“Aubs.” He shaped her name into a broken plea. “Come on, don’t do that. Don’t leave that way.”
She pressed herself flush against the wall. “Whatway?”
He came close. “Like you hate me. Like you’re mad.”
A sob choked her throat, but she pushed it down. “LikeI’m mad? Of course I’m mad. I’m furious. You’re single, and so am I, and even after all that, youstilldon’t want me badly enough to try.”
“What?” He stared at her. “Jesus Christ, how can you even think that?”
She tried to keep her lip from quivering.
He swallowed a gnarled sound and planted one hand on the brick beside her head, crowding her. “Let me tell you something. If you had any idea of what it’s like inside my head, you wouldn’t even consider saying that to me. You think I don’t want you? That’s bullshit. I want you every minute of every day. I want you when I’m dreaming, and when I’m awake, and when I’m so tired I can barely remember my own name. I want you so much that it survives every stupid, desperate thing I hurl at it. Every punch I throw and every letter I write and every shot of tequila I swallow. My whole fucking existence spins on an axis of wanting you.”
Her breath thinned and died. Oh yes, he had definitely written those letters. As if she’d had any doubt.
“Wanting you isn’t the problem,” he growled. “It’s that I can’t leave. At least not now. Fuck, I wish I could, but I made a promise, Aubs. I told Paige I wasn’t going anywhere, and I can’t break my word. Not without being the exact kind of person I can’t stand to be.”
She trembled. Longing clawed its way up her throat. The symmetry of the moment mocked her, like she was staring back across seventeen years to their first kiss, reflected upside down in a water droplet poised to fall. The wall, the winter night, those eyes that threw such impossible heat...
The only difference was that he’d already let her go once. And now he was trying to do it again.
“I get that,” she spat. “But you could ask. You could fight for it. Just once in your life, you could fight.”
“Fight?” He sounded perplexed. “For what?”
“Us,” she hissed.
He blinked once, then again. “How the fuck would I do that? You want me to ask you to wait for me?”
She mashed her lips together. She did. Of course she did.
“Because two years is a long time, Aubs. What if you get lonely? What if you meet someone? What if you decide you hate me?”
A pitiless laugh escaped her lips. “I don’t hate you. I love you. Still. Always. And if you actually lovedme, you’d ask.”
His eyes flared like she’d harpooned him in the chest. He hovered there, assailing her with the smell of smoke and steel. “Aubs,” he begged. His hand came up to cup her cheek, warm and rough and electric.
A dozen different emotions punched her in the solar plexus, reducing her to such a bright, explosive mess that the need to vent the pressure nearly blinded her. “What?”
His gaze dropped to her mouth. “You think I don’t love you? Because I do. I’ve been killing myself for seventeen years with how much I love you. I even have that letter you gave me, the night you left. I’ve just been reading it over and over and over, like some kind of fucked-up therapy that never actually works. OfcourseI fucking love you. I can’t seem to do anything else.”
She froze. He’d saved her letter?
Those endless eyes snapped up to hers again. “But I can’t ask you to throw away two years for me. You deserve someone who—”
“Shut up,” she said.
He blinked. “What?”
“Shut up. Just shut the fuck up. I don’t want to hear it.”
He made an anguished sound. “Then what do youwant?”
“Just. . .” She tried to swallow but couldn’t, tried to breathe but couldn’t, tried to do anything except want and want andwantand couldn’t do that, either. “Kiss me. I don’t care about the rest of it right now. Just be mine for one more night. We can figure the rest out later.”
A spark of disbelief lit those dark eyes. “What?”
Her control snapped. She anchored her palms to his face and kissed him.
