I need to feel him. To feel his skin warm against mine, to feel himherewith me. So I crawl over the console and into his lap.
“Then tell me you want to give this up. What it feels like right now between us.This.”
His throat works.
“Say it.”
“No,” he grits, nostrils flaring, and then his hands are sliding into my nape, threading into my hair tightly like he’s trying to fuse us together somehow. “I’m not fucking saying that, Maisie, because I don’t want to give you up. Because I’m too fucking selfish, and all I want is to keep you, even though it’s the last thing that I deserve.”
“Then stop trying to decide for me! Stop trying to push me away because youthinkthat you know what’s best for me. God, Wilder, you are my…freedom.”
The words burst out of me in a rush, like once I’ve started, now I can’t stop them.
“My entire life, I’ve been placed in this box that’s suffocated me. A box that requires me to be perfect and demure and never who I truly was. But I’ve never once felt that way with you. I’venever felt like I had to be anything other thanme.The woman who’s changing, and evolving, and chasing all the hidden parts of herself… until now. Your hesitation is only because of that same restricting image of me. The one that I keep trying to break free from. A person that I’mnevergoing to be.”
A shaky breath rattles out of me as I pause, chasing air.
“Please don’t become the man who takes that from me. Trust and respect me enough to let me choose what’s best for myself, even if the choice isyou. Don’t be like all of the other people who have taken my decisions away by their definition of me.”
“Fuck, baby,” he murmurs roughly, shaking his head. “I don’t want to be that person either. I just… I don’t fucking knowhowto do this, Maisie. I don’t know how to be what you need.”
“Youare what I need. Exactly who you are right now, that’s what I need. Nothing more.”
Wilder’s jaw flexes, like he’s trying to fight the thoughts in his head. My thumb gently sweeps across his stubbled jaw.
“How can you not be good for me when you make me feel more like myself than anyone, or anything, ever has? When you make me happier than I’ve ever been?” I kiss the corner of his lip softly because I can’t… not.
I want to make him feel the same way he makes me feel every day.
With his touch and his words that may be quiet, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t profound.
I press another kiss to his mouth, to the small cleft above his lip, the opposite corner, all while he holds me tightly against him.
“That’s not a man who’s bad for me. That’s a man who sees me in a way no other person has ever seen me. So see me now. The woman who’s never been more certain about what she wants. And what I want is you, Wilder. All I want isyou.”
Wilder presses his forehead against mine and just… breathes. Every slow, measured inhale is like he’s trying to drag me inside of him.
He doesn’t speak, not with words, but he says everything with the way he touches me.
The way he holds me so tightly against him, like he’s afraid I’m going to slip through his fingers.
The way he sinks into my hand that curves below his jaw like he’s trusting me enough to stop running, even if only for a moment. To just… rest.
Heads still pressed together, our eyes shut, breathing, it feels like we’re connected in a way that’s more than words.
And it feels like enough.
Even if the way it is right now between us is all we’ll ever be, it could be enough.
“We don’t have to figure it all out right now, Wilder. What happens next, or at all. We don’t have to decide anything. We just take it day by day and figure it out as we go. I’m not asking for anything more than to keep doingthiswith you, because I don’t want to lose you. I… I can’t.” I whisper the words, and his fingers tighten their grip in my hair.
He tenderly pulls me back to look at me, and I can see the emotion heavy in the depths of his eyes.
I can feel everything that he can’t say.
“I’m fucking terrified, Maisie.”
I nod. “Me too.”
