What have I become?
I've stolen her birth control. I've come inside her twice, knowing she's not protected. I've done everything I can to trap her, to bind her to me, to make leaving impossible. This isn't love. This is obsession. This is?—
No. It is love. It has to be love.
I've never felt anything like this before. This overwhelming need, this desperate desire… this absolute certainty that I cannot exist without her.
I’ve never had to navigate anything like this before. My entire life, I’ve never had to fear emotion dictating my actions. But now, I feel as if I’m losing my grip on everything I’ve ever understood to be true about myself. And there’s no one who can fully help me through it.
Luca doesn’t understand. My father would tell me never to speak to her again. I can’t burden Giulia with this. And if I were to tell Savannah how she makes me feel, the endless well of emotion that she’s unlocked within me, the need and desperation, she’d run so far and fast from me I’d never catch her again.
With Savannah, I'm someone I don't recognize. Someone who acts on impulse and instinct instead of calculation. Someone who's completely, utterly out of control. And I don't want to regain control. I don't want to go back to being the man I was before her.
That man was empty. He felt nothing. That man was just going through the motions of life without ever really living.
Savannah makes me feel alive. She makes me feel everything—joy and fear and desire and desperation and love and need and?—
Everything.
For the first time in my life, I feel everything. I'd burn the entire world down before I'd give that up. I'd kill for her. I'd die for her. I'd destroy anyone who tried to take her from me.
She's mine. She'll always be mine.
Mine. Forever. No matter what it takes.
As I finally drift off to sleep, the stolen pill still in my pocket, I know with absolute certainty that there's no going back from this. And I don't regret it.
Not even a little bit.
13
SAVANNAH
Iwake up alone in my dorm room, and for a moment, I think maybe I dreamed it all.
Then I move, and my body reminds me. There’s soreness between my thighs, and faint bruises on my hips where Romeo's fingers gripped me. My breasts feel tender, my entire body marked with the memories of how he touched me, all the ways he’s begun to undo me entirely.
The memory crashes over me: his body pressing mine into the mattress, his voice rough in my ear telling me I'm his, the feeling of him coming inside me again, marking me, claiming me.
What have I done?
I sit up slowly, pulling the sheet around myself as if it can somehow protect me from what’s happening. My phone shows it's almost noon—I've slept through my morning class. There are seventeen missed calls. Twelve from Thad. Five from Romeo. And one text from Romeo, sent an hour ago:Thinking about you.
It’s just three words, but they make my stomach flip. Not with fear or dread, but with something worse—anticipation. Desire.
I should be horrified, disgusted with myself. Instead, I can’t stop remembering the way he looked at me, like I was the only thing in the world that mattered. Like he'd burn everything down just to keep me.
Thad has never looked at me like that. Thad looks at me like I'm a possession he's acquired. A trophy. Something to be displayed and controlled.
Romeo looks at me like he needs me to breathe.
It's terrifying, and dangerous, and I know it’s anything but healthy. But it’s also intoxicating beyond belief. I feel like I’m drunk on him, making decisions that I know will bring us both down eventually, but that I can’t keep myself from acting on anyway.
I force myself out of bed and into the shower, turning the water as hot as I can stand it, as if I can wash away the guilt, the confusion, the memory of Romeo's hands on my skin.
But I can't. The guilt clings to me like a second skin.
I'm engaged. I'm supposed to marry Thad in an indeterminate amount of time—as early as Christmas if he gets his way, in less than two years if I get mine, or something in between. I'm supposed to be planning a wedding, not sleeping with another man. Not letting that man come inside me. Not risking?—
