I’m focusing on him.
Graham.
He sees me as soon as he climbs out of his truck. Without breaking our stare, he shuts the door behind him. And as soon as I hear the bang of that, I take off.
My sneakers slap against the stone pathway as I run to him and he does the same. He strides over to me and we meet in the middle.
Panting, I watch him.
His eyes are bright, brighter than anything I’ve ever seen and he’s watching me back with breaths as heavy as mine.
He’s looking at me. Looking.
“You left me a rose this morning,” I tell him in a breathless sort of way.
“I did.”
His raspy voice gets me right in the gut, right in that quickening that seems to have started the moment I laid my eyes on him, and I bite my lip for a second.
“Because you promised me.”
“Yeah. I can’t just say something and not do it.”
He repeats my casually thrown out words from last night and I swallow. I swallow my heart down because it’s trying to get out of my body. It’s trying to fly out to him.
“I want you to know that no one has ever given me a rose before you,” I say, batting away the wayward strands of my hair. “So that’s another thing no one has ever done for me. I want you to know that.”
Watching me intently, he takes a step toward me. “People are fucking morons, aren’t they? Although…”
“Although what?”
“Although, I’m not sure how good of a gift it is for someone like you.”
“Someone like me?”
He nods slowly, still watching me with a singular focus. “Someone who blushes like a rose and looks gorgeous as fuck doing it.”
A wave of emotion rolls through me. A wave, an avalanche of it. It rolls through my entire body before settling deep in my stomach. Deep in my soul.
Deep in between my thighs, and I clench them.
I clench them so hard, as hard as my heart is clenching right now.
Because the way he said it… feels like love. The way he’s watching me feels like love too.
I know it’s a lie. I know that. He told me that he can’t love me. That he never will.
So he’ll always be this broken dream of mine. This unfulfilled wish. My unrequited love.
But in this moment, he’s looking at me like he does. Like he does love me.
I’d kill for that look. Kill and steal and lie.
Yeah, I’d lie for that look because if this is the only thing I’ll have from him – a look – then how can I lose that?
“I missed you,” I whisper, taking a step toward him.
“You did.”
“Yes. So I spent the day baking all sorts of things for you. Everything with cinnamon. I know you like that.”
“I do.” Then he offers me something, something that was in his hand before but I didn’t see it. “Here.”
I see it now. A bag of lollipops. I take it from his hand. “You bought me lollipops?”
He nods again but this one is tighter than before, kinda bashful. “You were running low.”
I hug it to my chest, hug it and squeeze it before tearing the pack open and fishing one out. I give it a long suck before saying, “Is this your way of saying that you missed me too?”
He watches me swirl the candy in my mouth. “No.”
I frown, taking the lollipop out. “No?”
Then he closes the last inch between us and grabs me at the waist. He squeezes all the air out of me as he digs his fingers in, as if making sure that I’m really alive and he can finally touch me.
Lifting me up, he puts me on his boots and growls, “This is.”
By this, he means his kiss.
Because he’s kissing me now.
I let go of all the lollipops and the bag falls to the ground. But it’s okay. I’ll pick it up later. Right now, I need to kiss him back.
I wind my arms around him and do just that. I kiss him back while he kisses my candy-coated mouth before boosting me up with a hand on my ass, and carrying me up to the house while I hang onto him like a spider monkey.
A few seconds later, he breaks the kiss and I find myself on his bed again.
I lean up on my elbows and he bends down at the waist to get closer to my half-lying form. I watch with panting breaths when his hands come to the buttons of his shirt that I’m wearing.
Oh yeah, I’m still wearing it.
In fact, I took a shower and put it back on so I could smell him. I could feel the lingering warmth of his body on mine.
And now, he has his hands on it and I know what he’s going to do before he even does it.