“It’s okay,” I tell him, my fingers in his hair. “I’m not going to break.”
“No,” he says, and it’s barely a whisper. “But I might.”
I kiss him, slow and sure, trying to say with my mouth what I can’t in words. It’s unhurried and tender, as if we have all the time in the world and can spend it wrapped around each other in this place forever.
Slowly, his hips shift forward, the pressure at my entrance increasing as the tip of him pushes through, and we both stop breathing. For three heartbeats, neither of us moves. He’s barely inside me, and it’s already too much and not enough and everything all at once.
My hips lift, just barely, taking him a fraction deeper. The feeling of him, even this much of him, is so intense that my nails dig into his back and my entire body clenches, aching for therest. I tilt my head to give him more, because this is happening, and I want every second of it.
He chokes on a breath, his arms giving out until his full weight pins me to the moss, his body shaking against mine. The moment stretches, and stretches, and I think I might spontaneously combust from it before I can finally find out what it feels like when Kieran Cross lets go.
“I can’t,” he says, and then he’s pulling out of me, like separating from me takes everything he has.
A sharp breath escapes me, and my body arches up to his, chasing what it lost. But he just sits up and puts six inches of cold air between us, refusing to look at me, as if one glance at my face would undo whatever decision he just forced himself to make.
I blink, my thoughts racing, unable to process what just happened.
“Why?” I scan his face, searching for answers I’m not sure he’ll give.
He stares at the water for so long I think he’s not going to answer. Then he exhales, slow and shaky, like a man stepping off a ledge.
“Because violence follows me everywhere I go.” His eyes meet mine again in the moonlight, and they’re cracked open in a way I wasn’t expecting. “Everyone I care about dies. If I let myself have you, I’ll want to keep you, and that’s a death sentence for both of us.”
The words should hurt. They do hurt, somewhere beneath the golden haze that’s wrapped around my thoughts.
But his words keep playing in my mind, and I can’t let them go.
If I let myself have you, I’ll want to keep you.
That’s future conditional. It’s notI don’t want you.It’s notthis was a mistake.He’s saying he already wants me, and theonly thing stopping him is the certainty that wanting leads to having, and that having leads to losing.
Kieran Cross isn’t rejecting me. He’s rejecting the future where he lets himself be happy. And even now while he’s pulling away, his hand stays resting on my knee, his thumb moving in those slow circles, as if his body refuses to get the message his mouth is sending.
But I’m too emotionally drained to do anything except lie here on the mossy bank and watch him build walls I don’t have the energy to tear down.
“We should rest,” he says, gentler now. “You’re exhausted.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’ve barely slept since we left the academy.” He lies down beside me, not touching, but close enough that I can feel his warmth. “Close your eyes. I’ll keep watch.”
“I don’t need?—”
“Evie.” One corner of his mouth lifts into a smile. Barely, but it’s there. “For once in your life, stop arguing and just relax.”
I want to protest, but his hand finds mine and threads our fingers together, and anything I might have said gets stuck in my throat.
Without my scanning, I can’t measure his pulse through his fingertips. But I can feel it, fast and unsteady, and it tells me everything the words he said didn’t.
“Rest,” he repeats. “We’ll figure everything else out tomorrow.”
I close my eyes, and the golden haze wraps tighter, pulling me down into softness and safety. The last thing I feel is Kieran’s lips against my forehead and his voice far away, murmuring words I can’t make out.
Then there’s only warmth, peace, and the distant sound of water as I curl into him and sink into sleep like I’m finally coming home.
7
JADE
