my face, and I close my eyes because I can’t look at her when she says things like that. Ican’t face the way she’s just handed me this alternate universe where I showed up as her monster, and she welcomed me home anyway.
“Don’t,” I choke out, my hands dragging her body flush against mine until there’s no space left between us. “Don’t give me that version of us. I can’t?—”
“Can’t what?” Her thumb traces my cheekbone, and I melt into it, craving the way she offers me her affection. “Can’t imagine that I would’ve chosen you anyway? Despite everything you’ve done.”
“Stop, Shannen.”
“No, you don’t get to decide anymore what I get to fight for. You don’t get to take that choice from me again, Phoenix.”
“Be real with me for a minute, baby. What do you honestly think would’ve happened if I showed up years ago? If I’d just walked back into your life as if nothing had happened? Do you really think you’d have been ready for me? Because the girl in those letters wasn’t writing me love notes.”
“Maybe, maybe not. But so much time has passed, and I wish…”
She stops talking as a single raindrop lands on her cheek. I lean forward and kiss it away, tasting the cold water and the salt of her skin beneath it. My lips linger there longer than necessary because I’m a greedy bastard who’ll take any excuse to put my mouth on her.
“I wish you’d come to me,” she whispers against my temple.
“I’m here now. But you have to stop pushing me away when you want me close, because I feel it, Shannen.”
More raindrops land on her face, and I know the sky’s about to break open. We both know this night is running out of time.
“If you know me so well, then you’ll know I’ve lied to you, Phoenix.” She smiles, and the rain is coming down harder now,plastering her hair to her face and running down her neck in rivulets I want to chase with my tongue.
“You have?” Her lashes lower, and rain beads on them like diamonds, and she nods, her teeth tugging at her bottom lip. “Can you tell me?”
But she doesn’t answer with words. Instead, her lips drop to mine, and the entire world ceases to exist. Her tongue slips past my lips, and the sound that rips from my throat is pure animal because, fuck, I love the way she kisses. She takes what she wants like she owns me, her mouth greedy and demanding, and I’d unleash hell just to feel this for another second.
Fine, one date, but I’m not having sex with you.
The lie.
She was never going to be able to resist us.
She pulls back suddenly, her lips ghosting over mine. “Take me to your bed, Phoenix.”
Mine, not hers, because she knows what that means. She knows no one else has ever been in my bed and that my sheets haven’t known another body but mine.She knows it’s not just a bed. It’s a boundary, and now she’s asking to cross it.
My chest collapses in on itself, and my lungs stop working entirely from how much this means because it’s not about sex. It never was. It’s never been about the physical act of fucking, or scratching an itch, or any of that meaningless bullshit.
It’s about us, our fate, and the bond we built that will never break.
Chapter 16
Shannen
