“You love it.”
“Obviously.”
She’s smiling when she turns to look at me, wrestling her leggings back up her hips. I find some napkins in the glove box—trust Rooke—and we try to make ourselves presentable.
She pulls her sweater back on and checks her reflection in the visor mirror, fixing her hair.
Fuck, she’s beautiful.
Not like a cover model.
She is—and always was—car crash beautiful.
Haven is a wreck I can’t look away from, even when I know I should.
Swollen lips, flushed skin, her blue eyes still glassy from coming so hard she forgot his name and whimpered mine instead. The bite mark on her breast is already purpling.
Hair’s a disaster…just like her.
My car crash.
My beautiful disaster.
Mine.
“Leave it,” I say.
She scowls. “Looks like I just got railed in a parking lot, Kai.”
“Just the way I like it.” I reach over and adjust the butterfly between her collarbones. Don’t even realize I’m doing it until her eyes soften, and then it’s too late to play it off.
She touches it, then snatches at my fingers as I draw my hand away. “We’re really doing this?”
“We have to get out from under him. This is the best?—”
“No, I mean—” She gestures between us. “This. Us.” A weak laugh slips out of her. “Whatever the fuckthisis.”
I take her hand, threading our fingers together. “Yeah. We’re doing this.”
She stares at our joined hands with an unreadable expression. “Okay.”
Just that.
But it’s better than ‘no.’
Anything’s better than ‘no’.
I climb out of the Land Rover, pocketing the keys. Haven meets me beside the boulder, and I reach for her hand before I can chicken out.
She looks down at it, then up at me, eyebrows raised.
I wince. “Too cheesy?”
The corner of her mouth quirks. “I love cheese.”
Warmth floods my body. I squeeze her hand, and after a beat, she squeezes back.
We walk into the main campus building, and immediately people are staring. I catch a couple of girls from her old sorority doing a double-take. Some guy from the football team stares openly.
