Page 65 of One Kiss Isn't Enough
“Did you want to hurt them?” she asks quietly.
I answer her with questions of my own. “Why would I want to do this? Why would I want to hurt people?”
Another question is all I get. “Why wouldn’t you? That’s what you did before, and living out there, away from all this… nothing made you happy. You moved from job to job and you hated them all.”
“I was happy with you and bored with work… that’s life.”
“No,” she responds sharply, “you lost your passion.”
“I lost my family,” I correct her, raising my voice and stressing the statement. I feel the harsh words linger between us. The room feels colder than it ever has before. Anger simmers, although not for her; anger at my past, anger at this shit life I was dealt.
“You are my family, we are family. But Carter was too.”
She starts to speak, but her words turn to ghosts of thoughts as she stares back at me and starts to cry. “I wish we’d never left him behind,” she croaks and I swallow my confession that I wish we’d never left at all.
“Come here,” I say and hold her close, forcing her body to mold with mine. “I love you and I don’t want to see you like this.”
A shudder runs along her shoulders as she tries to calm herself down. Can’t she see this is the exact reason I don’t want to tell her these things? I don’t want her to live with the pain. I can bear it for the both of us.
As if reading my mind and finding fault in my conviction, she whispers against my chest, “I don’t want you to lie to me.” Her hot breath sends goosebumps down my skin in a wave.
“I don’t lie to you. I’ve never lied. I just keep some of this shit from you, so you don’t have to deal with it.” It’s a half truth. It’s always only a half truth.
“You don’t think I know? Or that I wouldn’t find out?” she questions as she lifts her gaze to me. Staring back at me are worry, sadness, and desperation even. And it stuns me.
“I know more than you think,” she says in my silence.
“I would never bring you into danger,” is all I can say, because it’s the only truth that matters to me anymore.
“Is that why you came up here before me? Because it was too dangerous?”
I almost lie, I almost hide it from her so she doesn’t have to know, but I can’t. “Yes.”
“Why not tell me?” she asks as if it’s that simple. As if I could risk her knowing who I am at my core and leaving me.
“I don’t want you to know. I want you to be happy and to trust that I’ll take care of it. All of it.”
“That’s not fair. I don’t want it to all lie on your shoulders. I want to help you. I want to be there for you.”
“You do help me, and you are there for me.”
“How can I, when I don’t know what you’re going through?”
“I just want you to love me.”
“You already know I do.”
“Show me. Kiss me. Kiss me like you love me.” I miss her kisses the most. When she’s angry and she’s holding back, I know she keeps them from me. And all I can think is that she must not need them like I do. She must not feel the same thing as I do when she lets me kiss her.
I can keep secrets so easily. But I can’t keep her touch as easily. I need to feel it every day. She makes me feel like it’s all worth fighting for.
“Kissing doesn’t make it better,” she says softly, but her gaze lingers on my lips and the fight in her cadence is weak at best.
“Fighting won’t either,” I answer her and that’s when her eyes lift to mine.
“Are you sure about that?” The seductive tone doesn’t go unnoticed, and neither does the challenge.
One large step is all it takes to dwarf her small frame under mine. She doesn’t back away, she doesn’t reach out to me, but her breathing quickens and her baby blues spark with a heat I’ve longed for.