After a minute, she released me, twisting so she could take off her t-shirt. By the time I’d brushed my teeth and returned in nothing more than my underwear, she’d already crawled into the bed.
I joined her. Immediately, she snuggled against me. She was still trembling, so I wrapped myself around her, cocooning her with my body and the sheets as much as I could without her being uncomfortable.
“Sweetheart?” I whispered, touching my lips to her hair.
“Mm?”
“I understand. And…I promise. I’ll tell you. Just not tonight.”
She shifted so she could tilt her head back and look at me. “You don’t have to.”
“I do.” I brushed a kiss over her mouth. “Trust me.”
“I do. Trust you. For both the skirt in my panties and the burning building thing.”
We shared a smile.
One that was warm and genuine and punched me in the fucking heart with its intimacy.
“Go to sleep. You need to.” I kissed her once more and wriggled.
She did the same, except she closed her eyes as she adjusted herself in my arms.
Minutes later, her breathing shallowed, and her heartbeat slowed against my chest.
I stared into the darkness of her bedroom. I could do nothing but let reality wash over me, because fuck.
Fuck.
Dahlia Lloyd owned me.
My mind. My body.
Everything but my goddamn soul.
For now.
***
She was so hot when she slept. If there was any doubt in my mind that she was a red-blooded woman, one night of having Dahlia Lloyd pinned against me for hours on end would have killed them.
She was a human sauna.
It’d been three hours since I’d left her at her house and I could still feel the heat of her skin against mine. She’d insisted she had to get to work, completely refusing to acknowledge her emotions from last night.
I wasn’t going to push. I wanted to, though. I wanted so fucking bad to know even more about her.
Now, I knew how she felt.
I hadn’t known a thing about her mom, but I’d always wondered how she’d died. I’d always wanted to know that one thing—when, how, why? All those questions had quietly bugged me for the last few weeks.
Now, it didn’t feel good to know.
Seeing her pain had drummed home how I felt about her. How much I truly wanted her—how badly I wanted a little piece of her heart for myself.
How selfishly I wanted all those things.
Nothing good would come of that. Even if I snuck through the darkness and stole a piece, it wouldn’t change that.
So different. We were so fucking different, even though we were so similar. I had to remember that. I had to remind myself of all the reasons why we wouldn’t work. Thinking about the reasons we would…
I shook my head and ran my fingers through my hair. The stone wall behind me pressed through my shorts and into my ass, so firmly it was stinging across my skin.
This morning was the first morning that running hadn’t helped. It’d done nothing to beat out the frustration that clung to me. It’d done sweet fuck all to push away my feelings for Dahlia.
I traced my mom’s name on her midnight-black headstone like I always did. Except this time, it was slower. I took in every sleek curve of the blocky, bright-white font, from beginning to end.
Her name.
Her birthday.
Her death day.
The line that said she was loved.
The one that said she was a cherished wife and mother.
The final words that proclaimed her death to be an irreparable hole in the lives of all who knew her.
If I knew the day she died how true that final statement would be, I would have created the biggest goddamn fuss of my life.
It seemed like a fucking eternity since she’d died. Eight years wasn’t that long, not really, but it was still as raw to me now as it was back then.
I shifted my gaze to the stone next to my mother’s.
Penelope Fox.
My heart clenched. Pain radiated throughout my entire body. I didn’t think about her. I’d blocked her out. All the memories had been firmly locked away from my life because thinking of her as a real, living person was too excruciating.
Maybe I missed her more than I missed my mom. It was an incomparable ache, I knew that much, but Penny had been so much more.
My baby sister had been the glue that was destined to hold our family together.
In a sick twist of fate, she was the explosion who’d shattered us.
I should have been thankful. Thankful she only took my mom. Thankful my dad felt a sense of duty to me and Perrie. Not that it had mattered for Perrie—she’d been the burden and I’d been the failure.
Penelope had always been the golden one.
The irony of that wasn’t lost on me either.
I’d been the failure, and now, I’d succeeded. Penny had been Miss Perfect, and she’d fucked up so monumentally, she’d ruined all our lives with her choices.