“It is for me.” I dip my head until my forehead presses hers.
When she squeezes her eyes shut, it sends a pang through me.
There’s still a valley between us.
“Sophia, I promised you the kind of love that would endure for the rest of our lives. That we would be like your grandparents, dying in each other’s arms.” My fingers wrap her neck so I can tilt her quivering chin up.
She bites that bottom lip hard enough to make a starburst of color. “I know.”
“And that we’d skip to the good part.” I stroke her jaw, hoping like hell she’s hearing me. “You promised me a few minutes ago that you wouldn’t care what I looked like.”
When she snorts, a tiny smile tugs up the corner of her mouth and her red-rimmed blue eyes finally open.
She looks up at me like she’s seeing me for the first time. “That was in case you were ugly.”
That pulls a grin out of me. “Did I disappoint you?”
Pink rushes up her throat. “No.”
Now for the important one.
“Does it change how you feel about me?” I ask it quietly, baring myself to the agony of rejection.
I need her to say it, one way or the other.
But she doesn’t.
She clenches her fingers into the fabric of my shirt, raises onto her toes, and presses her lips to mine.
A very happy old man
Sophia
My head is ina whirlwind, the truth bombarding me from every direction.
Oliver.
Biggie.
They’re the same.
In the very center of the tempest, the eye of the storm, is him.
I didn’t know that this was the answer I needed. Two worlds crashing into one.
With a groan, his palms frame my face as he pulls me tighter, his tongue tickling the seam of my lips, begging for more.
And I give it to him.
How did I not see this? Maybe I did?
Is that why on those nights I dreamed of Biggie, it was Oliver’s image that filled the void?
Fire races through me as he presses me against the cool metal of his truck, but it only stokes the flames.
Letting my eyes slip closed, the lines between the man I fell for online, and the one holding me, blur.
As his mouth claims mine, somehow I knew he’d taste like coffee and chaos.
