AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Without you, she’s just…”
“Please don’t say happy,” I beg, voice cracking in a way I’m not proud of. I shove my hands in the pockets of my coat, hiding the way they shake. Nia stares at me, mouth dropped open as she cocks her head to the side.
“Oh.” It’s quiet—and something about the way she says it punches me in the gut, leaving me breathless as she reaches her hand up to cover her mouth. Through her fingers, she softly says, “You love her.”
Fuck.This is not the woman this is supposed to be happening with.
There’s that heart slamming thing again, though.
“Yes,” I admit, my voice raspy and barely audible.
“She hides in the office when you come to Sunny Side. She’s there now.”
Of course she does. I heave a sigh before holding the next breath I gulp down. We’re at an impasse, staring silently at one another as I try to figure out what in the actual hell I’m going to do here. After a moment, Nia nods toward the door, a small smile stretching over her lips.
I dip my chin and turn, only pausing when Nia calls after me, “For what it’s worth, beneath all of the confusing feelings that she uses to keep you at arm’s length, I think she probably feels the same way about you. She wouldn’t do this otherwise.”
I slip through the door and hustle around the back of the shop, cutting through the narrow alley to the next strip of buildings. I find the first break between the buildings, fingers brushing against the warehouse that’s soon to be mine, and barely look both ways before darting across the street to Sunny Side.
I storm through the restaurant, ignoring the shouts of the waitresses and cooks as I dip behind the counter and slam through the door into the kitchen.
“Hey, what the fuck, man?” One of the cooks says. He steps into my path, but I dodge him quickly, feet easily eating up the distance to Delilah’s office.
She appears in the doorway with her hair piled in a messy bun on top of her head and the top two buttons of her shirt undone.
“Hey, what’s going—” she starts, breaking off with a gasp when I crowd her backward into the office, kicking the door shut behind me as I reach for her.
“Finn,” she breathes, body sagging as I pull her to me.
I grip her chin between my thumb and forefinger, dragging her face up as I drop my forehead against hers. My breaths are ragged, pitiful things in my chest as I breathe her in for the first time in three very long weeks. My eyelids drop closed and I revel for one long moment in the feeling of her chest pressing against mine with each shaky breath she takes.
“What are you doing?” She whispers as her hands come up to press against my abdomen. She doesn’t push me away, but she doesn’t wrap her arms around me to drag me closer either.
“Aren’t you tired, Delilah?” I ask, lips a hair’s breadth away from brushing against hers. The heat of her body so close to mine stings with the force of familiarity and want.
Delilah fights my grip, trying to pull her chin away to turn from me. My eyes pop open, boring into hers as she purses her lips, brushing them against mine with the briefest touch. She gasps, as if shocked by the touch, and wrenches away from me. She takes a step backward, wrapping her arms around her middle as she deflates.
“Whydo you insist on doing this, Finn? Wouldn’t it be easier for you to just go home, to leave Pine Ridge to me and stop torturing us both?”
“Because ever since you set my pants on fire, you insufferable brat, I’ve been head over heels in love with you.” I take a step toward her, a smirk crossing my lips when her ass connects with her desk. I drop my hands on either side of her hips, pressing into her as she sucks in a shuddering breath. “And I have it on good authority that you wouldn’t be acting like this if you didn’t feel the same.”
Chapter8
Delilah
“We’re impossible—it could never work,” I murmur, heart careening in my chest as his breath puffs over my chest and neck.
“Why?” He asks. I shake my head, closing my eyes as I tip it back to rest on my neck.Thisis precisely why I’ve been avoiding Finn Vittatoe like my life depends on it. Because my heart is hanging in the balance and I’m so fucking afraid of getting it broken by him again.
Maybe that’s not fair, but I don’t think clearly when I’m around him. I should hate him—he took my dream and stomped it to bits—but there’s a part of me that whisperseverything happens for a reasonanytime I try to be mad at him these days. And that traitorous part of me wants to give into him and the useless feeling in my soul that lights up like a string of Christmas lights when he’s around.
I groan his name, the sound of an exaltation on my lips when he lowers his head and kisses a trail from the crook of my neck to the valley of my breasts. This explosive electricity between us has to be worth so much more than a muted heartbreak that landed me precisely where I needed to be with everything I wasn’t aware I needed.
Pine Ridge. Sunny Side. Finn Vittatoe?
Check. Check. And… check?
My heart slams in my chest, knocking the breath loose from me as he drags his tongue up the column of my throat.
