Page 28 of In a Perfect World

“What were your parents’ reasoning behind all this?”I asked, trying to understand.

“They never gave me one,” she answered.“They just said that they’d given their word, and that I would learn to love Romelio because he was a good man.”

The man’s name rolled off her tongue with such fluidness that it spiked my jealousy up a notch, and the way that she rolled her Rs, her heritage shining through was a bigger turn on than it should have been.In fact, everything about her was beginning to feel like it was too much, and I really was in deep shit when it came to whatever this was.

“Did you guys used to date or something?”I asked, trying to stow away my jealousy and just listen.

She shook her head.“Never.I had no idea that he was even interested in me that way, and honestly, I haven’t even spoken to him about it.I just...I mean, I know that I should, but what kind of man does something like this without giving the woman a heads up?”

“I’m not sure,” I said, still trying to wrap my mind around her situation.

“I just...the idea ofgrowingto love my husband sounds so...so cold,” she went on.“It sounds like a...a business arrangement or something as equally boring.I don’t want to learn to love my husband, Kairo.I want to not be able to get enough of the man that I married.I want to look at him and not be able to ever imagine being with another man.”

“As it should be,” I told her, wanting to be that man more than anything right now.

“I just...”She let out a deep sigh as she looked up at the sky, and fuck me running, she was just so damn beautiful.“I just...I want my marriage to be more than just a duty.”

I couldn’t help it anymore.

I just fucking couldn’t.

Going against everything that I’d ever been taught and had believed in, instead of just diving into the creek, I took off towards the northern edge of the trees, then crossed over into Rancher Hills, breaking every fucking law that there was.

When I finally reached Triana, her russet-colored gaze was wide with a hint of fear in it.“What...what are you doing?”she choked out.“Are you crazy?”

Instead of addressing my mental state at the moment, I asked, “Do you want my hands on you, Triana?”Her eyes started darting around like we were about to be shot, and I could hardly blame her.“Answer me, baby.”

When she looked back up at me, everything that I was feeling was mirrored in her eyes.“Yes,” she mouthed silently.

“I need to hear it, Triana,” I told her, refusing to risk everything for a misunderstanding.

“Yes,” she said, clearly this time.

Not caring about anything else, I grabbed her face in my hands, then kissed her with everything that I’d been feeling since the day that we’d first met.I kissed her with her concerned words for me ringing in my ear, and I kissed her for how she kept coming back here, even knowing that I might not be waiting for her.I kissed her to show her the reason that I kept showing up when I shouldn’t.

When I felt her hands slide up my chest to wrap around my neck, my own hands found her hips, and then I pulled her close enough that she could feel what she did to me.Now, while I didn’t want to scare her away, I also couldn’t help what was happening between us.

I also would have kept on kissing her if a squawking bird hadn’t flown overhead, bursting our little bubble, reminding us of where we were and what we were doing.

“Oh, God...”she gasped, stepping back, her fingers touching her lips.“What are we doing?”

Throwing caution to the wind, I said, “I haven’t been coming here every day to just be your friend, Triana.”

She immediately began shaking her head.“You...we can’t do this, Kairo.You have to get back to the other side of the creek.”

I understood why she was panicking, and since she already had too much on her mind, I said, “Give me your phone number first.”

“Kairo-”

“Give me your phone number,” I repeated.“If you give me your number, then this will be easier to navigate.”I took her face in my hands again.“We can talk on the phone safely.”

That was the thing about the times that we were living in.While we were forbidden to cross borders, phones and the internet still existed, so we weren’t completely cut off from everyone else, but most of us still just stuck to our own kind because it was easier and temptation was a bitch.

Triana’s voice shook as she fired off her phone number, and I quickly grabbed my phone out of my pocket to save it.Once I did, I sent her a text, so that she’d have my number programmed into her phone as well, and as much as I didn’t want to leave, she looked like she was going to lose it.

Racing back over to Sterling Acres, once I was safely back on the other side, I said, “Call me when you get home, and then we can talk about this some more.”

“About what?”she asked, sounding a bit frantic.“My parents or what just happened?”