“You think so?” His voice is low, edged with something that sends my pulse into a freefall. “’Cause I haven’t even gotten to the best part yet.”
My breath hitches before I can stop it. I know that look. Know that tone. It’s the one he used to get when he was about to ruin me. The tension between us stretches thin, ready to snap.
Then it does.
His arm hooks around my waist in one swift, practiced movement, and suddenly, I’m not sitting next to him anymore.
I squeak, hands flying to his shoulders as he pulls me into his lap, my legs straddling his waist.
“Boone,” I gasp, half shocked, half something else entirely.
He laughs, low and deep in his chest, like he’s enjoying every second of my reaction.
“Yeah, honey?” His hands settle on my hips, thumbs pressing just enough to remind me that even though he’s in control of this moment, if I wanted to move away, I could.
I don’t.
Instead, I reach up and let my finger trace the bridge of his nose, slow and featherlight. His breathing shifts—deeper, steadier—but he doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak. Just watches me with that heavy-lidded stare like he’s memorizing the way this feels.
My touch drifts higher, brushing along the crease in his brow that didn’t used to be there. Down across the edge of his cheekbone, where a faint scar now lives—one I’ve never seen before. I pause there for a second, my finger skimming over it like I can smooth it away.
Then I trail lower, past the stubble along his jaw, down to the cleft of his chin.
My finger rests there the way it used to. Back when we were teenagers and I’d lie on the floor of his bedroom with my head on his chest, tracing that same spot and calling it my favorite place in the whole world. I meant it. I still do.
Boone swallows, his throat working around the silence. His eyes find mine, and stay there, unflinching. There’s no hesitation in them. No apology. Just a quiet sort of intensity that steals the air from my lungs.
He looks at me like he remembers every version of this moment. Every time I’ve touched him there before. Every night we built something wordless between us and didn’t realize how much it mattered until we broke it.
“Boone…”
He shakes his head once, sharp. “No.”
His voice is low—gritty and guttural like it’s been scraped from somewhere deep inside. My pulse skitters, and then his fingers slide beneath the hem of my sweatshirt, the rough pads of them dragging up the curve of my spine, slow and sure. Like he’s grounding himself in the shape of me, like he doesn’t trust this moment to be real unless he feels it.
His other hand stays on my hip, firm and steady as if he knows I’m two seconds away from bolting.
“No, what?” I ask, even though I’m not sure I want to know the answer. My voice sounds thin and breathless. His thumb presses harder, just enough to make my body go still.
“No more of this shit where you pretend I don’t belong here.” His gaze catches mine and doesn’t waver. “No more talking like this was ever going to end differently. It was always going to be you and me, Lark. You know that.”
I open my mouth. I want to argue. I want to protect myself from the ache clawing up my chest. But he doesn’t give me the space to unravel it.
His hand cups my jaw, gentle but commanding, like he needs me to feel every word he’s about to say. He tucks my hair behind my ear, his knucklesgrazing the side of my neck—and I feel it everywhere.
“I never should’ve left you,” he says. “Not the way I did. Not without looking back.”
The confession knocks the breath right out of me.
His thumb skims my cheekbone, soft, reverent. “But I’m here now, and I want you, Lark. I want all of this—the good, the hard, the every-damn-day. But you’ve gotta let me in.”
“I don’t know how,” I admit, the words barely above a whisper.
His gaze drops to my mouth, then back to my eyes. Something shifts behind it—like a fuse being lit.
“Let me show you,” he says, low and rough. A promise, not a question.
And then he kisses me.
