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“I’m not raking shit up, Stella. I’m trying to fix things. We were always meant to be together, and I fucked that up. So I’m here, better and clean and healthy, trying to fix it!”
I shake my head again. I can’t believe that’s what he’s here for. I won’t believe it. Doing so means I’m risking everything. The safety and sanity that I’ve crafted for myself over the last seven years, the walls I’ve built to protect my heart. He absolutely destroyed me once, and I barely survived. A second time might kill me.
“Let me go, Riggins,” I say in a near whisper, the tears clawing at my throat. “Let me go. Go live your life and do it without me. Stop dragging me down. I live in the same old town we grew up in, but you got out. You’re a new person. Take it. Run with it. Be Riggins Greene, rock star. Be everything you were always supposed to be.” He takes a step closer, and I close my eyes, not wanting to see him.
“And you’ll be what?” His voice asks, low and concerned. The same way he’d talk to me in the middle of the night when I’d confess my fears in the safety of the dark.
“I’ll just be Stella,” I whisper.
“You were never just Stella. You were never meant to bejustStella.”
“Well, that’s what I am now.”
“No, it’s what you’ve convinced yourself you need to be to fit in this town. Small and meek and unassuming.” He takes another step closer until there’s just a foot between us, and my breathing stops with the determined look in his eyes.
I know if I wanted to, I could tell him to back up, I could leave, and he wouldn’t follow, but I can’t make my feet move. I can’t force myself to do that.
“But you were always extraordinary, Stella. The brightest star in the sky.” His eyes take in my face, reading my deepest secrets and uncovering all of my truths. It feels like it lasts a lifetime before he sees what he needs to.
A whisper of hope.
The confusion battling within me, the bright pull I’ll always feel to him that sometimes seems to fight back the darkness of my fear.
And I’m so tired of fighting. I’m so tired of lying to myself, of telling myself that I don’t miss him, that I don’t crave him. Would it really be so bad to give in just this once? To scratch the itch, to ease the burn? Then we could go right back to before; I could finally move on…
Closure. It could bring me closure.
“Fuck this,” he says, pinning me against a wall and kissing me as if the world is about to implode.
The kiss detonates something inside of me in a way that our kisses in the past never have. That wall I’ve erected between us caves in, leaving me open to accept whatever he’s willing to give me.
Whatever he’s dying totake.
As soon as I do, any and all rational thoughts leave my mind. No thoughts on how this might destroy me later, nothing about how I’ll regret it in a bit. Just the all-consuming joy of being back in Riggins’ arms.
His lips move on mine, and my lips part like they’ve been trained to do so, his tongue sliding in and tasting mine. My hands move to his neck, tangling in the hair at the base of his neck, and I moan, trying to get closer to him.
“Jesus fuck, it feels good to hear that sound again,” he says when he breaks from my mouth, lips trailing down my neck, nipping and sucking as he goes.
My neck has always been wildly sensitive; kisses and nips there always made my entire body erupt in flames, and it seems he remembers that. His lips move, shifting so his thigh is between my legs, the firm span of it pressing where I already need him.
I moan again, the sound deep and feral. The pleasure and need rocketing through me catches me off guard, but I should have known.
I always knew I was born to be Riggins’. My body was built to respond to him.
“Riggins,” I whisper as he sucks on my neck. His hands move to my hips as his lips move back to mine, kissing me wild. He uses the new grip to move me, shift me, and encourage me to grind on his thigh. I’m rocketing toward pleasure and release at record speeds, but I don’t have enough of my mind in place to feel self-conscious. Instead, my hands grip tighter on his hair, pulling his face closer to mine like if there’s any space between us, I’ll cease to exist.
“Please,” I whisper, the words meaning so much more than a plea to convince him to take me over the edge.
I’m begging for him.
For Riggins.
The versions of him I refused to let myself even contemplate.
The one who loved me wild.
The one who always made me see stars.
