She disappeared behind the pane when he reached the dormer. A few seconds later, he clambered across the sill into his bedroom. He saw her pale dress glowing from the shadows. He turned on a bedside lamp. She was definitely here. No ghost or hallucination could possess Laila’s singular, luminous face or smooth, toned arms or lush, sexy hair. He hadn’t seen her in days. He experienced a wild urge to yell like some kind of savage. She was so damn beautiful, he wanted to absorb her.
Her eyes looked huge in her delicate face.
“Is everything okay?” he demanded, concern penetrating his euphoria at seeing her so unexpectedly.
“Yeah.”
“Then . . . what are you doing here?”
She pursed her lips together. She looked anxious. Miserable.
“Laila?” he asked, stepping toward her. He took her hands in his. His head dropped and he brushed his mouth against her cheek. “What is it?”
“It’s just . . . it wasn’t okay,” she whispered, glancing up at him. He realized she was trembling slightly all over. His arms closed around her.
“Shhh,” he murmured against her temple. “Just tell me what’s wrong.”
“I’ve been feeling like I was going to jump out of my own skin for days. My mom kept giving me one thing to do after another, after another. She saw me texting you and assumed I was texting with Ben. She wants to ask him back for dinner on Sunday, but Baba said he’d talk her out of it. We had this big picnic on the beach, and I threw it all up.”
“What? Are you sick?”
“No. I’m fine. I just . . . I feel like my insides are scraping together. Like my worlds are,” she said, looking up at him entreatingly. He smoothed back her hair, hating witnessing her distress, wishing like hell he could say something to help . . . knowing he couldn’t, because he was the cause of it. “After dinner, my dad started telling me all this stuff about how important it was to find someone that you shared common values with, because relationships are hard enough as it is. And then he told me how it would’ve been irresponsible for Uncle Reda and him to build sports cars and how you can’t buy food with dreams . . .” She paused and gasped for air.
“What?” Asher asked, very confused and concerned at how worked up she was. Christ, she looks as tense as I feel.
“It doesn’t matter,” she sniffed. “None of it matters. My point is, the whole day, I felt so . . . trapped, because I couldn’t speak the truth out loud, and I knew you were here, so close, but I couldn’t see you.”
He pressed his mouth to her temple again, and then to her hair. Inhaling her scent made his throat hurt. His chest. Everything.
“I had to come. I snuck off the sleeping porch. I stole Zara’s car. Jimmy told me you were up here in your room,” she recounted shakily. “I’ve never done anything like this before. I don’t know what’s wrong with me—”
“Shhh,” he whispered, kissing her cheek. “There’s nothing wrong with you, baby. I felt the same way all day.”
“It was . . . it was you saying that thing about us having only a week left that really . . .”
“I know. I know,” he murmured, skimming his lips against her jaw. She turned her face toward him. Their lips brushed together.
“You do?” she whispered.
“I know I’ve fallen in love with you.”
He hadn’t been prepared to say it. He’d never felt it, let alone said it in his life until now. It had just popped out of his mouth, a simple, huge, inarguable truth. She stared up at him, her eyes shimmering. Since he was acknowledging it for the first time, he thought maybe he looked just as amazed by his declaration at that moment as she did.
“Is that what this is?” she asked him slowly, wonder tingeing her voice.
“Granted, I’m new to it, but yeah. I’m sure.”
Her throat convulsed as she swallowed. “I am too. That I love you, I mean. What else could be making me so crazy?” she said, as if it had all just become crystal clear to her.
He gave a sharp bark of laughter, feeling some of the tension he’d been carrying around seep out of him. “This is a good thing. This is a very good thing.”
“Right. I mean . . . it’s never bad, to love someone. To be loved. Is it?” she whispered, stepping closer to him. His arms tightened around her. “It’s always a good thing.” Her gaze traveled over his face. “It’s always . . . an amazing thing.”
He cradled her jaw and lifted her mouth to his. “In the case of you, it’s nothing less than a miracle.” Unable to take it a second longer, he swooped down to claim her mouth.
Chapter Thirteen
She drowned in him, every cell in her being flooding with Asher. She succumbed willingly to the onslaught. Joyfully. He placed his hands at the top of her bottom and leaned over her, making her back arch, while he kissed her with furious intent. There was something so sharp about her need tonight. Something unbearable that clawed at her insides. Maybe it had to do with what they’d just confessed to each other . . . the revelation.