“Everything you’ve done today is temporary, apparently,” I fire back. “You don’t explain, you don’t ask, you just decide for me.”
I turn on him fully now, the fear from earlier burning off into something hotter and sharper.
“You don’t get to do that to me,” I say. “You don’t get to scare me out of my own house, throw me into a car, and then expect me to just…what? Calm down and go along with all of this insanity without demanding some answers?”
“I’m not asking you to calm down,” he says quietly.
“Oh good. Because that would be rich.”
He exhales slowly through his nose, like he’s counting to keep himself in check. “I didn’t have another option, Kylie.”
“That’s not an answer,” I shoot back. “That’s what people say when they don’t want to admit they took someone’s choice away.”
Something flashes in his eyes then—pain, maybe, or guilt—but he doesn’t interrupt.
Or give me any goddamn answers.
That makes me angrier.
“You know what’s really crazy? I actually trusted you, Rook,” I continue, my voice cracking despite myself. “I trusted you, and now…I’m wondering if that was a serious lapse in judgment on my part.”
“Kylie, you can trust me. I would never, fucking ever, do anything to hurt you. I’d let them ki—” He stops mid-sentence and then swallows hard.
Still, he’s not telling me what the hell is going on.
I laugh once, but it’s sharp and brittle. “God, you’re unbelievable.”
I move past him toward the window, then spin back around when the pull in my chest flares again.
“Why does it feel like this?” I demand. “Why does being near you feel like I can’t think straight?”
His shoulders tense.
“Don’t,” he says.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t ask questions I can’t answer without making this worse.”
“Everything is already worse!” I shout. “You kissed me in the car like it was the only way to shut me up. But God, the things it made me feel…” I pause and let my head fall back as the rush of emotions and feelings and sensations my body remembers from that kiss consumes me. I have to force a deep breath of air intomy lungs before I can look at him again. “And now you’re just…standing there. Just standing there and not telling me anything.”
His hands curl at his sides.
“That kiss,” he says carefully, “was a mistake.”
The words hit harder than I expect. A mistake?How was that kiss a mistake when it felt likeeverything?
He looks at me then, and something raw moves behind his eyes. “It was a mistake because it made me want something I’ll probably never get to have. Something I want and need more than anything in the fucking world but probably don’t even fucking deserve.”
All of a sudden, the room feels smaller. Every nerve ending in my body, every inch of my focus, homes in on him and the electric tension that vibrates between us.
My pulse stutters and my mouth goes dry. “What do you want, Rook?” I whisper.
“You, Kylie.” His voice drops. “I only want you.”
Something in me snaps, and I close the distance between us in two steps and launch myself into his arms.
I kiss him.
