“Gonna need you to realize sooner or later that I would burn down this entire fucking town for you. One body? That’s nothing.”
“You really would, wouldn’t you?” she asked as her fingers traced the outline of a tattoo over my chest.
“I’d do more than that.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean, why?”
“Why would you do any of that for me?”
The answer to that was complicated. Yet the easiest thing in the world at the same time.
“Because I love you.”
Curled so close, I felt the way her breath caught at that. “But why? I certainly haven’t made that easy.”
“I don’t love you because you’re easy. Or because you’re beautiful. Or because you have the nicest ass I’ve ever seen.”
Her chest shook in a silent laugh at that.
“I love you because of who you are. On the surface and beneath, where you don’t let anyone else see you. But I do. I always have. And the more I see, the more there is to love. It’s as simple as that.”
“All this time?” she asked.
“Since damn near the first moment I saw you.”
“Then why not say anything sooner?”
“I did. Constantly.”
“You were flirting and joking.”
“What’s that phrase? A lot of truth is said in jest. But I couldn’t tell you then. Not like this. You never would have taken me seriously. You needed time. You needed to realize that just like you, there’s a surface… then everything else below.” I paused, let out a humorless laugh. “Hell, even that didn’t seem like enough.”
Her finger paused its tracing and I could feel the tension coiling in her body.
“You’re nothing like the vision I had for a man,” she admitted. I went ahead and tried to ignore the slicing sensation in my chest at that because I got the feeling she was getting somewhere with this. “But I guess that vision of mine was what made me trust Drake.”
“Drake being a conman skilled in making people trust him is what made you trust him. And I’m not exactly sure I like that he’s my only comparison.”
“I haven’t really… let a lot of men into my life.”
“Yeah, I got that impression.”
“But I just… I had high standards.”
“There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s how you got a lot of the shit you got in life.”
“But the thing is… I was approaching a partner the same way I was approaching business. Like I was expecting everything to line up exactly how I wanted in the order I wanted… wearing exactly what I wanted it to wear.”
“You nearly came in your pants when you saw me dressed up.”
A choked sound escaped her at that, but she didn’t deny it.
“My point is… people aren’t structured like that. They don’t fit into neat columns or act how I thought they would or make me feel how I expected.”
“How do I make you feel?”
