My lips quivered. I clenched my jaw tight as if trying tokeep it from spilling my secrets. I’d never been good at talking things out or explaining my feelings. An anxious chill snaked up my legs and around my throat, squeezing it. But I couldn’t look at him and not tell him. I couldn’t look at him and pretend any different.
“I’m scared!”
His eyebrows arched. “What are you so scared of?”
“That I love you, Laken!” I surrendered. “Is that what you want to hear? That I am so all-consumingly in love with you that it absolutely fucking terrifies me?”
They say when it rains, it pours. And I poured.
“That I’m scared of losing you for good?” I panted, the breath in my chest disappearing.Gods.What didn’t he understand? “Everyone leaves, and eventually, Laken, they don’t come back. One way or another. One grand adventure or another. And if I cut it off right now then it’s my choice and I won’t be so hurt.”
Laken reeled back. “And that’s worth it to you? To lose someone you love and who loves you, over a fear that isn’t going to happen?”
“And what if you never come back at all?” My throat burned like muscles overworked.
“Damn it, Reece!” Laken took a step back, one single step. His eyes didn’t leave mine, the deepest blues poured into me like ocean waves. His chest rose and fell, hard. “I am coming back to you. I have always come back to you! Even from my Gods-damned grave, I will come back to you!”
My mouth shut. My throat tightened and tightened untilI couldn’t form words. Some part of me wanted to believe him, to give in, to think it could be that easy. That I somehow deserved it to be that easy. But a bigger part of me knew better.
Love may be able to do a lot of things, but it is not capable of promising tomorrow. Things change, people change, and they leave. Every time. “You don’t know that… you—you can’t promise—”
“I do know that,” he defended as if his life depended on it. “Because I do love you, Reece.” His throat bobbed as he swallowed, hardly able to speak. “I loved you when we were eighteen and I have loved you every day since. I would not be me if I did not come back to you.”
I’d been fighting it for so long, I’d forgotten there was another side to this war. I remembered what Maggie had said about my walls and how I locked myself inside them. But I didn’t want to be locked inside anymore, not alone anyway. I wanted my walls to crumble, I wanted my guard to fall.
I wanted to let Laken in, give him a key to the door, and never take it away. The answer came easy, it always had been.Iwas the one too stubborn to see it, purposely looking in the opposite direction because I’d been too scared to acknowledge the truth.
Suddenly, the world came back. Not subtly, but with force.
His hands dropped and his chest leaned over toward me as I stood too close. He pressed a finger into my chest. “You,” he whispered. “You are the little storm hanging over my headno matter where I go, and somehow I became addicted to your rain.”
Slowly, with intent to inflict a little pain, I dragged my eyes from his finger on my chest to his lips hovering so closely to mine. “Then drown in it.”
And he would.
Laken brought his lips to mine with enough passion to knock me off my feet—literally—but with an arm already around my ass and dipping lower, he caught me before I even began to fall. It might’ve been our last night together.
So when Laken pressed my body against the wall and panted with a ravenous gaze haunting his eyes—I let him eat. Feeling his lips, his skin on mine after being starved for so long was frenetic. Finding it nearly unbearable, I shivered at his pressure against me.
Laken pinned my hands above my head and kissed the sensitive skin between my throat and my shoulder, using his other hand to hold my waist. Struggling to breathe, I caved in to his touch, grinding my hips against whatever part of him I could touch, but it wasn’t enough. And he knew it, pulling his lips from my body long enough for the cold to slip in again.Torturous. Traitorous.
There was no gentleness, no slow pace, no taking it easy. It was passionate and it was burning.
“You sure you’re so mad?” he teased.
“I hate you.” The words tasted bitter on my tongue as I said them, sour with something stronger than hate.
Laken smiled against my skin and brought it back tolife. “Say it again.” He stood back, leaning in to hover just far enough from my lips I couldn’t taste his. “Say it again.”
My chest heaved. He liked this. I said it again. “I hate you.”
If I could’ve captured the wicked smirk that curled Laken’s lips—I would’ve. His eyes, famished and sinful, didn’t blink as he whispered into my mouth, “You wish you hated me.”
Leaning forward, I kissed him and bit his lip as I left. “Fuck you, Laken.” His hand spun my hips, and I faced the wall before I knew it. I did say “fuck you,” so either interpretation worked for me.
One hand of his ripped the back of my dress off, trembling as if he’d been holding back. The other wrapped around my waist, traveling farther down my center as his lips on my back did the same. My legs held my weight until his fingers snaked under my skirt and slipped in andGods, they knew exactly where to go. I clenched my fist against the wall, my nails digging into my skin. Fireworks ignited in my bones; my body trembled. Looking down, I watched his hands and where they touched me. His veins, his bones, where we merged and I melted into something unrecognizable.
“Fuck, Laken,” I complained.Complained. “Get the fucking dress off already!”
