I scrub my hands over my face and close my eyes again, releasing a long sigh.
It would be a lie if I said there weren’t times when I thought about just ending everything. Coming up here and hiking to the most remote place I can so that Killian and Liam don’t have to find me. They’ll know what I did without having to see me like that or knowing how I did it.
But, in this moment, I don’t mean it.
Bringing her up here has given me a reason to keep going, even if that reason is like a thorn in my fucking side.
I open my eyes to find her moving closer, tentatively, as if she’s afraid I might bite.
“Connor…look me in the eye and tell me you’re not going to hurt yourself.”
The flicker of sincerity and emotional waver in her voice make my chest tighten.
I hold her gaze. “I’m not.”
She presses her lips together, as if she doesn’t believe me, and she searches my face for the lie. Standing directly in front of me with her chest almost touching mine, staring up at me with those emerald green eyes, a flash of lightning lighting up her blond hair, she once again she looks more like an angel than the fucking demon I’ve made her out to be.
My eyes dip to her mouth.
Those lips so capable of spewing such hateful, hurtful things have revealed so much I never knew.
And just like when I found her sleeping, I’m mesmerized by them.
They’re so fucking perfect.
Plump and pink.
So sweet looking.
“Fuck it…”
I take her face between my palms and crush my mouth against hers.
Her hands press into my chest, and for a second, her entire body stiffens before she relaxes into my hold and returns the kiss, a heated, feverous smashing of lips against each other that’s as wild and reckless and pent up with tension as everything always is around us.
For a second, all the reasons we’re here, the things done and said that got us to this point and brought us up this mountain, vanish.
A sharp crack of thunder shakes the cabin and slowly drags me back to reality.
What the fuck am I doing?
I tear away from her, releasing my hold on her, and stagger back, searching with my hand until it finds the doorknob. Without looking back at her, not able to face the pure insanity of what I just did, I jerk the door open and storm off into the night.
11
RAVEN
What the fuck was that?
It takes my brain a second to process what just happened.
We were arguing…then Connor McBride was suddenly kissing me. And I didn’t shove him away. I didn’t slap him across the face and scream at him for being a barbaric asshole. Instead, I fell into his arms and kissed him back.
Hard.
I don’t understand what’s happening. My brain is too overwhelmed with everything we just said to each other and my body is too buzzed from that kiss.
And I don’t know what causes my feet to move toward the door he just slammed shut. Especially when the lightning and thunder have been sounding outside for the last hour or so and the rain falls even heavier now on the cabin roof.
