My jaw steels. Finally giving her want she wants, facing her head-on. “What do you want me to say, Rory?Huh? Enlighten me, please, because right now I feel like I’m losing my goddamned mind!”
Her arms cross as her lips smash together, silent even as that storm continues to ignite behind her eyes.
“I want you to tell me the truth,” she says defiantly, stepping into me. “I want you to tell me why you left, why you keep coming back? Stop being a coward and finally give me a straight answer.”
The air as charged as the electric sparks that fire between us. She’s not backing down and I don’t want her to.
“Tell me what this is between us. Give me some insight, Cole—please!” Her misery stabs, hitting me right in the heart. “You want to know what I know? I know that no matter how hard I try, I can’t let you go.” Her hand grasps at her chest. “I’ve tried, but I can’t.”
My mouth curves into a sneer. “So what?”
“So what?” She mimics, swallowing as she chokes back her surprise. “’So what?’Is that all you have to say to me?”
My eyes widen, igniting in a blaze. She wants the truth, fine.
“What more do you want from me? Do you want me to say that I love you, that I’minlove with you? Because it’s true, all of it. I know this with every single fiber of my being. And nothing and no one can change that fact because it’s true, and it’s never going to stop being true. Even on my very last breath, it will always be you, Rory. Always!”
My gasps as winded as they are ragged by the time I finish, but I don’t regret saying a thing.
I stare her down. “That good enough for you?”
Her face slips and it’s like a dozen daggers to my front. The energy she had before dissipating before my eyes. Shifting into something else.
Finally… “You love me?”
My hands fist, I exhale out my nose as I watch her. My heart thunders, racing a million miles a minute. “That’s what I said, didn’t I?”
She’s staring at the middle of my chest now; my erratic breathing matches hers. Her eyelids stutter, mind scrambling for an answer only she carries.
“Eight.”
Angling her head up. “What?”
“Eight steps. That’s all it took for you to walk out on me. Eight measly steps out of my bedroom and I’d thought I’d lost you forever.”
Her voice catches. “You counted?”
“Yes.”
Searching those silver eyes, they radiate, shining under the thickness of her lashes. Probing, while the entire time, my throat stays locked.
“And you love me?”
Another beat.
I nod. “Yes.”
She’s nothing and then everything all at once. The movement as easy as breathing. Pulling me down into her.
No hesitation, kissing me with the passion of everything she is. Her arms snake around my neck, pulling me into her. I go readily. Kissing her back with the same heat.
Kissing the girl who’s mine. The one I’ve loved since the very beginning. My Princess, always.
Bending, I pick her up behind the knees and carry her to the bed. Laying her down, our mouths never break from the other. Her kiss tastes like a reward, like coming home after months of nothing but dead ends and heartache.
Her blonde hair frames around her head like a halo, giggling as she pulls away. I groan my disapproval, sliding us farther up the bed. That softness in her voice finding its way out again.
She pushes back a lock of hair from my forehead. Resting her hands back on either side of my face again once she’s done. Rory’s eyeing me, but it feels deeper than that…