Her lips parted and closed without any words coming out. I didn’t expect to shut her up, but I was grateful for the moment of reflection instead of the immediate comeback.My girl was stillin there. The same girl who used to curl up and lie on my chest while we watched sappy movies in her dorm room. The adorable girl who used to blush when I kissed her neck. The brilliant writer who helped make my mediocre words sound like art. They were all there. I just needed her to let those titanium walls down.
I didn’t give her time to realize what was happening before I closed the remaining space between us and grabbed her throat. I moved slowly, giving her enough time to protest. She didn’t. Her heart pounded against the base of my hand as her eyes dropped to my lips.
“Reed.” She panted right before I crashed my lips into hers.
Carefully, I parted her lips with my tongue. Tasting her after all this time sent a war raging in my chest. It was like no time had passed. Every single year, every day that she was away from me disappeared. She tasted exactly how I remembered.
She whimpered quietly, making me ravenous as she opened more for me. Her fingers clawed at my head as I fisted her hair, pulling her as close as I could. Suddenly, she snatched away and slapped the shit out of me. Her delayed response was the one I’d expected from the start, so I wasn’t exactly caught off guard by the stinging sensation setting my face on fire.
“What the hell is wrong with you, Reed?”
“There’s a lot wrong with me. Where do I start?”
“Move out of my way. You don’t get to just kiss me like that,” she fussed, picking her tablet up from the table and clutching it to her chest.
I figured it wasn’t the best time to mention how she’d kissed me back. Instead, I backed up and stood to my full height.
“I’ve wanted to kiss you again for seven years.”
“That doesn’t make it right. I don’t belong to you, not anymore.”
“Who said?”
“Your mother!” she snapped.
Her quip almost threw me off track. There was no use in backing down. I was all in now. It was time to go in for the kill.
“You kissed me back.”
“I absolutely did not!”
That made me chuckle. Faith could run from me while she was away, but she could never hide—not her feelings, not herself. I knew her better than I knew myself. I had gone through too much to make sure that when she finally came back, I would be ready to claim her. Faith was mine.
“You absolutely did,” I said, moving in and closing the space between us again. She was flustered, furious, and beautiful enough to stop hearts and ruin lives, mine included. “Why do you want me to think you hate me?”
“Because I do.” She snorted, lifting her chin defiantly.
“No, you don’t.” I noticed the very moment her breath caught in her throat.
Faith might have hated me, but I knew she still loved me too. I needed her to know just how much I loved her. How much I had always loved her.
“I had to kill two people to get out of that arrangement. I went to my dad a couple of months before graduation to find out the procedure. My mom knew that I was thinking about it. That’s why she showed up to try to get in the way. Even after you left me, I went through with it because I knew one day, you would be back in my life. I don’t care what you say. I’m not letting you go this time, Faith.”
She opened her mouth, but no words came out. The pause nearly drove me up the wall. What was she going to say? What could she say? All I needed to hear was OK. Instead, she squared her shoulders and pushed down any signs of her surrender.
“So, when you realized seducing me to control the story wasn’t working, you figured confessing to murder was going to scare me into submission?”
I didn’t know why that made me laugh, but it did.
“I’m not trying to control or scare you, Faith. If I wanted to control the story, I would have never let a woman who proclaims to hate my guts into the building.”
“Well, what the hell do you want, Reed?”
“I want you. I don’t give a fuck about the story, or even this casino, if I can’t have you. Everything I have, everything that I have built is all for you.”
Her eyes narrowed as she prepared to try to finish tearing my heart out. I wasn’t sure if I could take that right now, so I spoke up again.
“Write your story the way you want to. Ask anything you want to ask, but you work directly with me. Take it or leave it, but I’m not letting up.”
