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“No, but you do care,” I tell him, squeezing my thighs around his hips. “You do care, Alaric. And it’s my fault. It’s —”
“It’s not your fault,” he growls, his fingers digging into my jaw. “It’s not your fucking fault, Poe.”
“But Jimmy —”
“Fuck Jimmy, all right?” he says with clenched teeth. “Fuck him and fuck the meeting and fuck every fucking thing right now.” Then, swallowing thickly, “Do you have any idea what those couple of hours did to me? What that phone call did to me. I’ve been scared a lot in my pathetic life, Poe. A lot, and I’m not proud of it. But I’ve never been scared like that. I’ve never ever been terrified the way I was when I found out what he did. To you. When I kept thinking and thinking and imagining you in danger. Imagining you holed up somewhere, tied to a chair. He told me that. He…” He has to breathe and take a pause here and I squeeze my limbs around him; I bury my fingers in his hair. “He told me and I wanted to reach through the phone and fucking snap his neck. I wanted to hear the crunch of his bones breaking. I wanted to see the life going out of his eyes. But I couldn’t. You realize what I’m saying to you, Poe? I couldn’t. I couldn’t touch him. I couldn’t put my hands on him for touching you. For hurting you. I couldn’t —”
I stop him again but this time I do it with my lips.
Like he did back at the motel.
I press a kiss on his mouth and he latches on.
He latches onto my mouth as if he needs it to breathe. As if he needs my lips to feel okay.
And of course I give them to him.
I kiss him until his breath goes back to being slow again. His chest goes back to moving up and down in a gentle rhythm rather than wildly, frantically.
And when he’s lulled into relief, I break the kiss and whisper, “I’m okay. Look? I’m here. With you. And not once when I was with him, in that motel room, did I think that anything was gonna happen to me.” His jaw clenches and I cradle it in my palms. “Because I knew you wouldn’t let it. I knew you’d be worried and you’d turn the world upside down looking for me. I knew that, Alaric. You’re my guardian. You’re the man who protects me and keeps me safe. Of course I knew.”
I did.
I wasn’t worried about myself. I was worried about him.
About him being worried and tortured.
About being torn between saving me and doing his duty.
“And look, you did. You did save me. You tracked my location. You called the cops. You led them to me. You saved me, okay? You did.” I sigh, studying his features. “But I know you. I know what you must’ve felt. When you got that call. You take your responsibilities so seriously and I know, I just know, Alaric, okay? That you must’ve just run out of there, out of your meeting and —”
“I quit.”
“What?”
He takes a few moments before he answers. And in those few moments, he makes a few adjustments.
First, he pulls and hikes my thighs around his hips in a way that the space between them is now all pressed up against his abs. Before he goes for my spine, bowing it in a way that our chests press and breathe together.
As if he’s aligning everything.
As if he wants us to be in sync.
Our breaths. Our bodies. Our hearts.
Like stars and planets up in the sky.
And then he comes for my face.
Which he cradles like my bones are made of fine china and I’m a fragile, silky creature that he’s holding in his arms.
Then, swallowing again, he whispers, “I quit the board. I quit…”
My heart is pounding, racing as I ask, “Quit what?”
“Everything.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t want to do this tonight. I… You need your rest, but… When I got the call, I was about to drive back to you. I was about to drive back to St. Mary’s. I wanted…”
He keeps trailing off as if he’s running out of words. But I don’t think that’s it.
I think it’s the opposite of that.
I think he has so many words to say that he doesn’t know which ones to say first.
So I help him. I grab the thread he left trailing and prod, “You wanted what?”
His eyes flash and his jaw goes tight for a second. Then, “To say thank you.”
“What?”
Another wave of emotion goes through him and we’re so close and we’re so perfectly aligned — courtesy of him — that I swear I feel his heart skip a beat.
Then, with his thumb making circles of my cheeks, he rasps, “I realized that I never said thank you. For the gift. For the jacket that you’d made for me. I never said…” He swallows. “But not only for the jacket. For other things too. For things that you do for me. For things that you do despite all the things that I can’t do for you. All the things that I haven’t been able to. And we both know that there are many things that I haven’t been able to do. We both know that.
