Page 92 of Make Me Mean It

“Like you weren’t almost-”

I can’t fucking say it.

Connor’s head drops back, his chest brushing mine, his breathing getting faster now. I can feel every one of them with how close we are.

“You don’t get to intimidate me into leaving.” His wrists shift beneath my hands, but he doesn’t fight me. “You won’t hurt me.”

My grip loosens around his wrists, some of the anger going out of me in one breath because Jesus fucking Christ. He’s standing here after everything he just watched me do, and somehow that is the one thing Connor seems completely certain about.

“That’s a lot of faith you’re putting in me right now.”

Connor tests my hold with the slightest pull, and I let him go. His arms slide down between us, brushing my ribs, but instead of ducking beneath my arm or putting any distance between us, he stays exactly where he is, close enough that every breath still presses his chest into mine.

“You won’t hurt me,” he says again, and there’s no challenge behind it this time. No stubborn lift of his chin or dare in his eyes. He says it like it’s a fact.

I’m standing inches from him with someone else’s blood drying across my knuckles, my own smeared over my mouth, adrenaline still pounding hard enough that I can barely keep still. Connor watched me beat the shit out of someone. He followed me out here anyway, let me pin him against a wall, and now he’s looking at me with more certainty than I fucking feel.

I don’t know what he sees when he looks at me, but I’m starting to hate how badly I want to.

“You don’t fucking know that,” I snap, sucking in a breath and getting nowhere near enough air.

Stepping back, cold air cuts into the space that opens between us, but Connor’s eyes follow me. Another step puts enough distance between us that I can’t feel the heat of his body anymore.

“I don’t know that.”

I roll my tongue over the split in my lip, waiting for some hesitation. Anything that says he understands exactly how little faith he should be putting in me right now.

Connor’s eyes flick between mine before falling to my mouth.

“I do.”

I go to put another step between us, but Connor follows, fisting my shirt and hauling me back until every inch of distance I just put there is gone.

I stumble into him, his palm flattening over the rapid beat of my heart.

“You won’t hurt me,” he says. “You can’t.”

I shake my head, catching his wrist to pull his hand away, but Connor only fists my shirt tighter and follows when I shift back.

“Stop.”

“You won’t fucking hurt me, Theo.”

Hearing my name in his mouth freezes my hands around his wrist.

Connor stares up at me, blue eyes moving over my face while his palm stays planted against my chest, feeling every frantic beat I can’t hide from him.

“You’re angry because someone else tried to.”

Connor’s eyes drop between us, and some of that certainty finally cracks. His throat moves around a swallow, fingers bunching in my shirt until his knuckles press into my chest.

“I trust you.”

For once, I’ve got absolutely nothing. Just Connor’s hand against my chest and the immediate certainty that he shouldn’t trust me fighting its way up my throat.

My mouth crashes into his, the split in my lip tearing open with the pressure, but Connor is already kissing me back and whatever sense I had left is broken by the first rough drag of his mouth against mine.

I crowd him back into the wall, his fingers knotting in my hair, pulling. The sting across my scalp only makes me press closer, my body pinning his while his mouth opens beneath mine.