“You wanted to look at me,” he repeats, as if not believing the words.
It’s not a question, but I nod anyway.
He pulls me to him by the arm he’s holding and wraps me up in a tight embrace. The same embrace I wanted to give him after I listened to his conversation with his bastard uncle.
“You’re fucking me up, Teal,” he whispers against my head, his hot breaths tickling my hair.
“Not as much as you are me.” There’s so much vulnerability in my voice, so much surrender, and for some reason, I don’t hate it.
“I’m glad you’re here, my crazy but beautiful belle.”
For the first time in my life, I wrap my arms around someone. I feel his heartbeat against my chest and his breaths in my hair and his arms squeezing me too tight.
I do the same.
My nails dig into the cloth of his shirt and sink in there, soaking in the warmth.
The belonging.
The care.
I never allowed myself addictions before, because addictions screw you up and mess with your logic and your head.
But as I hug Ronan, I know I have no choice in this addiction. It’s the type you just surrender to. You fall into it and let yourself float.
So I do just that, confessing in a soft voice, “I’m glad you’re here too, Ronan.”
25
Teal
For the following week, Ronan doesn’t leave my side.
He’s there in the morning to pick me up. He’s there to drive me back home, and sometimes, he kicks everyone out of the Meet Up so we can spend the night.
Those nights and afternoons are my favourites. Not only does he bring each and every one of my fantasies to reality, he goes a step beyond. He chases me around the cottage and the lake, making me feel like I can escape him just to pounce on me then fuck me in all positions possible.
I never thought I’d crave sex with someone as much as I do with Ronan. It’s not only about the joining of our bodies, but also about what leads to that. It’s about the emotions he shows when he’s owning my body.
I might not understand them that well — emotions, I mean — but I can see the meaning in the glint in his brown eyes. I can feel it in the way he touches me and hugs me like he wants to shield me from the world.
He’s been having some sort of a battle against the world lately. He made it his job to announce I’m his fiancée all over RES, and he’s been plotting to ruin Cole’s books every day since the garden incident. It’s strange to see Ronan act so territorial after he did everything to get rid of me.
In doing that, he’s been slowly but surely carving himself a cosy place in my heart. At some point in my life, I honestly believed I didn’t have a heart, or if I did, it only served its anatomical function.
But now, whenever Ronan is around, that organ goes in and out of sync. Everything he does moves me one way or another. It can be as small as smiling genuinely each time he sees me or how he keeps winking at me when we spend time with Charlotte. Or perhaps it’s how he brings me a bar of dark chocolate every day as if it’s become his ritual.
We spend entire nights texting back and forth. When I don’t answer within thirty seconds, he sends me a long dramatic text that basically says to answer him.
Ronan is still Ronan with his goofy attitude and tendency to turn every serious situation into a joke, but now I realise it’s part of his defence mechanism. It comes naturally to him, though, and he basks in being the centre of attention.
Unlike me.
Elsa says even though Ronan and I are different, we have chemistry. No idea what that means, but it’s probably something along the lines of how he can’t keep his hands off me. Truth be told, I can’t stay away from him either.
I’m that addict now, and if I don’t see him for a day, something feels so utterly wrong.
Knox says Ronan is changing me for the better, but my brother doesn’t know the internal battle I’ve been fighting because of that change.