I lean forward and brush my lips over her eyes. Kiss the tears away. As I do, she lets out a sob so deep that it shakes her entire body. I wait for the rest, wait for the tears and the fury that I know are roiling around deep inside her.
It never comes. Instead she swallows back the sobs, brushes away the tears. And when she looks up at me, it’s with a softness—an openness—I’ve never seen from her before.
“Why are you being so kind to me?”
I don’t even try to hide my confusion when I ask, “Why wouldn’t I be kind to you?”
She raises a brow, gives the laugh I’ve heard dozens of times over the last year. But it doesn’t hide the vulnerability in her eyes or the slightly inward slope of her shoulders, like she’s bracing herself for a blow. Another first from this woman who has only ever shown me strength. I’d be excited by the change, by the fact that she’s finally letting me in, except for the fact that she’s suffering. I wouldn’t wish this mess on anyone, let alone on the woman I love. The woman who has been such a staunch protector of my sister for so long. The woman who took care of her and had her back long before Ethan was in the picture. Long before I understood just how completely I had failed her.
“Kind isn’t really what we do, you and I.”
There’s a million things I can say here, a million different ways I can play this, and each one of them will change our relationship in subtle but important ways.
I could tell her that I’ve fallen in love with her, but she’s not ready to hear that yet.
I could tell her that I hate what she’s going through, but she’d throw what she perceives as my pity back in my face.
I could tell her that I want to be there for her because I wasn’t there for Chloe, but that would just undermine how important she’s become to me.
In the end, I say the only thing I can say. The only thing that makes sense to me right here, right now. “I think it’s probably time to change that, don’t you?”
And then I lower my mouth to hers, putting all the things I can’t say—all the things I want to say—into this one kiss.
Chapter 21
Tori
I don’t know why, but it feels different when he kisses me this time.
Maybe it’s the fight we had earlier and how angry I was at him.
Maybe it’s that this is the last part of making up from that fight—something I rarely bother to do with a man.
Or maybe it’s because he really is different. Because we both are—so different together from who we are when we’re apart.
Whatever it is, it makes this kiss feel more intimate, more important, more…just more…and I can’t help but revel in it. Can’t help but meet it—and Miles—head-on.
Leaning into him, I cup his too-perfect face in my hands. Stroke my thumbs over his cut-glass jaw. Tangle my fingers in the silkiness of his hair. And give myself over to this. To him.
I can tell the moment he feels my surrender. It’s in the way he pulls me more tightly against him. In the way his hands slip down to rest possessively on my hip. In the way he slides his tongue between my parted lips and into the deepest recesses of my mouth as if he, too, feels the difference.
I open to him—of course I do—and brace myself for the heat and the rush. For the flash and the fire.
It doesn’t come.
Instead there’s warmth and care and a tenderness so sweet it makes me tremble in a whole new way. And when he stands, when he pulls me to my feet and then sweeps me up into his arms, I do more than let him. Do more than wind my arms around his neck and hold on tight. I melt into him, melt into this one perfect moment in the middle of my violently imperfect life.
He doesn’t lift his mouth from mine even as he makes his way down the hall to the sweeping staircase that starts in the foyer. Doesn’t stop kissing me even as he carries me up the stairs two at a time. And he doesn’t stop touching me—doesn’t stop skimming his lips across my jaw, down my neck, over my shoulder—even as he lays me in the center of his bed.
Instead he follows me down, his mouth and hands and body pressed against mine like he’s afraid to let me go, even for a moment.
I know exactly how he feels. How can I not when the same desperation is clawing at me?
Heat builds with each second that passes, the fire I was expecting earlier beginning to haze my mind and burn along my every nerve ending. As it does, I pull at his T-shirt, wrap my legs around his hips, press my body against the lean, strong length of his.
He’s hard, his dick pressed so tightly against my sex that it might have been painful if I didn’t want him so much. Need him so much. But I do need him—around me, inside me, filling up the emptiness I’ve felt for as long as I can remember.
Part of me thinks it’s absurd that I expect him to do that, but another, bigger part knows it’s not ridiculous at all. Just like it knows that he’s already filled so many of my empty places just by being him.