Page 117 of Golden Ruin

“I don’t get how you could leave.” Her voice quivers. I want to bring her closer but restrain myself. “I couldn’t fucking breathe when you ended things, Sterling. Like… you took all the air out of the room, out of my life, and it nearly killed me. I’m not talking about you going to Miami. You know that. I’m talking about you leaving me.”

She goes silent, and I don’t press.

There’s a distinct memory that haunts me. In hindsight, it was probably the final straw that broke us.

It’s no secret that Lexi’s father is a sore spot, but she wanted to fix that. She fucked up the first time she reached out to him–taking her anger out on his car when she saw that he’d moved on. But she owned her shit and put herself out there again anyway. However, her dad, being an absolute narcissistic dick, rejected her olive branch. Actually, he went as far as threatening to seek legal action against her for how she lashed out before. She confided in me about it, shared the pain it caused her, and I… could’ve had a better response.

I could’ve had her back, criticized less, supported her more.

And after that talk—after I told her she shouldn’t have called him, shouldn’t have been so emotional, after I told her I understood why he wasn’t receptive—she looked at me differently.

But I get it now. It’s like she said before. She was never looking for the hero I thought I had to be. All she needed was someone to be there for her while she fixed it. Or didn’t fix it. Either way, she just needed me to be there. And as much as I hate the comparison, I know part of me will always exist beside her father in her mind. Another person she trusted who left. Yeah, he created the wound, but I sure as hell poured salt in it.

She wipes her eyes, but doesn’t pull away.

“When things got hard, when I became hard to love, you just… stopped, and I–”

“No.”

That word leaves my mouth too quickly for us not to both know what it means, what I’m actually saying.

But now it’s out there.

“You were never hard to love, and I never… I never stopped.”

My confession sits between us like someone just parked a fucking truck in the room, and there’s no taking it back.

So, in an effort to show her I’m not the same Sterling I was in college, that I’m not the same guy who ran when shit got hard, I do what hasn’t always come easy for me.

I let her see my soul.

“I love you, Lexi. That never stopped.” I pause just long enough to catch my breath after saying so much. “I’m tired of trying to live without you. I tried. I built an entire life that didn’t include you, only to realize existing without you is very different from being happy without you.”

I lower my gaze, staring at her hands in mine.

“Leaving you was the biggest fucking mistake of my life,” I admit. “You deserved better, and I’m sorry I didn’t know how to show up for you the way you needed me to.”

She doesn’t bother swiping the tears away this time, letting me see everything.

“I want you, Lexi. I choose you. I’m just waiting for you to see what I realized a while ago.”

She blinks up at me. “What’s that?”

I step closer, feeling like I’ll suffocate if I don’t say what I’m feeling. “That it was always supposed to be us.”

It feels incredible finally saying it, admitting that the chemistry that keeps pulling us in isn’t just muscle memory. It isn’t just lust or history.

It’s love.

She’s completely silent, and I hate that it makes me anxious. But she could absolutely tell me that I still haven’t said enough, done enough, but I can’t let that make me regret it. Because being honest with the woman you love can only be a good thing.

“Sterling, I–”

She’s quiet again, but I take small comfort in the fact that she’s still holding my hands, that she’s not running because I scared her off. So, when she stretches up to get closer to my height, and the soft warmth of her mouth meets mine, it’s all the response I need.

A soft gasp puffs from her nostrils when I hoist her up, loving how she instinctively knows to wrap her legs around my waist. I push the short, tight dress up to her hips, then slip one hand underneath it, rubbing and squeezing her ass. I lower to the edge of the bed, taking her down with me, and as she straddles my waist, there’s no way she can’t feel how hard I am through my boxers.

Her mouth never leaves mine as she pushes the straps of her dress and bra down her shoulders. And when she slips both arms out of them, I yank the fabric down to her ribcage, exposing her tits. Her head falls back when I take her nipple into my mouth, sucking it rough like she likes.