I take three more steps, until I’m so close to him I can feel his body heat radiating through the chilly air and hitting my cold, damp skin. Lightning flashes overhead, tiny slivers of it sneaking through the canopy above us, and thunder booms. A shiver rolls through me, and instinctively, I want to press into that warmth to escape the storm.
But Connor McBride is the storm.
His mind is a swirling maelstrom of emotions he’s not capable of sorting through or even recognizing. He is lost twisting in the blustery winds of the hurricane his own actions stirred up. Both what he did on that homestead to protect his family and what he did that night in a misguided attempt to protect me.
Connor stares me down, blinking away the water collecting on his long, thick dark lashes. “What happened back there was a mistake, Raven. Just like it would’ve been if I had touched you that night.”
“Then why’d you do it?”
He glances away, looking off into the pitch-black to the right of him as if he might find the answer there amongst the endless trees. “I don’t know. Because I wanted to end the entire conversation. Because I wanted to shut you up.” His shoulders slump slightly, as if some of the fight is starting to melt away in the falling rain. “Because I’ve wanted to kiss you since that night.”
My breath catches in my chest. “What?”
More lightning and thunder split the darkness and shatter the silence, and Connor turns his head back to face me.
All the words he just said in that cabin race through my head, and I struggle to make sense of any of it.
His intense gaze sweeps over me. “You’ve hated me for fifteen years because you thought I didn’t want you that night, because you thought I rejected you, but if anything had happened between us, I would have hated myself. I thought you were the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, and I didn’t want you to make a mistake you were going to regret. When we were finally together, when I had my first time with the girl I wanted it to be with, I wanted it to be perfect. Not when we were both so young, and definitely not when you were fucking drunk and incapable of really making that decision.”
“What?”
His words don’t really register.
They can’t.
Not through the fifteen years of hatred and anger I’ve had pent up against him.
“Then…why have you acted like you’ve hated me for so long?”
“Because you turned into a bitch on wheels with a vendetta against me. Because you acted like I had done something wrong. Because you set your sights on taking me down any way you could and you have for a decade and a half. Because you made me the villain in your fucking story and hung me out to dry and I didn’t understand why.”
Holy shit.
His words reverberate through my chest the same way the next crack of thunder does, and I struggle with the war raging so violently inside me.
Connor McBride has always sparked something intense in me—emotions that were too big, too real, too much, whether good or bad. Mostly bad.
We spent so long hating each other that we never bothered to figure out why, never wanted to fix it.
Maybe there is no fixing so much time and so many harsh things said to each other.
The wounds we caused each other slinging those barbs and taking each other down to the mat over the years still feel so raw, so open and fresh. At least, to me. So, they must to him, too.
He takes a step closer and lightning flashes again, casting strange pieces of light across the harsh set of his face.
“I’m sorry about what happened in there.” He tips his head toward the cabin again. “You told me you didn’t want me to touch you, and I won’t again.”
Connor starts to walk away, to continue his march toward the river, but I reach out and grab his wrist, stopping him.
“What if I want you to?”
I don’t know where the words come from.
Certainly not me, not from the woman who hates every-fucking-thing about Connor McBride. Not from the woman who despises his arrogance. Not from the woman who loathes his black and white view of the world. Not from the woman who is still fucking livid that he dragged her up here against her will.
But when he fully turns to look at me again, instead of letting him go like I should, I tighten my grip on his wrist.
He glances down at where my much smaller, paler fingers wrap around his strong, tanned skin, and when he looks up again, I close the distance between us and press my lips to his.
