I tried to breathe, but it was nearly impossible with the way his eyes consumed mine. My heart drummed wildly in my ears. My core quivered as my brain spun, trying to deny my tongue the words begging to escape my lips.
“Because…” I started. My eyes fell to his lips and bounced back quickly. His hand cupped my cheek, and his eyes danced between mine, telling me, begging me to say what he already knew. My lips parted, and with a shaky, trembling breath, the words my heart had ached to speak finally found their voice.
“Because I love you.”
His lips crashed onto mine in the next second, and my hands wrapped around him in the one that followed. His tongue swept against my lips, and they parted, inviting him in. We kissed with such passion, such force, it felt like the whole world stood still with us. He swallowed a moan I didn’t mean to release, and he groaned as I pulled myself into him.
I felt him then, hard and ready, and my body electrified at the connection. Every nerve came alive with aching anticipation. He lifted me with a strength that felt both effortless and urgent, and I wrapped my legs around his waist, clinging to him desperately as he carried me to his bedroom.
His lips were fire on my skin, his one hand strong in my hair, the other cradling my ass. His tongue traced the line of my neck like he was learning every inch of me by heart. He laid me down beneath him, and the weight of him was exactly what I’d been missing, though I’d never felt it before.
My hands traveled through his hair, down his back, and up his shirt, tracing every crevasse of his defined body. His mouth and tongue caressed my neck, my lips, my ear. He pressed himself against the center of me, and I moaned with tingling pleasure. I wanted him. I wanted everything he would give me—every breathless kiss, every whispered promise, every inch of him that was ready to take what was already his. I wanted to lose myself in him and let all the lies dissolve, as if they’d never existed.
But my brain flipped on like a switch, extinguishing the fire with a slow and steady stream of reminders of why I couldn’t get lost with E: Because it was wrong. Because I wasn’t his. Because someone else was waiting for me in the wreckage I was creating.
“Stop,” I said, breathlessly, gasping for air, but he kissed me again, still lost in the moment, and I didn’t want to resist him.
“E…” I pleaded. “We have to stop.” He pulled away just enough, still panting above me.
“Why? What’s wrong?” he asked, his questioning eyes searching mine.
“Everything. We can’t do this.” I was filled with guilt and shame, and I hated myself for my lack of self-control. For creating a mess out of my own heart and everyone else’s.
“Why not?” He was genuinely asking. Like he had forgotten the rest of the world and only he and I existed, and I loved him even more for it.
“Because Jake,” I said, defeated. “And Emma.” He stared at me blankly for a moment before he let out a breath and rolled off me. I sat up beside him as he rubbed his face with his hands.
“Fuck. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
“It’s fine.”
“No. I put you in a bad spot—”
“E. It’s fine. We’re both in a bad spot. It was bound to happen one day.” I smiled a sad smile, and he mirrored it. I released a deep breath, and so did he.
“Yeah… I guess it was.”
We sat in silence for a few minutes as we collected ourselves. I sat with my hands tucked under my thighs, shoulders hiked high, ankles crossed as I stared at my feet. His head was dipped low, elbows on his knees, and his hands folded before him. I forced myself not to spiral into the never-ending pit of guilt and grief that this would undoubtedly leave me in. Then he turned his head to me.
“I broke up with Emma,” he said, and my head snapped to him in shock.
“What? When?”
“A few weeks after I saw you. I couldn’t get you out of my head, and I just… I couldn’t be with her.” He looked down at his hands as his fingers interlocked.
I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything, too drunk with emotion to form a clear thought. He looked at me again, and my eyes met his.
“I love you, Sydney. I always have.”
My heart swelled too big for my chest, and it ached in a way I hadn’t expected. I shouldn’t have said it again, but I did.
“I love you, too.”
He let out a breathy laugh, and I saw the tears brim in his eyes, just as they did in mine. It was our hearts pouring out, celebrating the words they had waited too long to say and hear. But it was all too late.
“What are we gonna do?” he asked.
“About what?”
