good for both of us, and we would be doing him a huge favor leaving him the hell alone.
She would never, though. She wouldn’t stay away from her crutch long enough for him to breathe, and I would like to think I open his lungs. I want him to be free around me, able to be himself and put his own needs first for once in his life. Dakota seems to want to keep him locked away in a childhood romance that she’s too afraid to leave behind. If I knew what it was between them, I would have a better footing while trying to navigate.
When she confronted me about him time after time, I should have learned my lesson. She isn’t going away without a fight, and I’m too exhausted to give her one. Something has happened between them that made Landon her knight in shining armor and she the perfect damsel in distress.
But what about me?
Where the hell does that leave me?
I don’t need Landon for the same reasons she does, but does that make me less worthy of him because I want to bring him up and hold him there, like he deserves?
I don’t have the past that she shares with him, but I can make a good future for him if given the chance.
Landon groans as I grind my hips over him. He’s hard. He’s hard for me. His hands are on my body, pulling and tearing at every inch of me. It’s a desperate fury that I’m enjoying getting to know. I pull at his hair and drop my mouth to his ear.
“You’re so good, Landon. You’re too good,” I encourage, and he pants beneath me. He makes me feel like a queen—he isn’t some peasant to me; he’s the adored king. My king, and with him we would rule equally. I wouldn’t be stuffed into a dress and heels and forced to be a trophy wife for anyone. Not like Stausey.
That was unfair. Ameen loves her. I know he loves her, and a part of me is envious that their life is what it is. It’s not that I want her life; I just want a partner. I don’t need a big house with matching towels and china sets, I just want someone to want to spend time with me. I would rather have someone listen to me talk through a movie than wake up to a Mercedes wrapped in a big red bow.
Landon’s hands lift to my breasts and he fondles them, claiming the flesh in his strong palms. I would take this over any material thing. I could spend hours and days and weeks with him like this. But my time is running out; I don’t have the luxury of time here.
Dakota does. She has years on me. That makes her relationship with Landon more than some child love. That I could handle—if it was over. That same old parable about two childhood neighbors who grow up together and share lemonade on the steps of their childhood homes. Their friendship grows into love, and the rest is history. I had that, too. Even though I find that predictable and a little cliché, there is something to be said about the convenience of it.
I’m talking about something deeper; something happens when you share a tragedy. I know this firsthand. I remember when the worst thing in my relationship with Ameen’s little brother was when he told me that my sister was pretty. I was jealous, and only fourteen. I grew out of my jealousy and went on to be friends with him after our breakup. Well, the first breakup.
Since then, we’ve created our share of adult problems, and now that our siblings are married, the mess has become too big to clean up. Our relationship has been over for a while, regardless of the fine print.
Our siblings remind us how perfect we are and how we spent years eating their fancy cheeses and drinking their sour wine, which was twice my age at least. And now we’re going to share a baby, our little niece. The darling angel child that my parents are expecting to mend the crumbled bridge between the two families. I’ll be an aunt. He’ll be an uncle. But we won’t be together. I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were my parents.
I know that my sister, and my parents, blame me for the hostile relationship with his parents, but they only blame me because it’s easier than admitting the truth.
What was I thinking telling Landon that he can meet my sister?
“What are you thinking about?” Landon kisses his way down the column of my neck and between my breasts. This sweet, sweet man. I can’t tell him that I’m analyzing every bit of our relationship and deciding our future while he kisses every inch of my neck and chest.