Page 302 of Breathe Like Hell

“Fuck,” he groaned, squeezing my hand. His finger tapped three deliberate times.

I.

Love.

You.

I leaned in and kissed him, slow and purposeful. Not the rushing, violent kisses we’d smothered ourselves in since Dakota came into our lives, but something that etched all our years together into its frequency.

His hand found the back of my neck, his head inclining and his mouth opening. I slid my tongue along his, heart thumping in my chest.

“Kill,” he said against my lips.

“Ash,” I replied between kisses.

“Kill.”

“Ash.”

I backed him up against a tree, pressing the full length of our bodies together, feeling every solid inch of him, kissing him harder and deeper. But it still wasn’t rushed this time. I put my tongue in his mouth, tangling it with his, my hands resting on his hips, gliding up to grip his waist, then pushing back down.

“You’re going to give up your apartment,” I said through heavy breaths, feeling like I’d just stepped off a cliff and was in total freefall. And I needed it. I’d lived in my own carefully-constructed safety net for so long I’d forgotten just how much I craved this reckless obsession with him. This all-consuming devotion. “You’re going to move in with me. Tonight. Right now. I want you in my bed. I want to sleep next to you again. I want to fuck you, and I want you to fuck me.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, panting. “Okay. Fuck. With Dakota, too.”

“Yes, with her. Always.”

“I’m not going to let you leave me this time,” Mason swore, some confidence and possessiveness coming back into his tone. Fuck, I missed him like this. “I know better than that now. Do you understand that?”

“Yeah. I fucking do.”

He kissed me, long and deep and full of everything we still hadn’t learned to put into words. The ache in my chest remained, but it was different now. Decades of unfinished conversations settled silently between us, no longer begging to be solved all at once.

We were still broken.

Still grieving.

Still marked with scars neither of us would ever completely heal.

But for the first time, our future felt more important than our past.

“You want to go get her now?” I said, pulling my mouth from Mason’s. Of course I didn’t need to clarify who her was. Dakota. Our white-flecked doe. The best thing that’d ever happened to either one of us.

“Fuck, yes.”

He kept our hands locked together as we went back to the parking lot, then stalled. We’d both driven here. I glanced over at him, hesitating. I didn’t exactly want to part with him already, even if just for a short drive.

“Go,” Mason said after a minute, nodding to the truck. “I’m coming with you.”

“Good.” The beginnings of a grin tugged at the corners of my mouth.

Both of us got in the truck and Mason instantly flipped down the visor on the passenger side, tapping his knuckles against what he’d written there in permanent marker many years ago.

A+K FUCK

It was stupid. Not especially romantic, or anything. But it was him. It was us. It was proof that he’d been here before.

And I found myself very grateful all my attempts to scrub it off had mostly failed.