For a long moment, he doesn’t continue, but that’s okay. I know he needs time to gather his thoughts.
“I’ve been thinking.”
“Uh-oh. That’s dangerous,” I tease.
He rolls his eyes, but his lips quirk upwards, and I can tell my joke helped dissipate some of the tension saturating the air between us.
“I want…” Reid focuses on his hands, which rest on his knees, his knuckles littered with scars and scabs.
“You want?” I press.
“I want to try,” he says in a rush. “Us, I mean. The mating thing. I want to…try. If you want to.” He glances up at me, and our eyes meet, a bolt of heat slashing through me. “I know I’m not… I know that I’m…” He gestures helplessly down at himself. “But I want to… I want to…”
“You want to date me?” I supply, phrasing it as a question.
Reid bites down on his lower lip and nods once. “Yes. I want to date you.”
My heart begins to pound even faster. I can scarcely believe what I’m hearing.
“And you’ll be okay with me…?”
“Dating other men? Your mates? Yeah.” He swallows. “I…like you, Izzy. I really, really like you.” He scrubs a hand through his greasy garnet hair. “I understand if you don’t… If you don’t want…”
I lean forward and plant my lips to his.
Reid instantly takes control of the kiss, wrapping my hair around his fist and twisting my head the way he wants it to go. Lightning erupts in my veins, and fire prickles through every nerve ending.
The kiss is perfect and beautiful and so incredibly heartbreaking, because I can tell Reid is surprised—even though I’ve kissed him once before.
Reid still doesn’t believe he’s deserving of love.
I’ll just have to work hard to change that mentality.
“Is that a yes?” Reid asks, breaking the kiss to stare intently into my eyes.
The emotions swirling in his gaze are a sucker punch straight to the gut.
“That’s a hell yes,” I say, then I grab his face to kiss him once more.
Thirty-Six
IZZY
Ethan texts us to say he has to stay later for work, so the three of us decide to walk home instead.
Reid’s house is on the way, though he insists that he needs to walk me home. Emery and I both assure him that we’ll be fine and that it doesn’t make sense for him to backtrack. He concedes with a chaste kiss to my lips.
I notice, somewhat belatedly, that all of the lights are off in his home, the shutters drawn tight. Are his parents already asleep?
“Come on, pretty girl. It’s my turn with you.” Emery waggles his eyebrows salaciously as he interlocks his fingers with mine and begins to swing our conjoined hands.
We walk in companionable silence—holding hands the entire time—when Emery pauses abruptly. A flush crawls up his neck and settles in his cheeks. He glances over at me and then quickly looks away.
“You had fun tonight, right?” He chews on his lower lip.
I’m not sure I’ve ever seen Emery shy before. The man practically exudes confidence. It’s strange to see him like this, almost as if Ethan and Emery swapped places at some point when I wasn’t looking.
But I know this is Emery—a side of him he rarely lets people see.
