“Fine. I’ll go with you.”
“Do you think I’m just going to give in when you repeat your command forty times?”
“Works with Hannah,” he says, shrugging.
“I’m not your daughter or a little girl.”
“No, but you need some tough love right now. Get up before I pick you up myself.”
“No,” I tell him again. His demands don’t faze me.
“I didn’t want to have to do this,” he says, with a huff of annoyance. I hardly know what’s happening when I’m being tossed upside down and then over his shoulder. “I already asked your mom if I could kidnap you and she said yes. Imagine that.”
“No, you didn’t,” I tell him, slapping my hands against his back.
“Bye kids!” Mom shouts after us. “Have a nice night.”
“It’s so nice to see them all getting along so well,” Elizabeth says before Brody walks us out the front door.
“Put me down, Brody,” I shout.
“Almost there.”
“This is wrong. You can’t just take me against my will.”
Brody finally places me down on my feet next to the passenger side of his truck. “You’re right.”
“Thank you,” I snap.
“This calls for desperate measures,” he tells me.
“No, no it doesn’t.” Against my free will, once more, he lifts me up, but this time, my back is against his truck and his lips are working against mine. He’s breathing heavily and I can’t breathe at all. Everything within my body becomes weak and I can’t move or fight him off.
I don’t want to fight him off.
His kiss. It’s the kiss.
A soft moan from his throat vibrates into my mouth and the sound causes the center of my body to ache. His body is pinning me to the truck and his hands are tangled in my hair. My heart is beating so hard and fast, I’m positive he can feel it through both of our coats.
He pulls away, just a few inches. “You can’t kiss me like you did last week and then walk away like you didn’t destroy me for a second time. I won’t let it happen again.” Destroy him?
“Is this your form of tough love?”
“No, Journey. This has nothing to do with tough love, but it has everything to do with the spark you set off in me last week. I’m not getting any younger, and I’m not walking away from a feeling—a feeling like I’ve never had before. You can think I’m an idiot all you want, but I know something good when I see it.”
“I’m not good, Brody. I’m screwed up, and I don’t think I can bring someone else into this mess of a life.”
“Tough shit. I’m not going anywhere.”
“Why aren’t you listening to me? I’ve said no in every way possible.”
“Yeah,” he says with an exasperated chuckle. “But those damn eyes of yours have said: ‘please, help me’ after every one of those lying ‘noes.’”
It was as if I didn’t say every single thing I could say to make him put me down and walk away, his mouth is crashing into mine again. I close my eyes and rest my head against his door, allowing him to kiss me the way a girl should always be kissed. Why does he have to be such a good kisser? I’m weak. So weak.
I allow the kiss to last until my lips begin to tingle from a lack of oxygen. “You feel it too,” he says.
If I said I didn’t, I’d be lying. Instead, I stare into his eyes and swallow the surfacing pain. “You have a daughter. I’m not the person you should get involved with.”
