Page 105 of Hard Pass

Just the way she kisses me back.

This isn’t just attraction. This is her choosing it. Choosing me. The kiss deepens, rushed but certain, like we’ve both stopped pretending this is a situation we can walk away from.

“No one’s ever made me feel this desperate before,” I murmur against her mouth.

I pull back to breathe and then pause to process the confession I never intended to make.

Her lips are still parted. Her eyes unfocused. Her control . . . gone.

“What are you doing?” she whispers, confusion etched in her every word.

“Not a damn thing I should be.”

Her gaze flicks to the door. “Look where we are.”

Yeah. I know. That’s the problem.

She steps back first, control snapping into place like it never left. Except it did. I saw it. I felt it.

I want more of it.

But her hands tremble as she grabs her bag.

“I have to go,” she says quickly.

“Dublin—”

“Don’t,” she says, shaking her head, already moving past me. “Just . . . don’t.”

And then she’s gone.

I stand there for a second, staring at the door she just walked out of.

My jaw tightens and my body craves. I want her. I don’t know for how long or what exactly I want, but the woman is impossible to fucking quit.

In the past, I’d have moved on. Gone to a bar. Called up an old ex. But do something to take my mind off her. That feels fucking impossible.

She spent hours watching film with one intention—to find the truth. To validate my innocence.

Sure that’s attractive in and of itself, but it’s more than that. It’s . . . fuck. It’s her brains. It’s her belief in me. It’s the fact that I can see in her eyes how bad she wants me, wants more of whatever this is.

Just like I do.

Yeah. I’m not ready to stop fighting for more of the noise she quiets. Of that feeling I have when I’m with her.

Of her.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Cole

I shouldn’t be here.

The thought’s been on repeat since I watched her walk out of the film room. Like she didn’t say I know. Like she didn’t kiss me like she meant it.

But I drove aimlessly to burn off the restlessness. Down side streets, through neighborhoods where bikes were left haphazardly on the lawn, and around UT Austin where students crowded crosswalks on their way to the nearby fraternity houses.

And none of it helped, because I ended up exactly where I was headed from the start.