John snorted without looking up from his setup. “I never fuck up.”
She looked away first, and I felt the loss like cold air rushing in.
Afterward, with both of us wrapped tight in fresh Saniderm, I reached for her—then hissed, pulling back with a half-laugh. “Shit, it burns.”
She laughed, reaching for me.
“Can’t even touch it,” she said, fingers tapping lightly on the unwrapped part near my elbow instead.
“You can touch me everywhere else,” I offered, maybe too fast.
Her eyes suggested she understood all the implications, yet there was also a subtle snapping hinting at her restraint.
“I wanted it to be mine,” she whispered, eyes locked on my arm. “But it’s even better now that it’s ours.”
Ours.
“Thanks for doing this with me. For me,” she added.
Her voice shook, and I swear my soul climbed into her palm when she cupped my face. Her thumb dragged just below my eyes, and I went still, because if I moved, if I breathed, I’d say it. I’d say everything. I was a fucking sap.
But I’d have done it a thousand times over if it meant being the person she reached for when the world got too heavy.
“Always,” I said.
Could she feel it? That I’d already given her every piece of me without asking for anything back? That I’d burn down the world for her with a grin if she asked?
It had happened so fast. Maybe it had been happening for years. Maybe I just needed someone else to point it out so it would feel real. I knew it at the lake, but I had kept fighting myself. But now I really knew it, and I couldn’t ignore it.
Fuck.
Loving her wasn’t going to kill me.
Not loving her would.
12
MACKENZIE
We listened to the cleaning instructions and left the parlor. My nerves burned under my skin like a fever. Things were unraveling, slipping through my fingers before I could even decide if I wanted to hold on. Not even twenty-four hours into this fake relationship, and Max was already ruining it with his stupid soft smiles, matching tattoos, and the way he looked at me.
He feltsafe.And that was the most terrifying part. He felt like home, like belonging, and I had no idea what to do with something that dangerous. I didn’t deserve someone like Max—and the worst part was I still wanted him anyway.
He would hate me when he found out about the things I carried. The rot I kept buried inside me. Memories I’d never said out loud.
Like the chilling echoes of screams that had haunted my basement. Or the guttural grunts of my father as he dragged yet another unwelcome load through the back door.
Or the dull sound of the saw on bone while my mother hummed a lullaby to lull me to sleep. Things I should never have been forced to witness as a child.
But with Max, all the darkness that haunted my life dissolved. One look at him, and a desperate desire to kiss him seized me—body trembling, craving something I knew I shouldn’t want. Love, affection. Those words felt hollow here. This was supposed to be controlled, a fleeting distraction, a performance staged in shadows. Instead, it twisted into something darker, more visceral. Perhaps I was just waiting for a new horror to consume me.
The truth was, we’d been more than friends long before either of us admitted it. At sixteen, it was the kind of restless awareness that made me avoid his gaze. At seventeen, we knew exactly what we were doing when our hands brushed a little too long. By last summer, it was already a slow implosion.
He was intense, always had been. But that intensity was becoming something more. An unspoken devotion that was scary as shit. We were always on the edge with each other, waiting for years for it to finally happen. But we were both in denial.
I let my gaze linger on his a second longer than I should have, and then I ripped myself away. But the ache stayed, lodged in my chest. I was possessive over him. Jealous that he could move through life happy and unscathed. Part of me wanted to touch the light, flutter towards it like a moth to a flame. Another part wanted to diminish the light just to see if he’d stay. I wanted him so badly I almost wanted to crawl into his skin and make myself a home.
I shook my head. When I dared glance back, his eyes were still on mine, steady and sure, as if he was waiting for me to catch up to what he already knew.
